Friday, March 13, 2009

Winners Revisited

I posted a couple of times last year about the 1971 Topps Winners set and the alternate 1971 baseball box that hosted the contest allowing some youngsters to have their very own baseball cards. You can click here and here for more on the back story.

After my recent southern sojourn, I returned to the Topps Archives Research Complex to find a box of auction winnings. Within were ten of these elusive cards, possibly comprising a full set. Based upon some astute comments left against my original post, it appears the contest was conducted in the Pittsburgh area but it is still not 100% certain this was the only area.

The lack of baseball poses on some cards is confusing as my impression was this was a baseball themed contest:



These two cards have an early 70's vibe but for different reasons:



Two classic poses here:



Jerry is new to this blog but for Ricky, third time is the charm:



And lastly, the last two, exhibiting similar production flaws such as fish eyes and miscuts as found in the regular baseball cards:



The backs are similar in most cases and likely depended upon a form filled out by the winner, resulting in less information for some than others:



I find the change in fonts slightly odd and am unsure of the significance. The only major change in backs otherwise is on our catcher from above, perhaps his handwriting was not legible enough for Topps to decipher everything:



I wonder if this is the entire set?

1 comment:

Mbologna said...

Do these ever come up on eBay? If so, do you search under 1971 Topps winners?