Old 97

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:

She fills in the World Leaders subset too, which we knew but it's nice to see it in writing:

Now here it is, the complete "high number" checklist for the Small cards:

97 CLARA BARTON

98 ROBERT E LEE

99 ADMIRAL RICHARD E. BYRD

100 GENERAL GEORGE MARSHALL

101 GRAND CANYON

102 PARACUTIN

103 WALLY MOON

104 VOUGHT REGULUS

105 BOEING BOMARC

106 DOUGLAS NIKE

107 BASKETBALL

108 MARK TWAIN

109 ED MATHEWS

110 DOUGLAS K-3

111 LOU GEHRIG

112 CHRIST OF THE ANDES

113 AMELIA EARHART

114 286 1/2

115 ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL

116 KID GAVILAN

117 BABE RUTH

118 FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

119 S-200 "MINIJET"

120 ROCK OF GIBRALTAR

121 ARCHIE MOORE

122 KARL SPOONER

123 JEFFERSON DAVIS

124 CYCLING

125 NIAGARA FALLS

126 LOUIS PASTEUR

Simply Magical

This post is continuation, in a way, of the Penny Arcade series I toyed with several years back.  The premise is simple, I merely examine Topps one cent packs, preferably those already in my personal collection.  This brings us to a 3-for-1 deal today, as the "focus" (groan) is on some Magic Photo Packs.

The earliest card set put out by Topps debuted in 1948 and was successful enough to warrant a second series that came out in early 1949.  While the wrapper makes it seem like the set should be called Hocus Focus, that was actually the name of the bubble gum, while the cards got second billing as, of course, the self-developing Magic Photo. As an side, the cards came inserted between the inner and outer wraps. This surely impacted the condition of surviving examples today! You can find all sorts of prior posts I've written about the set using the Labels links. if interested.

There were two styles of penny packs used for the set, both with 1949 copyrights (and the same indicia). One has a glassine inner wrap around the gum, the other foil. I'm not sure if the yellow glassine used here was the only color used though but I've not seen another, although X-Ray Roundup employed a dark green inner wrap in 1949.

Here's the yellow:

The foil pack may have come after the glassine, I'm not really sure and the fact that two series were produced may or may not mean there's any connection:

This is the indicia; technically it's a Bubbles Inc. release: 

Note the Lord Baltimore Press logo (which appears on a couple of other similar style wrappers into some part of 1949) and also the black stamped letters and numbers.  Here:

I'm not 100% sure what that all means and every other example I've seen of the opened wrappers does not feature this. However, at a guess it's a stock identifier at the start of the paper used to print the wrappers where 10 indicates the size, MC stands for Multi Color and 32' is the length of the spooled roll.

Here's a point of sale banner for the first series, once offered by REA as part of a larger lot of related sales materials:

I can't find a color image of the first series retail box, but the Topps sell sheet, sent to me in this case by BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd, sure has a nice b&w image of it:

Compare this to the second series box in 1949, which came from another REA auction some time ago.:

It sure looks like both series were co-mingled for 1949 as there's 126 subjects in each.  Worth noting, this is the first Topps one-cent release to feature a square retail box and not be sold out of a round canister. I suspect they were reconfiguring things for the debut of Bazooka penny packs a little later in '49.  It's hard to read but the front panel says "Bubble Gum in Colors" at the bottom right. Six different colors of gum were manufactured, so that's kind of a sly move as the kiddies may have thought the images would be in color once developed. 

1955 saw Topps re-release a couple of sets in a cost cutting move as they moved in on acquiring Bowman.  One was Hocus Focus, issued in one and five cent configurations, the latter in a slightly larger card dimension than the former and with thirty less subjects.  Once again, use the Labels for more on the 1955 set, which clearly states "Hocus Focus" on the back of each card, unlike the 1948-49's. At this point in their history, Topps had stopped giving a set's bubble gum one brand name and the cards another.

The penny pack in 1955 had a white inner wrap:

These one cent 1955 packs are exceedingly difficult to find and the smaller series of 126 cards are quite tough as well (not that the cards from the series of 96 are easy). This would be the last issue from Topps that inserted a card between the two wrappers.

Yup, also Bubbles, Inc., which was originally used by Topps to create some space between their products but soon after this became their go-to persona for potentially controversial sets. It's use here was more of a throwback I think.

