A Red Letter Year

An accumulation of promotional materials here at the Topps Archives Research Complex concerning the 1964 Topps Baseball offerings has finally hit criticality and, after a comprehensive review, I can confirm it's a definite feast for the eyes.

1964 was the year Shea Stadium opened in Queens along with the World's Fair next door, and MLB held the All-Star Game in the borough on July 7th. The Mid-Summer Classic was hosted by the Mets in their brand spanking new ballpark amid all this wonderful tumult, as the National League squad won the star-studded exhibition. Topps clearly decided to take advantage and issued five colorful sets in '64, some of which specifically celebrated the event taking place practically (16 miles away) in their backyard.

The regular Baseball set is well known of course, and sported a design intended to show off the player photos unencumbered by graphics:

That popping out of Stallard's cap from the photo into the frame of the card was a feature of the set and most player cards exhibit this flourish. Now this is all well trod territory but I'm betting most collectors have not seen the 1964 gift box Topps came up with. I'm guessing this was offered after the season had concluded to burn off extra stock:

That image was provided by Friend o'the Archive Tom Daley and it's also appeared over at Sports Collectors Daily, which has some additional details, including a look at the sell sheet, which you should click over to see. However, there is another interesting box from 1964, one that displays Stan Musial, who had retired after the 1963 season, as a possible coin (and inferred card) subject on the front panel:

Musial publicly announced he was retiring in August of 1963, so his use here by Topps seems to have been a deliberate ploy to get the kids buying up packs to find him. It was an early series box (which we will see evidence of below) and the design was eventually changed:

(Courtesy Rockhurst Auctions)

The Baseball Coins were the sole insert for the year and we'll get to them in a New York minute. First though, I just want to highlight the special cello packs Topps issued in '64:

(Courtesy Robert Edward Auctions)

That's a pretty good deal for a dime I'd say; love the red and see-through readability! Here's a peek at two of the coins (not the ones in this pack):

The Baseball Coins look to me like they were issued in three waves. There were 120 early subjects, likely split into smaller coin batches that may have been "overlaid" with each other at various points. Here's an old auction ad from Leland's showing a full sheet, with description:

Some sources indicate the coins were found only in third, fourth and fifth series packs but this Salesman's Sample makes me believe it was really from the get-go:

Mantle, of course, was a first series card and the back of this sample really makes it clear the coins were there along with the cards; now! in fact:

Note the Musial coin image on that front panel!

Later in the season, Topps issued a "high number" series of 44 "All Stars", which were part of their multi-pronged All Star attack.  These had a special design, with blue backgrounds for the AL, red for the NL:

Yes, Lumpe was indeed an All Star that season...

...but many of the players in the All-Star subset were not.  Instead, Topps was going with players who had once or still were, All Stars. There's 44 players in the All Star subset, but 47 subjects in the master series as Wayne Causey was shown on the reverse of his coin as both an NL and AL player with the Athletics, and Chuck Hinton also managed the same trick, albeit with the Senators.  And of course, Mickey Mantle appears as a switch hitter on two different AS coins. Unlike Causey and Hinton though, the Mick has two distinct poses. I make that a 165 coin base set then, plus two variations but your mileage may vary. 

Hinton was a 1964 All Star but Wayne Causey never played on a major league All Star team. He was quite solid in 1963 and in '64 but I can't find any kind of information indicating he was selected and then could not participate; in fact he played in 157 games in '64 so I doubt he was injured and needed to pull out of the game. Maybe Topps believed he would be the representative for the Athletics, but instead that honor went to Rocky Colavito, who was having a really good season, so it's a definite headscratcher.

