Well, it's finally happened; after 71 years the checklist for the 1955 Topps Small Hocus Focus set has finally been completed! I first started looking at this set and its larger - yet smaller - sibling, the 96 card Large set back when I was preparing my 2013 guide to the early days and ways of Topps. It took a while but I finally realized the Small set had 30 more cards than the Large as they were produced in two different sizes, with the Small cards being, well, smaller than the larger ones. In fact, they were the same size as the 1948 Magic Photo cards, which were produced in two series of 126, which total was my educated guess as to the length of the Small Hocus Focus set.
So, while the first 96 subjects are the same in both sizes, the last thirty cards, from 97 through 126, are found solely in the Small set. Factoring their distribution saw them nestled between the inner and outer wrappers of penny bubble gum tabs plus the general indifference then (and pretty much now) in the set beyond the Baseball Stars and Boxers, means it took about fifteen years for the "high number" checklist to work it self out as the identity of #97 remained a mystery. The inclusion of Robert E. Lee as #98 led to some theorization it could picture Ulysses S. Grant, not a bad assumption.
Well, it took some finagling but Friend o'the Archive Richard Lapointe managed to land this elusive final subject recently and while it's indeed a Civil War subject, it's not a general and it's definitely not a man. Clara Barton turned out to be the final piece of the checklist puzzle:
