Paper Works

I love stumbling across various bits of Topps ephemera on my computer (or should I say cloud?). You can sometimes get a sense of how the company was promoting certain brands or distributing products.  

Here's three different bits o'paper from a long time ago, recently rediscovered and sent to me by Jeff Shepherd. First up is an order form for a trade association that managed shipments for The National Association of Variety Stores.  This is quite similar in nature to a form used by the  Consolidated Merchants Syndicate.

So 2,880 pieces (tabs in the vernacular) of Bazooka was $16.32 east of the Rockies and $17.28 out west, as long as you bought two cases minimum.  Pricing seems to be the same as wholesale for the time so the cost to a trade association was the same as that offered to any other jobber or wholesaler buyer.  NAVS  members each had their own exclusive territory, although non-members could have as many stores as they wanted of course. I wish the rest of the form was visible!

Speaking of jobbers, Ventura County Tobacco Co. appears to be one; note the pricing for 1957 Football matches the Bazooka pricing above for the west coast (60% of retail).  Bazooka proper was the same price from two years earlier to boot:

The handwritten calculations indicate the jobber was working out the "2% net" prompt payment discount.

Finally, we get what looks like an "extension bonus" payment to Frank Howard. He seems to have preferred cash to merch!

Stamping and mutilation (what, no folding?)-that's a long way from snapping two images on your phone to deposit a check!

Checking Out

We're going to round out the unnumbered checklists today with a quick look at the one from 1957 Topps Football. It's a bit more colorful than the ones found with '57 baseball:



The big Beckett Football Guide also mentions a variety with white instead of yellow background and states it is equal in supply to the yellow version but my quick, unscientific search of Ebay (from whence all these scans came) and Google last night only turned up a dozen or so of the yellow type. Can anyone (I mean you Doug!) provide verification of the white version?

The backs (and there are two, one for each main type of Topps bubble gum at the time) have a more finished look than the reverses of the '57 baseball checklists:





Same ads as the baseball! The Blony connection makes some real sense here as Topps borrowed one of the proposed designs for 1956 Bowman baseball cards in composing the 1957 football cards. Here is a '57 FB for comparison:



Printed on the now standard 132 card half sheets, the first series had 88 cards and the last 66, for a grand total of 154. Beckett indicates 22 double prints in the second series, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me as a 66 card print run usually means all cards are printed equally. That is a story for another day though.