I'm on a bit of a Baseball Candy roll of late and today we look at what is the least popular of the five subsets that made up Topps' inaugural release of a standalone baseball set. That would be the Team cards.
I've written about these oblong, gold bordered cards previously but there was a recent sale of a full master set of 18 at Heritage that caught my eye, although not my wallet. Sets do come up, a bit infrequently, but every year or so one is offered at auction. It's unusual for the master set of dated and undated varieties to pop up but that too, happens from time to time.
Printed along with the Connie Mack All Star cards, PSA as of December 13th, had graded 1,053 examples of which the highest is a lone 8.5 of the dated Athletics card. The dimensions work against them as a mere six straight 8's have been assigned and it's easy to infer high grade raw examples are just not out there. Meanwhile 996 Connie Mack's have been slabbed by PSA and 211 Major League All Stars. That's a different distribution from the last time I really checked, about a decade ago, with the spread between Teams and the Connie Mack's almost pulling even while the Major League All Stars have gone from about half the population of the Connie's to a mere twenty percent or so. Those MLAS cards are tough kids!
Distribution between the dated and undated Teams varieties seems roughly even and the least graded cards are those of the Giants, followed by the White Sox and Cardinals. I'm still tying to figure out if Topps used three different cardboard stocks and can say the recent Heritage lot only showed two, the brilliant white stock that seems to stay bright forever and the far dingier tan backs. I've long thought a cream stock exists but it didn't show up in this lot and relying upon scans doesn't always yield precise results. Let's take a look then at two different Teams, the Dodgers and Athletics.
The boys from Brooklyn were going to blow a massive lead in the National League pennant race by season's end but it was a dynastic squad that often brawled with an even more dynastic one in the Yankees from 1947-56, with six World Series clashes but only a single World Championship to show for it.
The back of this undated card shows off the brilliant white stock; it's a thing of beauty in a way:
Meanwhile the Whiz Kids got a National League Champions notation:
There was no Yankees card as seven teams were never produced, so no corresponding American League Champions card exists. The back of the Phillies card is also brilliant white:
They got two red pennants added on the back as well.
Now for the dated cards, which were issued after the undated ones, likely in a bid to avoid running afoul of Bowman. Dodgers again:
Here's a closeup of the name plate showing the date.
The dingier card stock is easily discernable when compared to the white:
The Phillies stand tall...
...despite the dingier card stock:
That's how the whole auction lot presented; brilliant white for the undated cards, dingy stock for the ones with dates.
The offered set was ninth on the PSA Registry and a check over there shows sixteen master sets on the registry, with half of them at 100% completion. The Heritage lot was the lowest ranked set that was complete, with a GPA of 3.48; the no. 1 set has a GPA of 6.16 and only one other partial is above 6.
These cards are not for everybody but many Hall of Fame players can be found in the photos and they certainly have their place in the history of the hobby.
Way back in 2009 I posted about the 1951 Baseball Candy set and, as part of what is now a mostly obsolete series of observations, examined how this multi-faceted set might have been assembled and distributed by Topps. To refresh your collective memories, Baseball Candy was an overarching marketing name and its constituent parts were comprised of what is now considered by the hobby at large to be five separate sets: Red Backs, Blue Backs, Connie Mack All Stars, Major League All Stars and Teams. The latter three were exactly twice the size of the first two, so they all fit neatly together for packaging and printing purposes when the two card panels of the Red and Blue Backs rode along. You can click around on the labels at the right for more details if you like but this is how Topps decided to take on Bowman in the start of what some (not me) have dubbed the Bubble Gum Wars.
There is evidence that the Connie Mack All Stars and Teams were printed together (note the sliver of brownish-orange along the right side of the Mack card)...
That's a color match for sure:
It also seems the Red Backs could have included in at least one, if not two, of the Connie Mack/Teams press runs, thanks to this oddity -a favorite - that resides in my collection:
It's possible all three red reverse sets could have been arrayed on the same press sheet but it's not a given, even with that with that Senators reverse as they may have run a waste sheet or two. But it sure seems possible. I've not yet seen scans tying the Blue Backs and Major League All Stars together like this; fingers crossed though.
Topps had issues with distribution of Baseball Candy, and of course there are three Major League All Star cards that are true hobby rarities. I won't get into why and how today (which I have refined since my 2009 post) but I believe combinations of those three rarities (Roberts, Konstanty, Stanky) and the Teams cards could have brought the entire Baseball Candy set down. Ignoring those Teams cards, which are somewhat scarce in their own right, the blue-themed sets are relatively tougher than their red-themed counterparts and seem to have had only a sole press run, vs. at least two for the Red Backs and Connie Mack All Stars.
This raft of problems left Topps with a bunch of undistributed Red Backs (and Connie Macks), plus a smaller amount of Blue Backs (and possibly MLAS cards) and they had to find ways to dump their excess inventory. Topps was relatively new at this but had already come up with several solutions for reselling some earlier sets that involved primordial Fun Packs and, for the Red Backs, (and a scant amount of Blue Backs) they blew them out in 1952 in packs of Doubles:
These were marketed a hailing from T.C.G. and had no caramel or other confection in the packs:
But there was also something called the Trading Card Guild, which I believe was created by Topps to:
a) funnel cards to non-confectionery markets, but also
b) dump excess inventory, and
c) possibly allow for third party selling of "dead" sets by sellers like Sam Rosen.
