Winner's Choice

Just when you thought we were done with looking at the 1971 Topps Winners set (which is actually from 1972) some additional information has come to light from an unusual source, namely one of the actual winners of the contest!  Jake Ingebrigston, who has done the deepest of dives on the set, was able to establish contact with Brucette A. Rumenyak, who has retained, over half a century (!) later, some of the correspondence that went out to her from Topps.

If you don't fully recall, this was her Winners card:

I've shown that front before but not the back:

It is a sign of the time that her softball team was called the Hot Pants!

Now, I mentioned correspondence and here we go. Sy Berger let Brucette know she had been chosen as, well, a winner!

I still can't believe six kids took the baseball card sets over having their own cards, but they did. 

As those of us who collected back in this era, the Topps cards usually debuted around the end of spring training. Topps Sales Promotions Manager Carl Spinella wrote to Brucette and let her know things were happening as Sy's mention of March 1 had come and gone:

Sure enough, four weeks later, Sy Berger (well, his secretary I'd say) sent her a letter along with the goods. Note how Topps picked her two favorite players to mention within:

Mr. Ingebrigston passed along this interesting tidbit:

"A guy she didn't know approached her in college and said he had her Winners card. With my finding a Wilke in a large stash of early 70's cards along with this story, I think it's very safe to say these cards saw some distribution in some form of retail."

So, has anyone out there pulled a Winners card from a 1972 pack?

More from Jake:

"I believe 14 of the 19 cards made their way out the back door at Topps HQ. Perhaps through the Card Collectors Co.. The 5 not included are April Bole, Steve Wilke, Carl Scatena, Patricia Cox, and Philip Edgerly. I believe any example of these 5 (with the exception of the uncut sheet you reported on that was eventually cut and sold as a set) either originated in packs or from the subject themselves. These are exponentially more difficult than the other 14. It’s not even close."

He is looking into this, so we may have even more to come!  Meanwhile, Brucette also offers some insight as to how the contest entry forms were distributed and even the demographics Topps was dealing with:

"Those forms were on a cardboard pad not taped to a box or in the box. Me, my sisters and a lot of my friends took an entry form and filled it out. I grew up in Brownfield, PA which had a population of about 700 people maybe. Probably 25/30 of my friends entered the contest. So figure about 30 from a tiny little town."

If you're wondering, Brownfield is in the Southwest corner of Pennsylvania, deep in coal country. Well, stay tuned!