Iron Horseplay, or, Give A Hoot

Two killer (and fun) Topps pieces in two different auctions will be hammered later this week, each differing vastly from the other in subject matter but very much similar in scarcity. The checklists, incomplete for the moment (and possibly forever on one) for both are of interest to me as well.

As many readers here know, I have been trying to track down the final subjects in the 126 count "Small" version of 1955 Hocus Focus for years now, to complete what is now a 68-year-old checklist,. My last post on these had it down to 2.5 subjects (subset numbering was unknown for three subjects when I wrote it, with one of the fronts known).  Well all has been sorted out except for one final subject, thanks to this little bauble surfacing and now on offer the Love of The Game Auctions:

It's actually in a PSA slab now but I like the look of  the card outside of its holder.  Here is the reverse, it's #111:

Unreal!  When I started looking at this set in earnest while preparing my 2013 book on the early years of Topps, I was 17 subjects shy of completing the full list of subjects from nos. 97-126 (these 30 cards are the extension of the "Large" set, which concludes at #96). Now all that's needed is to find #97, which is possibly U.S. Grant (as Robert E, Lee is card #98).  Surely someone out there has knowledge or a scan!

The other fun piece is a 1953 painting that went unused in the Topps set that year, which has appeared in a framed piece on offer at Robert Edward Auctions:

These paintings come down through the family of Topps founder Phil Shorin and push the count of original art near 200 now (out of a possible 280+).  He must have been taken with the cleaner looking pieces, as only a couple have any trace of the rubber cement used in the production process on them. 

Now, take a look at the upper right corner painting:

Yup, it's Hoot Evers, a subject which, thanks to an old piece of correspondence from Keith Olbermann, was thought to exist as an unissued subject but had not been seen until now. I wonder if any more unissued subjects will ever turn up.  I suspect the odds are stacked against it but anything is possible in the Topps universe!

And Then There Were Three

Well, hopefully everybody's worked off their post-Thanksgiving torpor! Assuming so, I am looking for a little help today.  67 years after it came and quickly went, the 1955 Topps Hocus Focus self-developing issue remains a thorn in my hide, at least in terms of completing the full checklist.  To refresh your collective memories, Topps issued the set in two sizes, a 96 subject affair known in the the hobby as "Large" and a 126 subject nightmare similarly dubbed as "Small" with the size of the card dictating, i.e. the Large cards measure 1" x 1 5/8" while the Small ones clock in at 7/8" x 1 3/8", which was the same size as the first Topps Magic Photo cards from 1948, which used a similar process to develop the images.

When I published my book covering Topps in the years 1938-1956 a decade ago, I realized that the checklists for both sizes had been hopelessly co-mingled and set about to extract one from the other.  It turned out the first 96 subjects in each size were shared and that Topps had issued an additional 30 cards in the smaller size, which were unique.  They took five of the subsets and added either five or ten cards for this "extended" 30 card series (I hate to use the term high numbers here because the last 30 Small cards exists in the same numbers as the first 96 in that size). This numbering scheme has caused confusion since 1955!

Look at Johnny Schmitz's two cards here.  The 1955 (Small) has four imperforate edges, since they were only issued with penny tabs of gum, inserted between the inner and outer wrapper:

The reverse has a short question that also, with a little bit of research, revealed his E.R.A. "feat" (second best, really?) occurred in 1954:

Note the number in the black circle at bottom right.  That's the overall set number for Schmitz, where as the Photo No. 18 of 23 Baseball Stars represents his subset numbering.  So he is 84 of 126 subjects in the Small Hocus Focus set. The Large size Schmitz is identical in appearance on the front...

...while the reverse shows the score lines used to separate one of the large cards from another as these were issued in panels in five cent packs. In addition, the subset numbering of 16 of 18 has been altered to reflect the smaller number of Baseball Stars issued in the larger size, while the overall set number remains at 84, in this case 84 of 96.

As a result, when separated, the Large cards are always scored/perforated on one or or two of the long edges.  The short edges are both imperforate. While the Large size cards are hard to find today, the Smalls are almost impossible at a ratio that could be worse then 40:1. My best guess is that Topps was testing both the ability to issue something in the style of an older set (which they had already done with their original Tatoo issue) and to see if the one cent penny "tab" packs, which had the card inserted between the inner and outer wrappers (a process they had abandoned by 1950) would sell.  Clearly, they did not.