Back in my 2009 Baseball Candy post, (what the heck here it is, take some of it with some salt) I did mention panels of Red Backs had been seen in Trading Card Guild packs that were elongated and made of red cello but until recently I had never seen one. Well, thanks to a recent Lelands auction, we now have eleven of these sighted, with ten entering the hobby via said auction. I managed to snag some scans of the packs before they were overwrapped following verification. As you might imagine, it's a veritable sea of red:
Wowsers! Flipping them over, one held a surprise:
Yup, that is a Connie Mack All Star (featuring Mickey Cochrane)at bottom right! What you can't really see is the indicia on these packs but thankfully I have a couple of the wrappers in my collection and it reads like so:
These could have been used for any of the sets Topps issued in two card panel format from 1950-51 (there were eight counting Baseball Candy as one big release) and you can see the 1951 copyright at right. The oddity here is really the Topps For Toys reference, a division they had originally created around 1948 to market a game. I believe these red cello packs were the last gasp for their toy division.
As mentioned, eleven packs were found but only ten made it to the auction block. Well it looks like the Luke Easter/Yogi Berra combo was withheld, and I think it could have been consigned by a big time Yankees collector who simply held on to a killer pack:
So here's the thing-could some cello packs of Red Backs potentially have a Connie Mack All Star sandwiched within? If a similar Trading Card Guild pack of Blue Backs ever came up, could it also have a Major League All Star card hidden within? Questions, questions...
Here's a little bit of bang for the Fourth folks! I've been tracking down a few things during our forced pandemic pause and recently focused on the 1951 Topps Major League All Star cards, specifically the trio of unissued rarities that are among the rarest cards of the post World War 2 era.
I found a very old Collectors Universe thread from 2003 by a poster called murcerfan that stated (I have lightly paraphrased and slightly corrected spelling and grammar):
Mastro sold the big 3 from the current all-stars set in 1999. Another loose and low grade example of Konsanty was sold by them in a big lot of Connie's and Currents in 2000 (might have been 2001). Here was Bill's write up back in '99:
In 1951 Topps produced a set of die-cut Major League All-Stars to complement their Connie Mack All-star issue. Both sets were supposedly to contain 11 cards, but the 'current" seemed impossible to complete due to three cards which never surfaced. In time, hobby pioneers were able to ascertain that these cards of Jim Konstanty, Robin Roberts and Eddie Stanky were never publicly distributed and that all known copies could be traced back to Woody Gelman, Topps' Art Director. No definitive explanation has ever been offered for their scarcity and Gelman who died in the early 1970's never offered an answer, so the mystery continues.
Few examples are known. Larry Fritsch and Barry Halper have sets of all 3. Both these "sets" have considerable glue damage from being mounted in Gelman's albums. Fritsch's on the back and Halper's on the front. Another "set" turned up several years ago with significant creasing. This group was hand cut and had no die-cutting. This leads us to believe these were not final production and were likely salvaged by a Topps employee....
John Rumierez (forgive me John) is the only fortunate collector in the history of the world to ever obtain undamaged copies. Many years ago a walk-in at a show sold John two of the three cards in high grade (Roberts and Stanky) but no explanation as to their origin was offered (or John didn't ask).
Finally Frank Nagy obtained a set of eleven from his pal Gelman back in the 50's. The die-cuts and card fragility worried Nagy so he scotch taped the backs (with two layers of tape that won't come off, I might add!). To add insult to Injury, Nagy stored his cards in a pile and the tape on the back eventually stuck to the fronts and caused some paper loss, although not severe. Mastro met Nagy in the 70's and they had a good laugh about that tape on one of Bill's visits. So we have a grand total of 14 of the unissued current all-stars in the hobby.
OK, that's a bit messy, a key point is off and I think the count above is actually 15 but it's instructive nonetheless. Let's unpack all that verbiage.
The conventional hobby story I've heard is Nagy got a set of 8 from Topps then wrote Woody to ask about the missing cards, which I guess he knew about, and Woody sent him a trio. All 11 at once or 8 then 3, it really doesn't matter as either way the story is he got his trio from Woody/Topps.
Then there are three confirmed examples numerically graded by PSA. All three were sold by Legendary Auctions in 2010, with the Stanky and Konstanty going to Keith Olbermann, while Roberts ended up in another collection. I have to believe it remains there or has only transacted privately since. It appears though that there was an intervening private sale before 1979 of these three and they ended up with Barry Halper as they were shown in various editions of the Sport-Americana Baseball Card Price Guide for several years (at least the first six). Here is a shot of each of them from 1980's Second Edition:
Note the staining on the left border at knee height.
Stanky (a helluva player and the 1950 NL leader in WAR, retroactively determined of course) has staining mid uniform around the area of his left arm and chest and at the bottom of the card.
