Escondido A Plena Vista

I was thumbing through the 1989 Guernsey's Topps Auction catalog recently, looking for something or other and realized, after having owned this publication for over thirty-five years, that it contained some images that were used for the 1960 Venezuelan Baseball Tattoos.  Yes, mixed in among the 1960 US Baseball Tattoo images and some from the 1965 Baseball Hot Iron Transfers were illustrations only seen in the South American set, last discussed here and stalled at nineteen confirmed subjects (plus another that is inferred with a high degree of confidence).

Well, it's no longer stalled at nineteen/twenty subjects, or at least I don't think so.  Take a gander at this page from the catalog:

Three distinct looks, three distinct sets! This really makes me think the universe of potential Venezuelan subjects is larger than my previously posited 24.

Some notes:

A) A total of 16 Venezuelan subjects, some already known, run across the top row and part of the second.

B) The captions for those 16 were added for the catalog and do not form part of the original art.

C) The missing caption on the left side of cell A21 is Ruben Amaro:

D) The (very) partial piece of a Zoilo Versalles Venezualan example that is thought to exist is not on display here. 

E) The "Cepida" image is not the same one used for Orlando Cepeda in the US set. If you compare the stateside tattoo...

...to the possible Venezuelan tattoo it's quite obvious:

I think the "possible" Venezuelan Cepeda drawing is taken from his 1961 Topps card, which further cements the issue as coming out after the 1960 US MLB season:

F) Ten additional "Venezuelan subjects" appear likely based upon the imagery in the catalog:

1. Matty Alou
2. Luis Aparicio (previously surmised as a possible subject)
3. Chico Fernandez
4. Tony Taylor
5. Felipe Alou
6. "Clio" (Elio) Chacon
7. Felix Mantilla
8. O. "Cepida"
9. Jose Pagan
10. Chico Cardenas

In terms of nationality, the Alou's were both from the Dominican Republic, while Chico Fernandez, Tony Taylor and Chico Cardenas were Cuban,  We know already that Cepeda was Puerto Rican, as were Felix Mantilla and Jose Pagan. Finally (at last!), Aparicio and Chacon were Venezuelans, with the latter also surmised as the other best bet as representing that country in the set. 

G) Excluding the possible Venezuelan issue-only subjects, a review of the 1960 US Baseball Tattoo and 1964 Hot Iron Transfers checklists show that if a player's image was in this lot, a corresponding issued tattoo exists.

H) It's certainly a coincidence but there's 55 player images from the two different tattoo sets on the page, which matches up with the 1960 US issue in terms of individual player count. There is known overlap between both sets and we see that here in a way.

I) Given all this along with the fact these types of tattoo sets usually have a total subject count divisible by eight that, I was previously hoping that at least three additional players could be found to be part of the Venezuelan issue. I note that five of the Venezuelan subjects are on this sheet in US form: Wynn, Drysdale, Lary, Groat and Woodling. Toting this up, it appears we have rounded the next divide-by-eight corner, so perhaps the final count will hit 32. With 96 subjects in the US set (thanks to various extras added by Topps) that divisor being 8 could also extrapolate out to 32 and the 16 shown here neatly represent half that number, which is a macro kind of thing with Topps in terms of laying out various sets. So, are we missing two subjects still?!

Of high interest then, is Bob Gibson who pitched for three MLB off seasons in the VWL from 1959-61 and then a winter in Puerto Rico. Gibson was also a participant, for two different teams, in the 1961 and 1962 Inter-American Series, the tournament that replaced the Caribbean World Series that year due to the shutdown of pro ball in Cuba by Fidel Castro in 1960 and the subsequent banning of MLB players from the country by Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick. Gibson as a possible additional Venezuelan subject does seem plausible. He is not depicted in the U.S. set.

Possible Subject 32 is another matter. Over 100 different players were involved in the combined 1961 & 1962 tournaments and each team was allowed to "import" a number of players from elsewhere (eight to ten from what I can tell). This led to a large contingent of MLB players on each roster. 

The Inter-American Series was held in February each year, just before Major League spring training kicked off. The inaugural 1961 IAS included a squad each from Panama and the Dominican Republic facing off against two teams from the host country (which was allowed an extra club) and the 1961 tournament was waged in Venezuela. The Series was a major event and the culmination of various Caribbean Winter League seasons, so interest was high.

Unfortunately, it's hard to find rosters for the 1961 series, although some scattered clues are out there.  Assessing all of this, I am very much coming around to the idea that this first Inter-American Series was the inspiration for the set, but that it could have been issued in conjunction with, or even after, with the 1962 event, which was held in Puerto Rico. In addition to the host country's two squads, Panama and Venezuela also competed that year and the rosters of the participating teams are more completely documented than 1961's, although a few gaps exist in what I've determined to date. 

The questions then are:

1) Was the Venezuelan tattoo set intended for 1961 and/or 1962? 