At least Topps was able to predict the NL starting pitcher for this sell sheet, which also features the phantom Musial:

We now turn to the Baseball Stand-Up set. This 77 subject green and yellow themed issue was not marketed as an All Star set but was essentially one in spirit.  The wrapper was a colorful beacon, in one and five cent form.  Here's the penny version: 

The sell sheet for this standalone set was pretty instructional, with this one straight from Woody Gelman's files:

Here's an uncut sheet of the set, which some notorious short prints. Coupled with the self-destructive nature of these cards, those SP's, which I covered in 2013 (!) can be tough indeed:

(Courtesy Robert Edward Auctions)

One set that did give an actual nod to the All Star theme was the one we refer to today as Giants or sometimes Giant Size All Star cards. The retail wax box was a thing of beauty:

(Courtesy SABR Baseball Cards blog)

By the way, that was not how Ford's card appeared in the set:

Whitey's does not, but some of the card backs reference events from the 1964 All Star Game itself. Check out the narrative on Johnny Callison's:

Talk about hot off the presses!  However, that attempt to harness post game energy flopped big time, and Topps had a gazillion leftovers. Reports from L.A. fans of the Sixties indicate they were sold at Dodger Stadium in made up packs of 25 for years and a well-known dealer purchased an immense lot of them in the Seventies.  You can find nice cards today with ease but don't be deterred by the numbers, it's one of the best looking things Topps ever put out.

A Baseball Photo Tatoo release also peppered the candy counters of the day and it's a little hard to find examples in nice shape. 

Here is the immortal Don Lock:

There were also twenty team logos mixed in:

I should probably revisit this set as it has a fair number of variations and nuances. For another day then but before we go, there's three more sets to deal with, one of which was 1964-adjacent and one of which was more traditional.  In reverse order, the traditional in the form of Bazooka's annual release:

Coupled with its amazin' box insert, long sheets of Bazooka Baseball Stamps:

These were advertised on the end flaps of the box, with ten different sheets available:

As if that wasn't enough, Topps also supplied fifty images for the 1964 Wheaties Baseball Stamps:

1964 was very much the year of Baseball and Beatles (with the mop tops not yet covered here in any kind of depth) for Topps.  Both were concentrated efforts that really helped fill the ol' coffers!

Here's An Idea

I'm in the midst of an extended series of posts that will probably begin to see the light of day in the next couple of weeks so today's effort is not going to involve a lot of heavy lifting.  I thought it would be fun to look at some of Woody Gelman's filing system today, namely the Idea Books he kept at Topps.

Woody had an extensive filing system and I'd imagine a pretty good amount of space at Brooklyn HQ by his notebooks, ephemera and whatnot.  He thought of this as part of his "idea retrieval" methods, which in a way are what the internet became well before anyone outside of ARPA or Bell Labs could grasp such a concept. Unfortunately, instead of being kept intact, these notebooks have been looted and pillaged over the years with all the pages and files being scattered across the hobby landscape with reckless abandon, stymying any hope of getting a complete picture painted. And so we have scraps...

Here's a neat one, possibly the earliest I've seen, 1955's Hocus Focus (large):

It's a little fuzzy and the infamous Woody all caps scrawl makes it even harder to read but above IDEA it says "Published" and the Item is "Photographic".  The Subclassification is "Hidden Pictures" and the See Under line has the set name.  This would not be consistent throughout Woody's long tenure at Topps, although he appears to have used mostly the same Idea page for his entire tenure with the company while inconsistently filling in the blanks. Having said that, the one I'll show next does not have any of the lined items off to the right, which looks like they tracked reaction from some group or groups of people (Topps execs, kids?) and some progress detail, which seems to be blank on most of the ones I've seen. I wonder if they kept a "clean version of some sets to show prospective licencees?

Here is "Copyright Merch." of a "test series", namely King Kong from 1965 (I have it as either '65 or 1966 but no matter this seems to cinch it at the earlier year), that got pulled when Donruss got the licensing deal.

Tattoos? Got ya covered (sorry) with 1967's Dr. Doolittle, unclear why it's not "licensed merchandise" though:

I'll close with perhaps the most interesting one of all:

"Inserts Types" is what this is, and yes that is a 1964 Topps Giant Size Sandy Koufax cropped excerpt shrunk down to the size of a 1969 Deckle. This makes me think the original idea was to do this almost-great insert in color, which would have been stupendous.  I suspect color would have been a bit more expensive though, in a year of chaos and cost (a lot of pictures had to be takes once the MLBPA agreed to an enhanced deal with Topps and due to the expansion that year). No clue what 27-B means though in the Progress Record.

Pretty neat, eh?