Note the connecting nub at the top and bottom of Konstanty (the 1950 NL MVP in case you were wondering how he ended up in this set) and there is a very hard to see fleck of cardboard missing atop his left knee. The reproduction in the guide is pretty muddy but this was 40 (!) years ago. All three graded examples have the nubs but these are the most pronounced. The nubs show these were all Baseball Candy production pieces.
These three were eventually slabbed by PSA (and it's how they appeared in the 2010 Legendary auction). Thanks to Friend o'the Archive Kevin Struss for the scans:
I have a scan of Stanky's reverse in the slab (below) and without (not shown but a recently sent Keith Olbermann image of the liberated card confirms its the same one):
Note the tape (and old "sticky" photo album residue) but this wasn't likely Nagy's originally for reasons that will be apparent momentarily. Here is the PSA 2 Konstanty:
That's a lotta glue! On the obverse, the Roberts and Stanky stains match the Halper cards shown in the Sport-Americana guide and check out the missing cardboard on Konstanty's left knee, also a match. The Konstanty is a PSA 2, as is Roberts while Stanky is a 1, I assume due to the tape being added (as opposed to glue?). Amazingly, it also was sold on eBay in 2006!
So the Halper examples are the sole residents of the PSA pop report for the trio, with the three Authentic examples not appearing anymore . Actually only the Roberts could still be in the Registry as in addition to Stanky, Mr. Olbermann has also liberated the Konstanty from its plastic tomb. I suspect the same happened to the Authentic examples after REA sold them in 2018. So other than Roberts, the Halper trio went to Keith Olbermann and the CU Forum description is therefore a little wonky on his two.
The Gelman trio of proofs are likely the ones REA auctioned in 2018 in PSA Authentic holders. They have not resurfaced at SGC or Beckett holders so they are in their natural state presently. More on these a few paragraphs down.
A reprint trio with finished backs was offered (as such) in 2014 at Net54 Baseball. These are seemingly from a different source than the Halper examples as there are no nubs (Stanky's "dirt" though seems similar to that on Halper's example but he has no bottom stain) and appear die cut but I think these are just cleaned up Halper examples as the missing paper from Konstanty's knee seems in place, as does the dirt on the left side of Stanky's uniform.
Now we get to a Stanky reproduction that looks like it came from yet another source (UPDATE 8/6/20-I've just confirmed the original was Fritsch's):
That's a known fake (it has raw cardboard back and is actually not die cut, that is a photo of the original) but note the extra creasing between Stanky's legs, the uniform dirt near his right shoulder (not on his left side) and lack of staining on the bottom border. Do the other two from the trio also exist from wherever this sprang? At least one MLAS fake was found along with this one that had both red and blue printing on the reverse but I can't recall which player, even though I saw it in person. This could be that fake or its sibling but I can't tell. Maybe this was from Fritsch? (Yup, see 8/6/20 Update above).
Finally, let's get to the actual proof examples mentioned above. In December of 1981, The Trader Speaks had a very interesting auction from Card Collectors Company:
It looks a lot like Richard Gelman was auctioning some of his late dad Woody's collection. No matter, this is the only display ad I have ever seen for the trio in my entire stash of old hobby publications.
In the Spring of 2018 REA auctioned a trio of proofs in PSA Authentic slabs that seemingly matched the CCC auction descriptions:
As you can see these were blank backed, showing the white stock used to produce the Blue Backs and Major League All Stars in their sole press run, so clearly cut from a proof sheet. If you see one with a non-white, raw cardboard reverse, it's a fake.
My belief is the initial run of each as sold in the nickel packs Baseball Candy included all cards printed in red, with the dingier backs, so, assuming any packs still exist and someone would open one, you should only find Red Backs, Teams and Connie Mack All Stars together. Blue Backs and Major League All Stars should likewise co-habitate but Teams may have also been inserted with these despite their red print backs (more below on this). I'm not sure if the smaller cards were on the same sheets as the larger ones but this scrap clearly shows contemporaneous printing of both sizes tied to ink color on the cards and how the initial idea was to have panelized pairs:
The larger Connie Mack All Stars, Major League All Stars and Team cards were essentially inserts for the smaller cards and all were initially sold under the Baseball Candy brand. I think Topps planned to market a kind of "immersive" experience with Baseball Candy, will all large components enhancing the smaller ones when the game was played with them; why else originally market them all under the same name? I suspect the Connie Mack All Stars were intended to face the Major League All Stars when the game was played with the smaller cards but the virtually non-existent Topps marketing campaign never got this across and my take is legal problems--probably an injunction halting sales- shut down the entire shooting match just as the Blue Backs were being sold along with the second run of Red Backs.
The Team cards are a bit of a head scratcher as to why they were included, no matter the overall intent of the Topps marketing strategy. It would not surprise me if it was part of an out of the box legal ploy to show they had issued cards of all players but then the set got shut down. Perhaps the missing seven Team cards would have been issued with a second press run of Blue Backs but this is all pure speculation on my part. There's enough smaller cards out there to suggest Baseball Candy sold well and the need for a second press run of Red Backs seems to confirm that too.