2) How many US players were mixed in?

I think it's plausible the set was issued in each year, just like the Venezuelan Topps card sets that saw a release every other year after 1960 (1962, 1964, 1966) and served double duty. It's also possible a handful of players were changed out, and if so, it's far more likely to my mind that existing subjects from the US set were subbed in as the artwork was already done by Topps. I am guesstimating they would not bother with creating a mere handful of new subjects for a re-release. However, there is a lot of overlap between the active major leaguers in the "possible" pool, not all of them Winter League or AIS participants, plus there are non-US-born natives who played in both MLB and the various Winter Leagues and tournaments (Luis Aparicio for instance). A real possibility too is some Winter League players who did not participate in the Inter-American Series were included in the set beyond those we already know.

One thing I believe may be in favor of a 1962 Venezuelan release is the inclusion of Frank Lary as a subject. He was also in the 1960 US release and his MLB campaign that year was pretty solid, but 1961 saw him go 23-9 and finish third in the Cy Young balloting (across both leagues at the time) and seventh in the AL MVP tally for a strong Tigers squad that finished second to the Yankees.

The Venezuelan tattoos are so hard to find we may never get an answer to what comprises the full set but I would like to narrow down the pool of possibilities with some more research.  First though, I'd like to see if any of you Archivists out there have any thoughts.

Northern Exposure

Put on your mittens lads, it's up to the semi-frozen north today!

I was lazily scrolling through eBay the other day, a pastime I regularly engage in and stumbled across a wondrous offering from BMW Sportscards, namely a full box of 1960 Baseball Tattoos, in O-Pee-Chee livery.  Yup, 240 penny packs of the first Topps supplemental baseball issue just lying there for 55 years.  Look at this:

Pretty cool, huh?  The blurry box flap indicia tells the story, namely that this was an issue licensed from Topps and printed in Canada:

Dig the top man!

The front panel has more of the great UPA inspired ballplayer, albeit a mere mirror image of the box top and wrapper:

The back has the ubiquitous ad for Bazooka:

Now, taking a look at all of this, I am thinking about how the closely related 1960 Football Tattoo was issued in Canada.  The football set is very, very hard to find so it's a bit difficult to suss out.  As I noted in a post some time back on the Baseball Tattoos, that set has indicia on the wrappers that detail distinct US and Canadian releases. You can clearly see the US and Canadian versions have different "made in" and "printed in" information.  Here is the US wrapper:

And the Canadian:

The football set indicates it was made in the USA and Canadian versions were made and distributed under license with Topps.  I believe that means that there is only one wrapper design and not two like with the baseball set.  You can clearly see that on the full football wrapper:

Friend o'the Archive (and provider of that Football Tattoo scan) Mike Blaisdell and I have discussed this a couple of times and he believes there is only the one version. I am convinced that if I had paid a little more attention last time out, I would have come to this correct conclusion earlier.

Thoroughly Ripped

So I got this innocuous e-mail yesterday from friend o'the archive and online buddy Shane Hardie, asking me to take a look at some 1960 Topps Baseball Tattoo scans. That was about six hours ago and I lost Saturday afternoon to the quest!



Long story short, Shane has a theory that the little rips that appear at the top of each tattoo were not the result of the pack being opened but rather a production mark. Here is a closeup:



Shane noticed that when you looked at an unopened tattoo that the rip was already in place and neatly hidden by a flap of the wrapper from the other end when folded on the production line. Well, I happen to have a few pieces of unopened Topps gum from 1946 in my collection and I poked out the foil wrapped gum on a piece of Peppermint



and could see a little rip on the interior of the wrapper, covered by the flap from the other end. I then opened a piece of Spearmint



and observed the same thing. Here is the Spearmint from the other side:



My first thought was that the little rip was caused when the wrappers were cut by Topps on the production line but a closer look revealed the foil wrapped gum tab had a corresponding notch in the same location on the Peppermint:




That little round dot below the rip also penetrated to the other side of the interior wrap



It's hard to see but it's there. It's also on the Spearmint tab but much fainter and it does not present well so I've left it out of the pictures here. It's impossible to make it show up on a scan but the gum tab also had a slight depression in the same spot. Here is some 65 year old gum for your viewing pleasure:



I was tempted to chew it but thought better of it. The score line actually appears just to the right of the rip on the example above (where the foil is still folded). I suspect it was the result of a pin holding the wrapped tab down to secure it before gluing.

Other wrappers share the rip as well. here is a 1949 Stop n Go pack that held a license plate card:



There's another goodie on the flap, I'll get into it next time. Here's a couple from Chris Benjamin's Non Sport Guide:



To top it off, here is an OPC Football Tattoo from 1960, also with the rip:



That would mean that Topps either imported the Football Tattoos into Canada or that O-Pee-Chee used the same equipment as Topps.

