Witch Craft

Well both Hallowe'en and Thanksgiving have come and gone, save for some leftovers but Friend o'the Archive Jeff Noll has come up with a Trick or Treat retail box for our post-prandial viewing pleasure. We last saw this style of box the day before Hallowe'en of course and now we can have a much better looksee.

It's in rough shape but these are extremely rare, so you take what you can get:

Love the graphics! Note the 49 cent price stamped on the box.  In fact, that was was a dime above suggested retail! Topps must have sold these for about 23 cents at most when averaged out (60% was the standard wholesale (jobber) rate, although terms were 2% net, so prompt remittance meant you only had to cough up about 22 cents per. If you assume a 48 box case (an educated guess, I have no hard information) then that was a mere $11 or so for what amounted to 2,880 cards-yikes! That extra dime per box was a pretty healthy uptick for the retailer who stamped this one.

We know the jobber rate thanks to some Topps promotional verbiage; 1956's Jets is one confirmed occupant and the key to knowing the suggested retail price:

(Courtesy Lonnie Cummins)

I'm not sure if that Airplane Picture Cards bit peeking through the cello window was just a paper insert or just there for the photo but it's too big to be a penny pack.

Here's the back view, a little more intact than the top:

Very simple elements convey the Hallowe'en theme quite nicely.

The end view is pretty plain but there was no mistaking what time of year these were intended for:

Per Jeff, these boxes measure up like so: 2 1/8" x 8 1/8" x 3 7/8", the first number being the height. He further advises there are no product codes or other markings anywhere on the box.

From what I can tell Topps had given up on Christmas themes after about 1953 and Valentine's Day livery doesn't seem to have come around for a few years still, so this must have really been a big seller, even with the discount pricing.  Topps provided cardboard displays too for larger buyers, those profit margins must have been scary!

Come Fly With Me

Ah, the heady days of the Jet Set: Sinatra swingin' on the radio, cocktails clinking and exotic destinations beckoning! Even Topps got into the act, with their 1956 Jets set, a 240 card ode to flying machines. The small black and white cards, as we know, were sold with Trading Card Guild overtones and an album was made available for easy storage and display.

Legendary Auctions just concluded selling a whole bunch of 50's unopened boxes and one lot had some great shots of the cards, packaging and albums. The box has been shown here before but this is a classic look at some prime unopened cellos:



Normally that red and black box would have held 36 packs of Giant Size cards but due to the smaller dimensions of the Jets cards, 62 cellos were contained within.

The albums were sold for 15 cents each in 8 count boxes:



So the artwork for the cello boxes was actually on the box for the albums! Each album held half of a full set (120 cards) so 30 cents were needed for the entire run of 240 to have a nice home.

Here's another look at the album:



Neat, huh?! The cards were also sold in two types of penny packs, one repeating the look of the box art , which to be fair to the Guild, was prominent on the penny and nickel packs and boxes. But another penny pack was issued called Fighting Planes, giving a militaristic look to things. I can't find a good scan of that pack at the moment but stay tuned as I am feverishly gathering all sorts of scans from the 40's and 50's of anything to do with the smaller Topps cards. I'll add it here when I locate it.

Guildy As Charged

I was paging through the new Mile High Auction catalog last night and among the many droolworthy lots within, one of the most simple jumped out at me immediately. The subject of my focus? A mere empty Trading Card Guild box:



The auction detail indicates Topps Jets packs lurked within back in the day and while that is good and useful information, I was more taken in my the fact I could now legibly read the wording on the box top, to wit.

MR. DEALER

Trading card collecting, like the collecting of stamps and coins, has increased tremendously. Clubs, special publications and international societies have been formed to foster further interest in this hobby.

The Trading Card Guild receives thousands of letters from collectors seeking to locate rare issues or missing cards to complete a collection. The Guild is constant releasing new issues for the avid collector on a variety of colorful, educational and absorbing subjects. Write your questions about old an new issues to Trading Card Guild 237-37th Street, Brooklyn 32, New York.

Previous posts here on the Guild have detailed the ten cent price point used for its offerings. The boxes would contain cello type clear (or mostly) packaging, although dimensions and card counts per pack would vary issue-by-issue. Since ten cents was high for the day, Topps seems to have been inviting solicitations to purchase cards from them in the wording above from more affluent purchasers. This makes sense from a logical and financial standpoint If you had dimes to spend instead of pennies, you probably had more disposable income than the penny pack crowd. Bigger packs would also be an indicator of purchases intended to complete the set.

Now, the big question in all of this is: how did Topps plan to fill any orders for "odds", to use the international society vernacular, from those "thousands" of correspondents? Could this all be a precursor to Woody Gelman's Card Collector's Company? That is one intriguing question I hope to answer someday.

A Crafty Move

If you have followed this blog over the past fifteen months or so, then you will certainly recall references here and there to the Trading Card Guild, a crafty transposition within the “TCG” acronym of Topps Chewing Gum.

The Trading Card Guild looks like it was started as an effort by Topps to sell cards in higher-end establishments, at least when compared to the corner candy store or the local 5 & 10. Primordial efforts in the Fifties yielded a ten cent price point for packs and featured fancier cellophane wrappers. I have to think these marketing efforts, which stressed the educational aspect of the hobby, were aimed at parents and possibly teachers. After all, what kid would give a hoot about learning something valuable from his or her cards, especially when there was no gum to be had in the packs? There was likely some overlap between what types of establishments were offered Guild packaging by their jobbers or wholesalers vs. the "regular"penny or (more likely) nickel packs and I would think only select cities and suburbs were targeted.

The earliest thrust of the Guild seems to be centered upon “twin-windowed”, horizontally elongated backs that held sets issued in panels. It is possible the move was in response to a Bowman campaign that sold cards in ten cent packs and used a newsletter to entice parents to buy more educational product. The earliest sets I have seen reference to that were sold this way are the 1951 Red & Blue Backs but I would not be shocked if they are a year older.

Fighting Marines is another set known to have been branded as such. In 1953 some of the first series baseball cards were issued in ten cent, twelve card Trading Card Guild packs. Legendary Auctions has some in the hopper right now:

I wonder, without cause I might add, if these packs are the source of the hobby lore wherein leftover high number 1952 baseball cards were mixed in with first series 53’s?

You can't tell from the cellophane that they are Topps Guild wraps but the box gives it away:

I wonder if any set was available on an a la carte basis?

Here's a better look at some key packaging:

A couple of years later, Topps 1955 All-American football cards were sold in packs similar to those containing the '53 baseball cards but with almost twenty cards within. Some of these were found years later in an old candy store so not all large cello packs went to Grant’s or A&S! However, if you look at this CU thread, the All American packs were in a regular Topps box. Damned strange if you ask me.

The 1956 Elvis Presley set was also issued in Guild trappings:

There is at least one album associated with the Trading Card Guild, from the 1956 Jets issue and I ponder if that was a common denominator since, as you can see from this box that held the 1953 baseball packs and the Elvis reverse above, that you could write to the Guild and obtain all sorts of things and albums would certainly help move some packs of cards.

Various issues appeared within these red and black wrappers and the moniker also was used for 500 count vending boxes, as this 1964 Beatles artifact clearly reveals.

I suspect the Trading Card Guild efforts died out when Topps moved their production facilities to Duryea in 1965 but am not 100% certain. It would be great to work up a full list of Trading Card Guild packaging and sets as there is scant information on the web or in print concerning this subject. I’ll post updates here as things develop.