What's odd looking back almost 70 years now is why certain players were included. A little bit of investigation though shows the player selection wasn't really off the mark and in addition Topps may have had limited options given their player pool in 1951. Like Stanky and Konstanty, whom I touch on above, the other two seemingly bizarre choices for inclusion in the set were Walt Dropo and Hoot Evers.
Dropo was the 1950 AL Rookie of the year and Evers had an excellent campaign in 1950, receiving some AL MVP votes (as did Dropo). Evers was also a stellar athlete and from what I can tell all these decades later he excelled in center field. Injuries were his biggest problem, plus a late start due to military service but he was considered a good enough player to replace Ted Williams in left field for the Red Sox when the Splendid Splinter was recalled for active duty in May of 1952 during the Korean War. In fact, he was traded for Dropo as part of a blockbuster deal in June 1952 that brought him to Boston from Detroit (and which also included another MLAS, George Kell). So three of the eight regular issued subjects in the set were in the same trade!
Circling back to the matter at hand and as noted above, I am presently unsure if the Team cards were issued with the blue backs or which version (dated 1950, or undated) came with which run of Red Backs or even if some got held back to be inserted with the Blue Backs. There could certainly have been a mixing after the first Red Back/Baseball Candy run was sold and even some legal strategy in the timing of issuing dated or undated versions.
Later, bagged "sets" of Red and (possibly) Blue Backs were sold, but they appear to have been an aftermarket product and the large cards within may not have been representative of the original packaging. You can click through the links on the right if interested in more details, noting some information in the earlier posts has been amended. There were generic ten cent "cello" packs as well sold under the Trading Card Guild rubric; these did not come with gum and could have had some of the larger cards in them. Penny packs of Baseball Candy would only have the smaller cards within; Doubles packs were 1952 reissues without the caramel.
I decided to look at PSA and SGC pop reports to see if there were any clues in the pop reports and indeed there were.
Looking at small card panels and large cards, PSA shows a 82/18 percent Connie Mack All Stars vs Major League All Stars count and essentially the same split on Red Packs vs. Blue Backs, strongly suggesting they were marketed together by color. The Teams have an overall pop of 911 and for the dated vs undated varieties it's roughly a 50/50 split, with a little variance from team to team. The overall PSA pops for all Baseball Candy subsets as of June 27, 2020:
Red Backs: 15,117 (may include panel count) Blue Backs: 7,356 (may include panel count) Teams: 911 Connie Mack All Stars: 836 Major League All Stars: 183
That's very close to a 2:1 ratio for Red Backs vs Blue Backs, underscoring the extra red press run. The total of Teams vs the two All Stars sets is also quite close, roughly within 10 percent. This could mean the Teams were packed with both colors of Baseball Candy panels. Don't forget they and the Connie Mack All Stars are also found with both dingy and brilliant white backs.
SGC has counts that mirror these results somewhat:
Red Backs: (site does not display sums) but 167 panels Blue Backs: (site does not display sums) but 60 panels Teams: 223 Connie Mack All Stars: 444 Major League All Stars: 67
The red vs blue panel mix is a bit off from PSA but SGC does not get nearly as many subs. The Connie Mack All Stars and Major League All Stars also match at around 87/13 while the Teams count vs. the die cut cards is only 44/56, which doesn't track at all with PSA. If I remember correctly, early on in the slabbing wars, SGC was able to holder more oddly sized cards at first due to their ability to create custom inserts on the fly. Beckett did not have a lot of graded examples but their overall numbers match the findings at the other two. I didn't include their Red and Blue Back counts but did count the big cards.
Combining the large card counts from both PSA, SGC and Beckett yields 2,766 examples graded like so (rounded percentages):
Teams: 1,182 (43 percent) Connie Mack All Stars: 1,326 (50 percent) Major League All Stars: 258 (7 percent)
Toting it all up and assuming all trios of the Super Short Prints began as just that, while not knowing what John Rumierz's two examples look like and assuming there was always a matching trio that explains the "loose" Konstanty, here's what I have come up with, detailing my best take on provenance for each. I assume the die cuts did not survive at the same rate as the Teams but we'll never untangle that one. Roberts: 1) PSA 2 die cut -Woody Gelman/??/Halper/2010 Legendary/Current Whereabouts Unknown 2) Raw die cut- Woody Gelman/Nagy (double taped back)/Mastro 1999?/Current Whereabouts Unknown 3) Raw die cut "nice" - Rumierz show walk in 4) Raw die cut/back glue - Woody Gelman/Fritsch/Current Whereabouts Unknown 5) PSA A "Good" Proof - Dec 81 TTS CCC ad/likely 2018 REA/Current Whereabouts Unknown
Stanky: 1) Former PSA 1 die cut - Woody Gelman/??/eBay/??/Halper/2010 Legendary/Olbermann 2) Raw die cut- Woody Gelman/Nagy (double taped back)/Mastro 1999?/Current Whereabouts Unknown 3) Raw die cut "nice" - Rumierz show walk in 4) Raw die cut/back glue - Woody Gelman/Fritsch/Current Whereabouts Unknown 5) PSA A "Good" Proof - Dec 81 TTS CCC ad/likely 2018 REA/??/2019 Goldin/Current Whereabouts Unknown
Konstanty: 1) Former PSA 2 die cut - Woody Gelman/??/Halper/2010 Legendary/Olbermann 2) Raw die cut- Woody Gelman/Nagy (double taped back)/Mastro 1999?/Current Whereabouts Unknown 3) Possibly "in the wild" (was this separated from the Rumierz walk-ins?)-Mastro 2000 or 2001/Current Whereabouts Unknown 4) Raw die cut/back glue - Woody Gelman/Fritsch/Current Whereabouts Unknown 5) PSA A "Good" Proof - Dec 81 TTS CCC ad/likely 2018 REA/Current Whereabouts Unknown A tip of the hat to Anthony Nex and Al Richter for background on some of the Mastro auctions. Many questions remain on Baseball Candy and the "Big Three" MLAS but they helped solve a couple already.