The way Topps renumbered the smaller version's subsets was inconsistent as they added cards in the beginning as well as the end of the subset numbering sequences. There were five subjects added to the smaller Baseball Stars and this list highlights how Topps wedged in some of them.  Overall set number is to the left of the player's name, then the large subset numbering, followed by the small, with the subjects in purple being the ones added to the Baseball Stars subset in the extended series. This is how they break down:

117 Babe Ruth None - 1/23

Unknown Lou Gehrig None - 2/23

43 Dick Groat 1/18 - 3/23

44 Ed Lopat 2/18 - 4/23

30 Hank Sauer 3/18 - 5/23

86 Dusty Rhodes 4/18 - 6/23

5 Ted Williams 5/18 - 7/23

26 Harvey Haddix 6/18 - 8/23

31 Ray Boone 7/18 - 9/23

69 Al Rosen 8/18 - 10/23

51 Mayo Smith 9/18 = 11/23

87 Warren Spahn 10/18 - 12/23

67 Jim Rivera 11/18 - 13/23

79 Ted Kluszewski 12/18 - 14/23

49 Gus Zernial 13/18 - 15/23

13 Jackie Robinson 14/18 - 16/23

42 Hal Smith 15/18 - 17/23

84 Johnny Schmitz 16/18 - 18/23

60 Spook Jacobs 17/18 - 22/23

8 Mel Parnell 18/18 - 23/23

103 Wally Moon None - 19/23

122 Karl Spooner None - 20/23

109 Ed Mathews None  - 21/23

Crazy, right?  However, that Gehrig gives us a major clue as to the ultimate makeup of the extended series Topps used for the smaller cards.  The front of his card is known from an old auction:

However, while we know the subset numbering is 2/23, we don't know Lou's overall set number.  I can tell you it's either #97 or #111 as every other subject has been identified in the 1-126 sequencing. The other hole is that of a World Leader using one of those two numbers (and either 17 or 25 of 25 in that subset). The only other unknown is the subset numbering is #123 Jefferson Davis (perversely a World Leader and with a subset number that's also either #17 or #25) although a reliable source relayed his details to me (but I'd really like some scans). 

I know these are out there, but who has scans?  I'm partially holding up the second edition of my book due to the missing subjects so am quite anxious to get this sorted.

Here's An Idea

I'm in the midst of an extended series of posts that will probably begin to see the light of day in the next couple of weeks so today's effort is not going to involve a lot of heavy lifting.  I thought it would be fun to look at some of Woody Gelman's filing system today, namely the Idea Books he kept at Topps.

Woody had an extensive filing system and I'd imagine a pretty good amount of space at Brooklyn HQ by his notebooks, ephemera and whatnot.  He thought of this as part of his "idea retrieval" methods, which in a way are what the internet became well before anyone outside of ARPA or Bell Labs could grasp such a concept. Unfortunately, instead of being kept intact, these notebooks have been looted and pillaged over the years with all the pages and files being scattered across the hobby landscape with reckless abandon, stymying any hope of getting a complete picture painted. And so we have scraps...

Here's a neat one, possibly the earliest I've seen, 1955's Hocus Focus (large):

It's a little fuzzy and the infamous Woody all caps scrawl makes it even harder to read but above IDEA it says "Published" and the Item is "Photographic".  The Subclassification is "Hidden Pictures" and the See Under line has the set name.  This would not be consistent throughout Woody's long tenure at Topps, although he appears to have used mostly the same Idea page for his entire tenure with the company while inconsistently filling in the blanks. Having said that, the one I'll show next does not have any of the lined items off to the right, which looks like they tracked reaction from some group or groups of people (Topps execs, kids?) and some progress detail, which seems to be blank on most of the ones I've seen. I wonder if they kept a "clean version of some sets to show prospective licencees?

Here is "Copyright Merch." of a "test series", namely King Kong from 1965 (I have it as either '65 or 1966 but no matter this seems to cinch it at the earlier year), that got pulled when Donruss got the licensing deal.