A Giant Mess

I'm going to try and post a midweek entry every Wednesday for the duration of our Spring of Discontent. Everybody can use a little distraction I'm sure.

Topps went all out in 1964 with the Major League All Star Game being played at brand spanking new Shea Stadium, right next door to the World's Fair (which I attended as a wee lad). In addition to innovative bright red packaging for the ten cent cello Baseball packs (with two coins no less) in '64, they issued two extensive and well thought out "extra" sets: Baseball Stand Ups and Giant-Size Baseball All-Stars (the latter colloquially referred to in the hobby as Giants), the latter of which came out after and referenced events from the All Star Game which was held on July 7. The Giants had three players per team represented within, some of whom were not necessarily participants in any All Star Game ever but Topps has always made some curious choices with their secondary sets. There was also a Photo Tattoo offering in '64, which was standard fare and likely not issued due to the local presence of the ASG.

The Giants are one of the nicest sets ever issued by Topps in my opinion and I know a lot of hobbyists concur. They are also available to this day in abundance.  There was a massive 70's west coast find of these and I believe a couple of notable east coast dealers had hoards as well.  I have read of attempted sales of these at several ballparks (Dodger Stadium sold packs of 25 through the mid 70's) and imagine the World's Fair concessionaires got a crack at them too but the set came out sometime in August and just didn't sell. Topps did a massive overstock dump for sure and I've seen reference to colossal amounts of these being essentially given away by them for what amounted to freight costs.

Here's a Baseball Card News article from January 1986 that succinctly sums up the state of play at the time:

You will note the mention of seven short prints that are seemingly not as abundant as the other 53 subjects:

  3 Sandy Koufax
28 Bob Friend
42 Dick Stuart
45 Wayne Causey
47 Galen Cisco
51 Willie Mays
60 Bill Skowron

All well and good I suppose but here is an uncut sheet (likely complete despite appearances to the contrary) from an old Huggins & Scott auction and it has 49 short prints out of 72 slots on the array:

Yes, there are three Mantle's visible and that is important because if you look at the other seven cards below him on the left edge of the sheet, they represent the "short printed" subjects,which are no lesser in printed number than 42 other players.  They are instead "edge" prints and with three Mantles on the sheet, he doesn't feature as an SP. Topps must have had major issues with that left side edge when cutting these. The Koufax is a toughie in nice shape but based upon the PSA population report he is not the hardest subject in top grade-that would be Bill Skowron.  Check out these PSA 9 and 10 numbers for the SP's:

  3 Sandy Koufax  38/6
28 Bob Friend  61/8
42 Dick Stuart  76/6
45 Wayne Causey  63/13
47 Galen Cisco  63/0
51 Willie Mays  96/4
60 Bill Skowron  29/0

UPDATE 5/29/20: I just realized I left out a whole paragraph on the Double Prints-yikes:

The fifth and ninth columns repeat as do the players in the three slots to the right of the Mantle cards in the first and fifth columns. So the Double Prints are as follows:

  4 Bob Bailey

  6 Ron Hunt

12 Al Kaline

16 Dean Chance

33 Pete Ward

36 Johnny Callision

38 Harmon Killebrew

39 Luis Aparicio

40 Dick Radatz

58 Ron Santo

Friend o'the Archive Roy Carlson (you will be seeing quite a bit of stuff from him going forward on these Wednesday posts) sent along this key bit of Topps internal messaging that shows the dire sales of the set:

The collation summary above was for five cent packs; a ten cent cello version may also have been configured but I can't really find anything on that and I think there may have instead been a cello version of the five cent pack. I would have to think vending boxes were made up as well, maybe to suck up whatever oxygen was left by the last gasp of the Exhibit Supply Company.  

Look at this, a Heritage Auctions offering of a wax pack first, then a shot of a slight variant from the Lifetime Topps Project blog:

It does not seem like cello packs exist and Anthony Nex, a pack guru of utmost repute, has never seen one. Here is a regular 64 cello, not sure if it ever got mistaken as a Giant Size pack:

Two boxes of Giants did not come close to yielding a full set of 60 according to their own notes, no surprise as this was typical Topps collation at the time for most of their sets and you only got three of these big boys at a clip.  Great set, lousy sales!