Unboxing Day

More cellophane today campers!  Football cards also got their own little boxes protecting cello packs in 1970 and '71 but unlike their Baseball counterparts, no 1972 box came out.  This could have been due to Topps becoming a public company in March of 1972, thereby killing off any "un-needed" additional expense but it also could have been because Topps had a better idea on the pack graphics. I tend to think it's a combination of both.

Friend o'the Archive Dave Schmidt sent along a picture of a 5th series Baseball cello from 1972 with graphics on the front that highlights the transition:

I was not aware of this variation pack and am advised these were only tested with 5th series cards and obviously no outer box housed them. The test must have been a good one as the 1973 Baseball cards followed suit:

But I was talking about football, wasn't I?  The first Topps cello packs that I am aware of that had football cards came out in 1955 and featured the All-American set.

Topps used the cellos in '55 to help kill off Bowman, stuffing these ten cent packs full of as many as 22 cards!  The Trading Card Guild boxing came with a topper (as did a number of TCG retail boxes I suspect):

1956 saw a similar approach but Bowman had been vanquished and you didn't get 22 cards anymore in what was the first Topps NFL set.  Check out this amazing image from a past REA auction:

Cello Football issues continued into the standard card size era in '57 and I can't find any vintage FB cello's with graphics on them from 1957 onward. In fact, once you get to 1960 Topps seems like they almost abandoned gridiron cello issues.  I could find no entries in the PSA pack pop report for 1962, 1964 or 1965, although Mark Murphy's unopened pack guide indicates they were issued in all years. A 1965 tall boy cello would be a thing to behold!

1967 though, brought us a 1967 Football rak pak, once again memorialized in an REA auction:

Topps often test drove things with Football before following suit with Baseball the following spring.  For instance, pack inserts started in 1960 Football before they appeared in Baseball starting the following year.

There's definitely Football cello's in the 1966-69 years and then 1970 brought a nice, bright red box as Baseball test drove Football I guess! Mile High auctions had this bad boy a little while ago:

Topps already had reduced the card count from the 33 offered in 1970 Baseball cello's but the gum came onboard to soften the blow:

1971 brought a yellow box for Football, scans of which I found over at the quite wonderful Sports Collectors Daily:

The card count was excised on the reverse, foreshadowing the 1972 Baseball cello box:

1972 remains interesting as Topps used two cello pack varieties.  One was plain and one wasn't.  Here's a front and back from REA (again):

And here is a '72 cello with graphics:

These can be found in either flavor for the first two series. As for the infamous 3rd series, seemingly only distributed in wax to Stevens Point, Wisconsin, I don't think there are any cellos.

I'll end it here as it's quite homogenized from 1973 on as Topps had no competition and a bottom line to protect for its shareholders, resulting in a period of general blandness.

Land of the Giants

Generally speaking, the teams I root for cause me great disappointment most of the time.  I follow the Knicks in basketball (ugh),although with the Nets coming back to Brooklyn I may double down as I almost always go as local as possible here on Long Island.  That of course means I am an Islanders fan as well, which was quite a lot of fun for their first fifteen years, not so much since. In baseball it's the Mets, which I don't even want to get into, it's such a sad situation.

But in football, it's the Giants and has been since I was in third grade and used to go to their summer training camp at C.W. Post University and chase the players for autographs.  Oh, it could have been the Jets and I flirted with them a bit over the years but Big Blue is my football team and without them my sports fan experience would pretty much be the most depressing collection of teams this side of the Continental Football League.

In 1956 they would also celebrate after winning the NFL Championship, with this talented bunch of players:

Two decades earlier Ed Danowksi was the only Giants quarterback until last night to win two championships for the team, although Phil Simms certainly deserves a mention, despite a season ending injury near the end of the 1990 season. Danowksi even gets a nod on the back of the card:

After winning in 1956, it would be 30 more years before they added another title but they have accumulated some hardware since then!

No heavy posting today, just a hearty well done boys!

Check Back Later

After issuing a couple of unnumbered checklists in 1956 baseball packs, Topps took the idea to the gridiron and issued a single checklist card that year, also "pushed" into the packs:



I had to grab that from Ebay as I have not yet waded into the 50's inserts personally.

With only 120 players in the set, there was no need for a second checklist. However, the flip flop of the colors from the first group of 60 to the last indicates to me two series were issued. This Ebay nab shows the reverse and a Bazooka ad:



Unlike the baseball checklists from '56, Blony Gum does not seem to have made the cut for football, although Topps would continue to market the historic brand aggressively for a few more years.

120 cards is an interesting figure as well as the cards would have been printed on 110 card half sheets (two of which comprise 220 card full sheets; half sheets are what almost all extant uncut sheets actually are) as seen in the '56 baseball checklists post. This gives 11 rows and 10 columns, or vice-versa depending upon your perspective, on a half sheet and it appears there are 20 short prints in the '56 football set, so we have a number divisible by 10.

I've never seen a full '56 FB sheet but if you take each 110 card half sheet and print 100 cards in the same quantity on each and then a different group of ten each in one column on each half sheet you can get to 120 different cards with 20 short prints very easily. This will be a discussion for another day as there is also some thought certain teams were short printed in their entirety and wouldn't you know it, there were twelve teams that year and at ten cards each you get 120!

Topps used the 1956 football set to start a trend that would continue into 1957, the contest card. Five or six different ones were issued, covering two separate dates (you had to predict scores of various games and mail in your response). Here is one that covers two games played on October 14th:



And here, in a scan I borrowed from a great online store called Quality Cards, is an example of the November 25th card:



Each date has (maybe) three different possibilities as different games were featured . I say maybe as the reverse shows these were actually numbered (or lettered) in a sequence as such, as revealed by Beckett:

C1, C2, or C3 for the three types of October 14th games (C must be for "Contest") and CA and CB for the November 25th games. There is a question as to the existence of the third type of November 25th card and since I can't find any good back scans of these at all, I'll leave that for another post as well. You can see the number or letter superimposed int he center of each card.

The contest cards appear to have been printed along with the checklist as this helpful miscut details:



The contest cards and checklist are tough and the checklist is difficult in nice, unchecked condition, much more so than one of the baseball versions. Miscut and off-centered checklists are frequently seen.

My feeling is that the contest cards were a way for Topps to see if their distribution network was working efficiently. After all, they now had tons of addresses from around the country and could see where their cards had been sold and it appears Topps tried to get a team from both coasts and middle of the country on each card, which would make a lot of sense for a nationally distributed product. 1956 was also the first year of the NFL's national TV contract, so the stars were aligned for Topps!