Ersatz All Folks

Hey kids-kind of a "so good it could be real" post today, so hang on for a fun ride!

Here's a couple of esoteric Topps sales stimulators I found from an old Morphy Auction some time ago.  These are of the neater items I've seen in the ersatz-promo vein.  The first is a "Baseball Certificate" which very much resembles an admission ticket of yore-because it actually was one!  It's hard to read but it indeed bestowed a granstand seat to the bearer.  This may have been from a Bazooka contest but I'm having trouble tracking which one so perhaps it was instead from a distributor contest, something Topps ran with regularity.

Next up, we get this fantastic item from two years later, hawking the first Topps Baseball inserts (Baseball Stamps) and the standalone albums used to house them:

That was clearly designed to look like a Western Union telegram and given that Thanksgiving is almost upon us, this one seems apt to show as an example (plus it was sent on the exact day I was born!):

Western Union killed off telegrams on January 27, 2006 in case you were wondering why you hadn't received one lately!

Topps would up their game considerably in 1962 with faux fiat currency.  I can't find any promotional material for these, which doesn't mean there wasn't any of course, but it's MIA right now.

Baseball Bucks came first and were an entirely separate product from the flagship Baseball, sold in one and five cent retail packs.  This is a typical example, tilt and all:

The change of seasons brought Football Bucks of course, which might be the most miscut-prone issue Topps ever produced.  These were pack inserts with the regular issue Football set:

And if you lived in Canada Hockey Bucks also saw daylight once a pack of Hockey cards was opened, although they had a decidely North of the Border look. These are not the easiest things to find:

Still tilted after all these years!

-30-

Metal Shop

Running off a sheet of cards at the printers would seem like a pretty mundane task these days. That's not the case of course but like anything else it seems like it happens almost effortlessly these days. It isn't and never really has been all that easy and there are a lot of processes involved before the final product spins out of the press.

One part of one method, namely offset lithography printing,  involves the use of thin aluminum plates, which have the images being used to make the cards (or anything else really) etched on to them.  If I have this right (and this is a very simplified explanation), the plates are dampened with a water based solution then inked in the press. The ink ends up adhering only to the "dry" areas to be printed, as the solution prevents ink from adhering where it is applied.  The inked portion is transferred, or offset, to a rubber roller, making a reversed image before being rolled over the press sheet.  This is done for each color pass.

The plates cannot be "wiped" once used, they have to be melted down and remanufactured.  As you can imagine, a lot of aluminum has to be destroyed for any type of meaningful recycling to occur, ergo when it comes to Topps, there are few aluminum plates floating around.  That is, unless you are talking about 1962.

 Take this 1962 Kansas City team cards (#384):

In order to print it, you needed this first:

Compare that to this 1962 Football plate, which has corroded to a degree:

When you look at the card this plate produced you can see that the Baseball plate has an additional element, namely the team name is visible in the black oval. Therefore, it must have been used to produce a different color than the one for Chandler. The inset photo is missing as well; that would have been added during a different color run.

A large find of 1962 aluminum sheets was noted in an SCD ad in  the January 31, 1986 issue where Mid-Atlantic Coin Exchange was selling 1962 Baseball Green Tint plates (second series). They also had a number of 1962 Hockey plates as well.  All of these had been cut from the original, larger aluminum sheets used to make the cards. However, at least two partial sheets have survived from the Hockey run:

You can get a good idea of how vivid these were in the unfaded areas (which look like they had something like a paint can on top of them for years. 

Plates even exist for promotional material, like this one for the 1962 Baseball Bucks set:

I'm not certain how these all came to survive.  It's not like today where Topps sells or uses as inserts the plates that produce the cards. Given that the green tint plates were in the '62 mix, it seems plausible Topps required the plates be returned to them as that run was not produced in Philadelphia. Or did Topps also sub out work on the Football and Hockey sets that year? No matter where they were printed, it's clear these sheets never got melted down.

Buck Board

Super Topps ephemera collector John Moran passed along a nice scan a while back of a Topps sell sheet for the 1962 Baseball Bucks. It has, shall we say, a certain Leave It To Beaver-esque quality to it:



And that little fat kid in the middle on the bottom of the sheet looks faintly like Elroy Jetson, don't you think?

Not much else to say tonight, so enjoy the links!

The Bucks Stop Here

The early 1960's were an incredibly creative time at Topps. They were putting out great sets in every line and creating killer inserts to boot. They even established a meme of sorts in 1962!

The expansion of the American and National Leagues in 1961-62 opened up or expanded four major league markets and with Fleer pushing hard to compete Topps was coming up with little extras to differentiate their offerings. They inserted stamps into the baseball packs and marketed their first real supplemental set since 1956. Baseball Bucks were a 96 "note" set of faux currency sold in penny packs:



Given the difficulty I had finding a pack scan (the above is from a recently concluded Ebay auction) it can be assumed the bucks did not set the world on fire. I also wonder if penny packs were really popular at this point as well since Topps phased them out entirely across all lines in 1965.

Topps Vault sold a proof box a couple of years ago:



The bucks, which measure roughly 4 1/8" x 1 9/16" (sizes, cuts and horizontal orientation vary a little) had to be folded to fit in the pack. Folds are generally found about a little to the right of the player photo. They also came into contact with the gum, which can cause some issues.





The design on these is fantastic! You could open up a pack and find one of three denominations (1, 5 or 10) and either and AL or NL logo on the reverse. The paper even feels a little bit like legal tender. Team logos were also a real cool touch, as was showing the team's home field on the front. You can find these fairly easily but good luck on the centering!

Here is a partial uncut sheet of 48 notes, probably from an REA auction a few years ago:



Not to let a good idea go to waste, despite likely lackluster sales, Topps created a 48 note set of NFL players (Fleer had the AFL license at the time) that were inserted in their 1962 football packs:


(from http://footballcardgallery.com)

The design elements of the Football Bucks echo the baseball issue almost exactly, right down to the fold, miscuts, size and denominations:




These are harder to find than the Baseball Bucks but not all that tough to track down.

Topps did not issue a basketball set in 1962 but I'll bet they would have had Bucks inserts had they sold them. They did manage to halve the count again and create 24 Hockey Bucks inserts for the 1962-63 NHL season. Topps hockey cards were sold in Canada, usually coming out in midseason hot on the heels of the annual Parkhurst issue.


(from Bobby Burrell's Vintage Hockey Collector book)

If you want to go broke real quick, buy some 50's and 60's hockey wrappers or packs. If you are tempted to open one, you will find slightly redesigned bucks:




The Hockey Bucks are difficult to find (the above two scans are a rare sighting from Ebay) especially in nice shape, which is true of all three issues. The only denomination on these is "1" for some reason. Size is similar to the baseball and football issues and well centered, untilted examples are probably more myth than reality. I am told the Hockey Bucks quite resemble the Canadian currency of the time, which makes cents.