Tattoos? Got ya covered (sorry) with 1967's Dr. Doolittle, unclear why it's not "licensed merchandise" though:

I'll close with perhaps the most interesting one of all:

"Inserts Types" is what this is, and yes that is a 1964 Topps Giant Size Sandy Koufax cropped excerpt shrunk down to the size of a 1969 Deckle. This makes me think the original idea was to do this almost-great insert in color, which would have been stupendous.  I suspect color would have been a bit more expensive though, in a year of chaos and cost (a lot of pictures had to be takes once the MLBPA agreed to an enhanced deal with Topps and due to the expansion that year). No clue what 27-B means though in the Progress Record.

Pretty neat, eh?

Coming Into Focus

So six or seven years ago, when I was researching sets for my book, I realized that Topps had done something strange with the 1955 Hocus Focus set. It was long thought the "small" (7/8" x 1 7/16") version of this set came out that year, with the "large" (1" x 1 9/16") version issued in 1956, but Topps in fact issued both versions in 1955.  This was because the small cards came in penny tabs while the large cards came in nickel packs and were panelized, six at a clip. The reason for this double sizing remains unknown but I suspect the penny packs were a test issue of some sort, probably to see if the style of packaging was still viable (it wasn't).

Here is the evidence for both sets being a 1955 issue, one Johnny Schmitz in small:

And large.  Note the subset numbering reduction to 18 from 23 and the dotted lines on the long edges, which matched light scoring on the front to allow for breaking the panels into individual cards, the latter a sure sign of the larger version (at least one long edge of a 56 will have these lines):

So we have the same text and overall number for both, which is how the sets are configured through #96.  Schmitz actually led the Senators in staff ERA in both 1954 and 1955 (the latter was about a run higher than his stellar 2.91 mark in 54) and after I guessed they were referring to his stellar 1954 season I had found another reference on the Hal Smith card to an event in 1955 that sealed it:

Smith made his major league debut on April 11, 1955 (which dates the set after that event) and was actually NOT the top batter in the American Association that year - Johnny Bucha of the St. Paul Saints was two points higher at .352 but with only 278 Plate Appearances vs Smith's .350 with 413 PA's - but close enough.

Woody Gelman himself got the date AND set name wrong in a Card Collectors Co, catalog from ad from April 20, 1962:

That two bucks for a full uncut sheet of the small cards would have been quite the investment 57 years ago!  As Woody got the name of his own company wrong as well, we can assume typos occurred with some frequency.

While the sets shared main sequence numbering up to #96, there were 30 additional cards issued in the smaller format concluding with #126. These 30 subjects also feature a disruption in the numbering of five of the eight subsets accordingly.  At the time my book was published (July 2013) 17 of the subjects above #96 remained unknown. This extraordinary paucity of checklisted subjects among the "super high" numbers is unprecedented-there are simply no other Topps card sets with unknown subjects, although a few 40's and 50's Tatoo sets are similarly under-developed as you might imagine. Most intriguingly, another penny issue from 1955, Davy Crockett Tatoo is even rarer than Hocus Focus with only a handful of examples presently known.

In the years since, the list of unknowns has been whittled down to a mere six. That number was eleven until very recently when Brian Wentz of BMW Sportscards sent along scans of three heretofore unknown subjects and Friend o'the Archive Bill O. pointed me to scans of two others.

First up, the "BMW" find", led off by a real doozy:

Kind of hard to see the grandeur in that tiny little picture!

Another airplane has come along now as well:

That's a little better-you can even see the pilot in the cockpit.

Finally, we have some cycling action-this guy looks pretty excited:

These new subjects from BMW were found within a larger grouping of twelve of the small cards.  As I have previously noted the ratio of small to large cards seems to be about 1:40 (I may be tweaking that a little downward as I do more research but it still seems about right) so this is no small thing.

Bill O. found these two, nos. 100 & 110:

No. 110 is quite blurry as it's from a small original scan, subset number is still TBD-this is one elusive subject as previously I knew it by number only.  Slowly it reveals its secrets, this Douglas K-3

We can infer it is #12 of 15 Airplanes as the other four in the subset above #96 are known.

The numbers still lacking confirmation of their existence are: 97, 98, 108, 111, 120 & 125 with #110 being a known number now but needing some sharper focus and another subject being Lou Gehrig, number presently unknown as no back scans can be found.  I do have an old Sports Collectors Digest picture of Larrupin' Lou's obverse though, from a Scott Brockelman find around 2003:

 Sixty four years in and we still don't have 'em all nailed down!

