Football, You Bet!

Continuing from last week, the trove of 3-D protoypes recently auctioned by Heritage contained four subjects beyond the dozen Baseball players already dissected here. Let's start today with Football, U.S. style. Update: The PSA labeling references affiliation with Topps, I'm not sure if that's because they came from a Topps executive or whether Heritage has some details ting them in.

There are four known U.S. Football subjects in the 3-D prototypes, two of Bart Starr and two of Tucker Frederickson, who each appear in two different sizes.  The other Starr is larger than a normal card, more like 5x7 inches as is a Frederickson, although Tucker has the same pose on both sizes seen to date. This Starr is a lot nicer than the other, which has some condition issues:

You can see a little nub on the top border; these seem to have been produced much like the Kellogg's Baseball cards that would begin to appear in 1970, also using the Xograph process (which is a trade name used by Visual Panographics). As with the Baseball examples, the backs are all pristine, or close to it, with no back stamps. In a Freaky Friday kind of move, the larger Starr has no fake autograph!

If you scroll down the above link for the damaged Starr, a less damaged (and slightly tilty) Frederickson appears, showing pull marks at the upper left similar to those found on some issued Baseball examples. That's the same size as the one Heritage has, and it's a little more rectangular then the big Starr. I don't  have permission to show my scan of the larger Frederickson card but believe it measures roughly 7 x 9 inches.

This is all very interesting to me as the process was clearly being worked out with what was fairly new technology.  Topps had interest in overseas Football as well, no surprise as they had been selling internationally almost since their 1938 founding. Update: Again, the Topps affiliation on the label is noted.

We've seen this Cané before, although unlike the current example, with a backstamp.  Here's the unmarred example:

Note how squared off the card is. There is a Sarti offered by Heritage with the same characteristics:

Much like the "big boy" Frederickson, I don't have permission to show the scan in my files of the third European football, Rivera of Milan but it uses the same graphics as the Cané and is also squared off like these two.

Meanwhile, a really weird one from the Topps file copies is this Captain America:

The artwork seems a little off-model to me, although Cap was in the midst of a reboot, likely due to some legal maneuverings, starting in 1968, so who knows? What I do know is this Cap prototype sold for a whopping $52,460!

 I'll see if I can get the OK to post the mysterious 3-D scans mentioned above, stay tuned.

A Whole New Dimension

Heritage Auctions recently concluded an auction that featured the holdings of an ex-Topps executive, which is something that happens once or twice a year now it seems.  These consignments often yield rare, sometimes almost impossible, items and this latest batch contained several jaw-dropping pieces.  The executive is unnamed but Heritage theorizes he may have held a full array of examples from the entire run of prototypes that eventually resulted in the test release of 3-D Baseball in 1968.  That's incorrect as some, but not all, of the issued Baseball 3-D's are here and two of the known Football subjects are missing but the array is certainly impressive and appears to feature a good bit o'fresh to the hobby goodness. 

The consignment also has football (US and soccer-style) prototypes and a surprise non-sports subject.  Today I want to focus on baseball, given the wonderfully exciting World Series that will conclude tonight, capping the first MLB season to begin and end outside of the United States no less. Let's kick off with the semi-unicorn Brooks Robinson prototype-yowsa!

I last examined the 3-D Brooksies in detail way back in 2014 and found four extant copies were known, all of which have distinguishing features.  Among those features were varying degrees of damage and/or dirt on each each. It appears a fifth was hammered by Heritage in 2023 as well.

The front of the Heritage example is almost pristine, as is the back:

There's some extremely light foxing that's just barely there-this sucker is clean! This essentially unblemished look makes this a sixth extant example of this card by my reckoning. I don't normally get involved with prices here except for exceptional things like this and the hammer ended up being an impressive $134,200.

Next up is our old friend M. Clough, who usually goes by the moniker Yaz. At least one of these was known already and you can see it here, along with some other goodies we'll get to next time out. As with the Robinson card, the Clough/Yaz is also very, very clean:

That little white dot on the bill of his cap seems to be on the original source image.  $34,160 brought this one home, no doubt impinged by the lack of Yaz's name appearing.  It was pretty common to use fake names on such creations back then. The reverse looks even brighter than Brooksie's:

However, look at this image and the Robinson, you will note the absence of the Xograph back stamps on these, which identified the firm and also indicated they were samples to be returned to them.  The previously known "Clough" and one of the B. Robby's has a stamp (and another Robinson has remnants of one showing), so these were apparently meant for Topps to retain after that part of the process played out.

There were also ten 3-D Baseball cards in the batch, the three of which make up the known proofs that never made it to the test packs. I'll pass on copying all of them out here, just click over to Heritage to see.

The Robinson and Clough garnered AUT grades, whereas the three prototypes that come close to resembling the final product received two 4's and 5 from PSA.  The remaining seven issued 3-D cards range from PSA 4 to 8, although the backs all look pretty clean as well, save for some light foxing on a couple. So I'm not sure all of these were Xograph samples but it really doesn't matter, given the ongoing popularity of the 3-D Baseball set.

Football from all sorts of places next time out, plus the surprise!