Well your blogmaster picked up a very odd 1951 Topps Red Back last week. Offered for sale was a split panel of #7 Howie and #12 Jim Hegan:
I already have an example of an intact panel plus a full set, so it wasn't those two mugs that grabbed my attention but rather what was shaking on the backs of these cards:
Yes, that is a large portion of the reverse of a 1951 Topps Team card! This particular oddity was likely produced during the second run of Red Backs and Teams, where brilliant white stock was used (the first run was cream for both sets). I believe this would mean the Team cards were of the undated variety, the 1950 dated versions coming last since they only come on brilliant white stock.
So what to make of this monster? Well, I think it means the Teams, which were on the same sheet as the Connie Mack All Stars (see the miscut below to see how they were next to each other on the sheet), but probably not the Red Backs, had been run off first.
My initial operating theory is that the red ink for the Team cards, which is the same as used on the Red Backs, was run off on a couple of Red Back sheets as a color test, then put aside to be used to used with other waste sheets as protection on the tops and bottoms of each stack of uncut sheets as they were palletized and banded for transportation from the printer in Baltimore to Brooklyn. I still think that latter part is correct but am rehthinking if all three sets were on the same sheet since they were sold together as Baseball Candy in 1951
The orientation is right I think when my miscut backs are compared to Connie Mack above- printed to the side and not atop a Team card.
I have never seen anything like these two Red Backs and wonder if any more are out there. I started a thread on Net54 about them as well, which may be worth checking in on. Hopefully more information can be developed.
A couple of years ago I wrote two articles for Old Cardboard magazine consisting of set summaries for Topps’ pre-1960 baseball offerings. One of the intriguing things I uncovered while researching the articles was the relationship all five of Topps’ 1951 sets had to each other in an overarching issue called Baseball Candy. With some additional research since then even more has been found. Hang on, this is one l-o-o-o-o-o-n-g post!
To refresh your collective memories, the five baseball sets released by Topps in 1951 were:
Red Backs, a 52 card baseball game set with two variations, which would prove key in developing a timeline for issuance of all five sets. An easy master set to put together even in nice shape, there was a huge find of these about twenty years ago that swelled an already robust supply. Topps called these the “A” series of 52 and in some of the more expensive packs they were sold as joined pairs in a vertically oriented panel, separated by nubs. Some consider these the first true Topps baseball cards. They were packaged together with the Connie Mack All Stars and undated Team Cards in nickel Baseball Candy packs and also sold on their own. They were sized to fit easily in a child’s hands.
NOTE: I now believe the Red Back printing information below to be incorrect; it appears only two press runs were made. See here for more information. 2/1/12
Blue Backs, another 52 card baseball game set but with zero variations and harder to find than the similar Red Backs. They also seem to generally seem to be found in rougher shape than the Red Backs. Topps called these the “B” series of 52 and indeed, they can be considered as the second series of game cards issued that year. These cards can also be found in vertically oriented panels of two, although the Blue Backs are much, much more difficult in this form than the Reds. They were marketed in similar fashion to the Red Backs, at least to a degree.
Team Cards, strangely truncated at nine cards (out of a possible 16), they can be found with a 1950 designation on the front, or not. Black and white photos framed by a gold border don’t sound all that attractive but looks pretty sharp to me. These horizontally elongated cards have red text on the backs.
Connie Mack All Stars, an 11 card set of pop out cards featuring retired greats as selected by the Tall Tactician, which should have been 12 in number as it was short an outfielder, which hobby legend suggests would have been Ty Cobb. These too are elongated (vertically this time) and have red text reverses.
Major League All Stars, aka Current All Stars, another 11 card set of pop outs, in all probability also cut short by one (there is no manager) but also featuring three great short-printed rarities of the modern era. Even without the short prints, this is a notoriously difficult set to assemble. Unlike the otherwise similar Connie Mack’s, Major League All Stars have blue text on the back.
The saga of Topps’ 1951 cards begins simply enough. Red Backs and Blue Backs were commonly issued in wax penny packs called “Doubles” with a piece of caramel within. The Doubles moniker relates to the fact two cards (Baseball Playing Cards to be precise) were in the pack. From here on out it gets strange.
Let’s first examine how each set was printed.
