A neat little sell sheet popped up in my feed last month for 1962 Topps Stamp Gum or, as some guides and hobbyists like to call it, Famous Americans. This 80 stamp set has always been a bit of a headscratcher to me. After issuing large sets of Baseball Stamps in 1961 and 1962, both of which were pack inserts with the regular issue Baseball cards each season and then paired with standalone albums that sold for a dime, no album was ever created for Famous Americans. This has always seemed very strange to me but maybe those standalone albums didn't sell too well and Topps decided to take a different tack.
Here is the sell sheet, which is pretty detailed:
Maybe the hobby nomenclature should be Great Americans but I digress. Note the text indicates an album was never contemplated but also the weird numerical code running up from the bottom on the right edge:
That's either C46ZM10 or C462M10 and I'm not sure I've seen anything like that on sell sheets of this era. It predates any commodity code system I'm aware of by about four years but it could just be a reference to the print order for the sheet. However, a smaller and more stamp-themed sheet exists and also has the exact same code:
So I'm really wondering that really is some kind of primordial commodity code.
My additional interest in the set today has less to do with the subjects therein, which I admit can be interesting...
...but rather has more to do with the gum itself, which was orange flavored. Topps seems to have been experimenting in earnest with different artificial fruit flavors around this time:
Topps would use fruit flavors increasingly often as the Sixties wore on but usually as a standalone confectionery product. While
Bazooka and (especially)
Bozo offered orange bubble gum over the years, the next time they offered a sports-themed ride along was in packs of "Sports Gum" in 1981, with
Thirst Break:
Each of those soft pieces had its own comic wrap:
As you can see, 56 of those Sports Facts comics were included in a set that was tested and then apparently discontinued due to lack of sales. Gatorade had an orange sports gum product at this point that was readily available (and quite tasty) so I assume Topps was trying to copy their success.
The Thirst Break box bottom offers an object lesson in Topps commodity codes. You can see on the comic the code ends in -0, which signifies 1980 in this case. But the box, which also has a -0 code, is copyright 1981:
Here, 1980 is the year of product conception and that code means Topps started tracking specific costs associated with it in that calendar year. With that 1981 copyright, this is a great example of how a product's year of issue can fall after the commodity code date. The code on the overwrap is in a format I've not seen previously, so some further cracking seems to be in order.
Sports Facts are not that easy to find and often found in rough shape, with product staining almost a given. I doubt they will ever be widely collected but it's a set loaded with Hall-of-Famers from various sports and a bit of an under the radar Topps collectible.