How Irregular

Well it's been just over a year since my last post on The Card Collector and now that I've dusted off some more issues, I thought I'd share some additional fun facts.

I don't have a full run of issues but I did note that sometime between issue 11 (5/15/61) and 16 (12/30/61) Woody Gelman turned over the editorship to Jim Zak of Cicero, Illinois, although it remained essentially a house organ for Gelman's Card Collectors Company, which still published the little 'zine.

First up, from number 19 (3/30/62) we get an issue date for the Bazooka Presidents set, namely 1962.
(UPDATE 6/23/20: It turns out it's from 1960 after all):

Previously attributed for the most part to 1960, this 33 card sets runs through Eisenhower.  These were issued in the familiar 3 panel package designs.  Here's old Zachary Taylor:

Later in the same issue we see that the 1962 Topps Baseball Stamps were being issued 40 at a time, at least in the beginning.

The Stamps did clock in at 200 subjects, although Roy Sievers is shown with two teams (Athletics and Phillies) as Topps corrected a mistake as he was never on the A's. This little hiccup meant 201 stamps were actually issued!

Anyhoo......Fleer's FTC complaint against Topps makes news.  Fleer would win one of their arguments in 1965 before the decision was overturned and they sold all their player contracts to Topps in '66. Topps had 414 of 421 major leaguers locked up and Fleer took exception.

Things pick up a bit in the next issue, dated 4/20/62, check out the CCC ad:

1949 Bowman PCL cards are one thing but 1956 (really 1955) small Hocus Focus cards in uncut sheet form for $2.00???!!!  The $1.00 price point for the PCL cards is intriguing as the recently reappeared 1952 Baseball high numbers (garbage scow, my ass) were going for the same rate.  As it has turned out, the former are a good bit harder to find that the latter.  And I've never seen an uncut sheet of the Hocus Focus cards-the mind reels at what that would be worth today.  Other ho-hum items include T205's, Hopalong Cassidy foils and the rare #68 Fleer Ted Williams card. Jim Zak had some deals too, no?

In issue 22 (6/20/62)  we get one of the first inklings of the 1962 Baseball green tints:

Meanwhile issue #24 (8/20/.62) brings 1949 Bowman misprint sheets and 1952 Topps highs. Woody was really turning up some goodies!

I hope to fill in the missing issues (I have about half of the run) but these seem a little harder to find than some other hobby mags of the day. Some are also very mundane but the hobby was visibly nascent for two decades and the Card Collector was a vital early publication that helped fuel the wide-ranging world of cards that exists today.

Instruction Card

We'll shortly be moving more into the 1960's and early 70's in terms of the overall vibe of this blog but there are still many things from and about Topps in the 1940's and 50's worth posting about.  Near and dear to my heart are the postage stamps sized issues of 1948-49 and the last gasp of those little wonders, the Hocus Focus set of 1955. Still without a complete checklist for the smaller sized version some 60+ years after issue, the whole set is a bit of mystery in terms of timing and packaging, although I suspect it was retailed in response to another confectioner's offerings.

I managed to snag an image of the instruction card issued with the larger version of the set recently and it's pretty neat:

I like how you can make out the bare outlines of the World Leaders subset in panel 3.  It's a lot more detailed than most instructional drawings from Topps over the years. The card also shows signs of high speed "ribbon cutting' where strips of uncut cards were cut at high speed, resulting in a slight curl that's just off kilter.

The back is plain Jane man:

I post reverses of things even when blank to help identify potential counterfeits.

I still need an example of the blue developing paper and although I don't collect wrappers per se, I do collect the penny wrappers from these tiny little issues.

I bought my panel from Larry Serota, known to many in the hobby as a collector of many hard-to-find cards. Larry also had a number of auctions going on eBay with small and large groupings from the set.  Here are some undeveloped and uncut panels of the large sized cards, as inserted in the nickel packs, showing how panels of four plus three came packaged, although I have seen some that may be only "twos" (hard to tell this long after the fact):

It's one of those sets where the backs look nicer than the fronts!

As previously noted on the blog, the small cards do not show signs of perforations or dotted lines as they were inserted as singles in the penny gum tab packs.

As I stated above, I'll be focusing more on the 60's and 70's going forward but will still, of course, post anything worthwhile from the earlier decades of Topps as items come to my attention.