Red Backs
You can see nubs on these cards still, indicating the attachment points. There will usually be four larger nubs, almost like a hinge, either on the top or bottom and a smaller, single nub opposite:
Red Backs can be found with a pure white stock back or a less brilliant version I will call cream, which leans toward a browner tone. Here is white:
Here is cream:
The fronts are generally of the pure white variety but some have the cream color and feel like the gloss is reversed, i.e. like the printing sheets were flipped before being inserted into the press. Most of the cream front cards in my set exist with pure white backs. On the other hand, some cream colored fronts mysteriously have cream backs as well, which makes it seem like the sheet flipping theory is not foolproof. Fair enough-this is an ongoing investigation.
What is noticeable about the pure white stock is that is does not seem to fade over time, indicating it is of a high quality. The cards might get dirtied through handling over the years but the brilliance of the white stock does not seem to dissipate. Cream backs seem to suffer a bit from fading.
Now we come to the two variations in the Red Backs, involving Gus Zernial and Tommy Holmes. The former can be found with the White Sox or A’s mentioned in his biography, the latter with either Hartford or the Boston Braves.
Gus Zernial was sent to the Athletics by the White Sox (via the Cleveland Indians in a three-way deal also including Minnie Minoso) on April 30, 1951. His pre-trade card has him in a Chisox hat:
Post-trade the logo is airbrushed out and blank.
Easy enough to do if you don't have a picture on file with his A's garb and a harbinger of future Topps airbrushing efforts.
Tommy Holmes presents a bit of a quandary though.He had a pretty solid 1950 at the plate for the Braves but was named manager of their Hartford minor league club sometime after the season ended and presumably before spring training in 1951.Topps must have started production on the set late in 1950 as he is shown on his "Hartford" card in a Boston cap.
When Holmes accepted the Hartford job Topps amended his bio on the card front to reflect the fact he managed in Hartford as the photo was likely set and only text changes could be made prior to printing this run.
Then on June 19, 1951 Tommy came back to the bigs as player-manager of the Braves. While his photo remained unchanged, his updated Red Back biography reflected this promotion
.
This tells us there were multiple printings of the Red Backs. My set has the following permutations of these two players:
In the Net54 thread where I first posted these these observations, it is noted that a large find of these in the late 1980’s contained only Zernial (Phila.) and Holmes (Hartford) variations, which I am advised had brilliant white backs. The evidence at hand then certainly supports a minimum of three press runs. Given the six week spread between the transactions for these two fellows, I have to surmise the Red Backs were selling quite well.
This gives a possible timeline of a first run of cream stock backs, a second run of white stock backs following the Zernial transaction but before the Holmes promotion and then a cream stocked third press run with Holmes shown as Boston’s managerWhew!Another possibility is they were printed in two locations, with a second run in one of the plants.This is not as far-fetched as it sounds, which we will get to in a bit.
Blue Backs
The Blue Backs could not have been printed before May 14, 1951 (per Bob Lemke’s observation of player/team changes) and not too far after June 15th as Andy Pafko, traded on that date to the Dodgers, is shown in his Cubs uniform. Chronologically this places the Blue Back printing around the time of the second Red Back printing featuring the white backed Zernial (Phila.) and Holmes (Hartford) cards. They also appear to only have gone through one printing as there are no variations and the backs are found only in brilliant white. This makes sense as they are four or five times harder to find than the Red Backs in my experience, although they are not scarce by any means. It also may mean they were printed the same time as the white backed Reds.
What does it all mean? Well, did Topps get creative, and co-opt a lucky descriptor on the Red Backs (meaning “A” in “a series of 52” was part of a phrase and not a series identifier) when issuing the Blue Backs with the “B series of 52” wording? It could be happenstance and lead to the logical conclusion the Blue Backs were a second series created after the success of the initial Red Back run. IF that was not the case, then the Blue Backs still appear to be a planned second series. There’s more to come on this front too.
The real fun begins though, with the three larger card sets.
Team Cards
For some reason, Topps printed up these black and white cards in undated and dated versions. That’s odd certainly but no odder than the fact seven teams are not represented.
I had always thought the dated versions had to have come first but close examination of Burdick’s American Card Catalog a little while back led to his statement that the dated cards were reissued. This gives us a timeline with the undated versions being printed first.
Much like the Red Backs, there are distinct cardboard stocks used for the Team Cards. From what I have observed, brilliant white stock was only used on the reverse of the undated cards.
The white backs also feature reverses that feel and look very smooth. Dated cards can also be found with an almost gray back (a minimally finished natural cardboard tone):
The gray backs seem to occur only on dated team cards, although there are tantalizing hints of white backed dated teams (bad scans, just can’t tell if they are white or cream). I have a slabbed 1950 Dodgers card so can't feel the back but it looks rougher than the front of the card or a white back does. It's basically unfinished stock on the back. There is a harder to find dated cream colored version as well:
The jury is still out on undated cards with cream backs. Here is a dated one sold on Ebay last year with a creamy looking reverse but the lighting is bad and I can't be 100% certain:
Once again, we have a set that looks to have gone through at least three press runs. Printing in multiple locations is also a theory we need to examine and will do so momentarily. Let’s look at the die cut cards first though.