I think Shane is right-the rip is the result of the production process and not caused by the opening of the pack. Topps used the same equipment for a long time it seems; here is a 1939 wrapper with the same rip, sent to me by friend o'the archive Jeff Shepherd:



That one is pretty pronounced and you can see the white area where the glue must have gone to seal the flap on top of it. The 1964 Baseball Tattoos also have this rip:



I can't find any scans at the moment but Topps last penny tattoo issues in this style were 1967's Dr. Doolittle and Comic Book Tattoos, although they issued a non-tattoo product the following year called Magic Funny Fortunes. I'll try to see if those have the rips; if they do it mean Topps might have used the same packaging equipment for thirty years! In 1969 Topps went to an accordion style tattoo sheet that sold for a dime so maybe that's when they upgraded their machinery, although one would think the 1966 move to Duryea, PA would have resulted in gleaming new production equipment.

I wonder if this post will cause a "flap" over the rips?

Tatoo Me

Well, it was inevitable. After Sunday's post on the two baseball tattoo (or tatoo) sets produced by Topps, I have been sucked in and am working on a much larger post concerning all of the Topps penny tattoo issues from 1948-67. That will take some time however and today, courtesy of Friend o'the Archive Doug Goodman, I will instead show a few illustrative scans from the baseball issues.

From 1960 here are a couple of the generic "plays":





Horizontally, the player autograph subset is also quite attractive:



While the team logos bring us back to the vertical:



In 1964 we also have some variety. Here are the three colors of wrapper, almost an All-American look:







The team logos seem a little less likable compared to four years prior:



But the real meat is in the player variations, all of which involve Hall of Famers. Harmon Killebrew resembles an old stoplight (no yellow):



While Sandy Koufax has the yellow but is geometrically differentiated:



We know The Mick wasn't yellow but he is here:



The Say Hey Kid also may not be a blockhead (autograph seekers may disagree) but Topps thought he was:



More to come on the Tattoo front, stay tuned!

Tattoo You

Topps has a long history of issuing tattoos. One of their first issues was a tatoo set of general subjects that was issued in 1948-49 and reissued in 1953, simply called Tatoo Bubble Gum, aka Carnival on the display box. They followed this with numerous sets primarily based upon comic characters in the 50's and 60's before adding sports themed vegetable dyes to the mix. They continued into the 70's and 80's with these sets and for all I know still issue them today. I'll delve into the non-sports and non-baseball tattoos at a (much) later date as they have a convoluted history date-wise to say the least. Today I want to take a peek at the one cent baseball tattoos of the 1960's.

As their retail war with Fleer raged, Topps started issuing more and more sets as their coffers filled with the pennies and nickels of the baby boomers. 1960 really marks the beginning of a competitive period with Fleer and a few other confectioners such as Swell and Donruss that would last about a dozen years. The first stand-alone baseball set to be issued in four years by Topps was a series of 96 rather generic looking tattoos that sold for a penny.

There are fifty five players, sixteen team logos, ten autographs and fifteen plays depicted in muted colors, sold in a rather nice pack:



The tattoo itself was on the inner wrapper:



Here is a detailed, mirrored image to give you an idea of how it would look on your forearm, albeit blurry and washed out like we all remember:



O-Pee-Chee, Topps' Canadian marketing partner, also issued the Tattoos in '60. Here is a sealed pack that will give you and idea of how these looked at retail:



That's Jim Gilliam bleeding through by the way. The back was almost identical, with one small difference I will highlight in second:



You can clearly see the Made in Canada and Printed in Canada declarations but here is a closeup:



Compare that to the US version:



It is said the OPC set mirrors the US one but I have never seen an actual checklist for the Canadian issue. Some information is available here on a fabulous O-Pee-Chee baseball site (click around and to-and-fro, there is a lot there) but there is no separate listing shown either so I'll believe it when I see it, as they say.

Topps issued another set (Baseball Photo Tatoo) in 1964 that featured much more realistic looking players. 55 players (with four variations as well) and 20 team logos make up a shorter but better looking set:



I'll post about the variations down the road as I need to assemble scans but Killebrew, Koufax, Mantle and Mays can be found two ways each. The tatoo has a lot more detail than four years prior:



Mirrored, you get this:



Some were a little more colorful:



That color is where the variations come in by the way and is tied in to the print runs, which vary depending upon the color of the wrapper. There are red and yellow wrappers in addition to the blue and players are not available in all colors from what I have seen, although some can be found with two. There was no corresponding Canadian issue in 1964.

The 1960 OPC's are by far the hardest to find and exist at a small fraction compared to the US version, which is also not easy. The 64's are the easiest to find in comparison. More on tattoos someday folks but a thorough review of the color schemes is in order first! I'll also have a pice on the 1971 Baseball Tattoos down the road as well but those are a different beast than these penny pack sets.