Connie Mack All Stars
The Connie Mack All Stars were almost certainly created in the wake of Mr. Mack stepping down as manager of the A’s and the publishing of his book entitled My 66 Years in the Big Leagues.
The Connie Mack All Stars have red printing on the reverse:
Incidentally, the original edition of the book came with four baseball cards, which are quite attractive and worth showing here:
The eleven Connie Mack’s can be found with white or tan backs (sometimes veering toward gray), with finishes similar to those on the team cards. I showed a white above, here is a tan, from the back of my Speaker and you can see the corners of the card retains the original color as they were ensconced in photo corners at some point:
Connie Mack's and Team Cards were printed on the same sheets, as this grouping shows:
These two miscuts tell a little bit about the sheet configuration, with team cards printed below the Connie Mack's in one instance but side-by-side in another. We also have two die cuts printed next to each other. Two runs in two locations, one with Connie's and Teams together?
It's an important question as to whether all nine team cards were on the same sheet or if there were more originally and some were pulled. In other words, what happened to the other seven teams? Were they never printed or did they actually roll off the presses? Topps made available some of the Major League All Star cards to people who wrote to them but if that was so, then would not people have also asked about the missing teams? I have to think they would have and that seemingly supports the theory the missing teams were never printed.
This clearly means the Team Cards and Connie Mack’s were designed to be packaged together at some point in the distribution timeline. Since the undated Team Cards have white backs and came first based upon Burdick’s findings concerning the 1950’s being reissues, we can extrapolate the white backed Connie Mack All Star’s also coming first. As there a zero variations with these die cut cards it’s a moot point but a clue is a clue, right? But since Red Backs and Connie Mack's were also sold together, we still have a bit of a mystery on our hands. Before we look for Shaggy and Scooby Doo to help us, let’s look at the toughest of the 1951 Baseball Candy issues first.
Major League All Stars
The eight issued Major League All Stars can be found with white backs only.
You will note they are advertised as being eleven in number, a fact that looms large over the fate of this set. Since the text on the reverse is blue, they likely were not printed along with the Connie Mack’s and Team Cards (which have red text). In fact, there is some evidence they were printed entirely on their own sheet from a 2004 Mastro auction (notice how the indicia plate differs slightly from the Connie Mack's):
Famous for three colossally difficult short prints (mid five figures for a decent, if not pristine example is probably a bargain) that may never have seen the inside of a pack and which could be obtained by writing to Topps and requesting them as legendary collector Frank Nagy famously did. The three short printed cards also have another factor in common. Two of the short printed subjects, Robin Roberts and Jim Konstanty, were teammates on the Philadelphia Phillies in 1950-51 and while the third, Eddie Stanky, played for the Giants those two seasons he was born in--you guessed it--Philadelphia. I have also been advised by a collector that owns all three short prints that they only come with white backs.
Now Philadelphia was where Bowman Gum was located and I have to think the “Philadelphia Connection” got Topps into trouble, throwing a wrench into an intricately planned and integrated series of cards when they ran afoul of players contractually bound to Bowman. Topps used caramel instead of gum to circumvent Bowman in '51 but some players probably had exclusive deals that year, which caused Topps to pull them. It is easy to envision a Baseball Candy multiverse otherwise, where one kid with red backs faced off against another with blues, cheeks bulging with caramel with an array of pop up players spread out before them--current all stars versus all time all stars--with a gold bordered team card pinned to the wall overhead. Alas......
Let's turn to the packaging of these five sets, which is the window into what Baseball Candy was to have been.
Anyone who collects the Red and Blue backs knows that the penny Doubles pack can be found even today in unopened form, although it is far more likely to contain Red Backs, even though the one below has Blues.
The box had some simple rules: "Winner deals!"
There were also Baseball Candy penny packs though, with colorful wrappers that are not all that easy to track down these days. I initially thought these contained but a single card (“Card” not “Cards” is shown on the wrapper but the nickel pack uses the singular as well) and piece of caramel hidden within but now think otherwise. (EDIT SEPT. 2009-I NOW BELIEVE THIS TO BE INCORRECT, SEE UPDATE HERE)
It’s the nickel Baseball Candy packs where things really get interesting.
There were advertisements tying together the Red Backs and Connie Mack All Stars too:
As you can see the Red Backs and Connie Mack’s co-habited in the nickel Baseball Candy packs. At some point, it appears the Team Cards joined the mix:
The fact the caramel is in a glassine wrapper is interesting as there is anecdotal evidence it was going rancid from contact with the cards in the penny packs. The description of the contents gives me pause however and is a little confusing in mentioning “product residue” which makes it seem the caramel was still touching the cards:
1 1951 New York Giants Team Card (undated)
4 Two card Red Back Panels
That’s a pretty good haul for a nickel!
Did Topps take previously packaged Red Back panels from Doubles packs and reuse them in the nickel packs, which could explain how product residue got on the cards from caramel that was sealed off in a glassine envelope? It might rabbit, it might.
Adding to this intrigue is the nugget that the Blue Backs also are known in hobby circles to have come in nickel Baseball Candy packs. My theory is that they were designed to be marketed with the Major League All Stars thus tying together both of the ’51 sets known only with brilliant white stock and blue printing on their backs. I suspect when the Philly connection killed the Major League All Stars, Topps halted production of the blue-themed card packs. The Major League All Stars went into limbo, the Blue Backs were certainly repackaged in either Doubles or Baseball Candy penny packs.
There is an issue with this though, brought to light by Irv Lerner.
An article in SCD written by George Vrechek which primarily covers the 1962 Topps Green Tints had some recollections from Mr. Lerner, a long time collector and dealer. It’s a great article, as I would expect from George who is the best chronicler of the hobby's history I can think of. You can read it here: http://www.sportscollectorsdigest.com/article/irv_lerner
You’ll see Irv mentions that 1951 Topps Red Back nickel packs had undated team cards and Connie Mack's in them which is no surprise. He then states the nickel blue back packs were issued in New Jersey with dated Team Cards and ML All Stars. Well, that could mean the Team Cards were repackaged as well as I would expect only undated white back team cards to be found with Blue Backs and ML All Stars.. It might also mean there were two different production facilities, which is possible since I believe Topps did sub out work to a Philly area (Camden, NJ?) printer in the early 50’s. Then again, maybe the dated Team Cards with white backs tie into this and could be as rare as the Major League All Stars. Or, Mr. Lerner is not 100% accurate in his recollection (hey, it happens after six decades) and it was undated team cards in the “Jersey” packs.
The Blue Back packaging leads to a related theory that all of the red print backs were brethren as well and there is proof of this:
The contents of this amazing package are described as:
“ a complete set of fifty-two Red Backs in their original uncut two-panel form, an instruction sheet for playing the game, three 1951 Connie Mack All-Stars cards, and two 1951 Topps Team cards.” Red backs all, one way or the other!
That is cream backed Reds with gray backed Team Cards packaged together (no idea what back the Connie’s had) btw. Here is what the playing diamond looked like:
One thing is worthy of note—this bagged and (presumed) “set” and ancillary cards does not mention Topps anywhere on the package and they may have sold excess inventory to a third party.
So what really happened in 1951? Perhaps this is the correct timeline, perhaps not (EDIT SEPT. 2009-IT'S NOT-SEE UPDATE HERE)
1) Red back First Printing, sold in Doubles one cent packs and five cent Baseball Candy packs. Penny packs were possibly not sold until after the nickel Baseball Candy packs came out.
2) Blue Backs sold in Doubles penny packs.
3)Red Backs second printing, with team changes after mid June, 1951), sold in five cent Baseball Candy packs with Undated White Back Team and White Back Connie Mack's.
4)ML All Stars Philly connection blows up the set. Philly players Konstanty and Roberts are pulled, as is Stanky, who was born in the City of Brotherly Love. We are left to wonder if a friendly pressman printing the set for Topps in Philly alerted George Moll or Bowman? Some five cent Baseball Candy packs with Blue Backs and ML All Stars get out, most don’t. The remaining cards get blown out to a Philly area wholesaler/jobber (in Camden, NJ maybe) and so enter the New Jersey market but don't sell too well under the radar and many boxes are probably discarded when sales tank.
5) Package up the remaining Red Backs with Tan Backed Dated Team cards and Tan Back Connie Mack’s whipped up for another go around, in 5 cent Baseball Candy packs.
6 Sell leftover Blue Backs still warehoused destined for insertion into 5 cent Baseball Candy packs with whatever else is left (ML Allstars, Gray back Team cards, etc.).
7) Sell leftover Blue Backs in rare penny Baseball Candy Wrappers, perhaps without nubs as only one card was in each pack.
8) Sell remaining Red Back, Team Card and Connie Mack stock to a third party, who bags the whole set with a paper playing field and sells for 29 cents. I believe there are tan backed team cards in this bagging as well (see back scan above).
9) Drive intrepid Topps researcher bonkers 58 years hence.
Number nine is the only thing we can be sure of today. And I still don’t know what to make of a reference I found once indicating the Red Backs were also sold in these early 50’s Trading Card Guild cellos which have the manufacturer as Topps for Toys:
Trading Card Guild was a Topps pseudonym and these packs have been identified with early 50’s non-sports connected-pair sets so I guess it’s not too big of a leap.
Thanks to Doug Goodman, Al Richter, Randy Trierweiler and a host of others for providing input on these sets.
Edit: 6/20/19: Brian Wentz has advised "That double-windowed cello actually contained both 1951 Red Back pairs AS WELL AS a white back 1951 Connie Mack All-Stars. The Red Back pairs sandwiched the white back Connie Mack All-Star. If you ever have the opportunity to compare size, it all makes sense. This is first-hand information from someone who opened them in the 1970s from leftover store inventory. We have a bunch of those flattened cello wrappers which were saved from buying the collection. The find yielded lots of Mint 9 Red Back pairs, in addition to a NM-MT 8 and a NM-MT+ 8.5 Babe Ruth as the highlights"
