Getting Testy

Going to lay some eye candy on you today kids, in the form of some Topps test packs.

Topps was infamous for running very brief tests of products in at least four ways: lab testing with kids and the product in a controlled setting, handing out test items at local schools, giving distributors and salesmen a few samples to see the enthusiasm level among their buyers, and throwing a box or two of boxes on select retail store counters and gauging the public's response. The latter method is by far the most well known today and many test products, especially those from the 1966-74 period are rare and expensive (especially if sports related) these days. Before 1966, well it's not easy to to tell how tests were conducted at the retail level.

The retail test packaging that is known today mostly was created using plain white wax wrappers, with a product sticker on the front sans price and, if the product was being tested with a confectionery item within, a small ingredients label on the back that also served to "seal" the pack.  These, it is said, often resided in a generic white box and that's presumably where the pack price was displayed as these were never marked as to cost. Around 1974 this started being supplanted by different mediums and Topps also started doing more specific tests, such as using two price points. Almost all Topps products, except their recurring annual sports issues were tested in one or more forms and almost always at the retail level. Many products failed their tests and never made it to a full blown release.  Others were designed for a regional sales campaign, or promoted from test status for such a purpose, and are often found in greater numbers than those that were just tested at retail.

Test packaging is not always extant for certain issues and of course some sets are legendary rarities.  One such set is the 1966 Baseball Punchboards where the wrapper is not even known, just a bare description of it, from Rob Lifson:

Topps designed and proofed a retail box for the set:

Great cards, almost impossible to find!

It's possible the full checklist for this set is not complete.  In 2009 14 two card panels out of what I speculated were a set of 18 were known.  I don't believe the count has changed since then.  These are among the hardest-to-find tests Topps ever created and some of the Hall of Famers can go for staggering sums.

1966 (that date may not be firm, I suspect it's a little later) also brought a tough Non-Sports test, Fold-A-Roos.  This pack illustrates how typical stickers on both front and back look:

That front may not match up with this back and at least a couple of packs are known to have survived:

It's a tough set and not may people know about it. Being metamorphic makes it very unlikely many of these are still around:

Examples of a regional test or limited issue are well-known to baseball collectors.  These two 1967 sticker sets appear to have been a test AND a regional issue. You can actually find these in the wild:

If there's a test wrapper with sticker, it may replicate the above two pack fronts. Also on display the retail box which is not plain white:

The Pirates box is known in proof form:

That product code on the reverse eliminates this as a test box proof.  The stickers look great BTW, with 33 per team, so 66 across both sets:

Topps thought about a similar pin issue as well that featured just San Francisco Giants but it never launched in any form except as a proof.

Here's one more for today, from perhaps the most popular of all the test issues, 1968's 3-D Baseball:

Sorry but I can't find an ingredients sticker, maybe someone will send me one and I'll pop it in here.

Back with more tests next week!

A Dicey Situation

I was starting my research for this post, which covers the "1961" Topps Dice Game set, when I discovered-very much to my surprise-that I had not posted anything in depth on this subject.  Given the near mythic status these have attained and the stratospheric prices even low grade examples have been bringing, the time is indeed here to dive in.

The cards don't have any indication they were made by Topps but the photography and especially the typography undoubtedly peg them as one of theirs. Long attributed to 1961, apparently for their alleged resemblance to the regular issue cards from that august year and possibly due to (an irrelevant) set count, the 18 black and white cards that make up this unissued set were designed to allow a game of baseball to be played by two youthful enthusiasts.  No doubt influenced by two dice based baseball games, namely ABPA, founded in 1951) and (probably more-to-the-point) Strat-O-Matic, which debuted in 1961, Topps developed and possibly tested Dice Game in the early 60's. If there was a test, my guess it was in a research lab setting and not at retail. Len Brown however, seems to indicate in an old interview that the set was retail tested but given how the surviving examples present and the general lack of cards, I just don't think that's accurate.

That's essentially the organized hobby knowledge of the set!  There is a little bit more that can be added though. In a Sports Market Report for PSA, Kevin Glew interviewed (via email) a couple of us hobby types (including moi) trying to pin down, among other things, exactly when the set was produced. My own thoughts were the cards resembled those being designed for internal use by Topps starting around 1965 while noted collector (and Friend o'the Archive) Bob Fisk opined that the set was probably intended for issue in 1962 or '63 due to a player selection that included 16 1962 All Stars and two other players (Tony Kubek and Bill White) who put together campaigns that should have landed them in the Midsummer Classic. (Update 3/6/19-the dating has been confirmed as post 1961, a post will be made in April 2019 explaining.

I have previously posted here my thoughts that the Dice Game could have been intended for sale in set form with a pair of dice and and possibly a scoresheet but that has never been confirmed.  Two later examples make the possibility of complete set marketing a 50/50 proposition I think.  The 1966 Baseball Punchouts, which are even rarer than the Dice Game cards, seem like they were intended to be sold piecemeal while the 1968 Batter Up box set took the baseball game inserts from the 1968 Baseball packs and packaged them all up at once, with box-back instructions on how to play a nine inning contest. The Punchouts were also an 18 card set, although designed as panels that each featured an AL and NL player and could be split apart and seem to me to be the next logical step in the Topps quest to issue a standalone game product.  In fact, it's possible the Dice Game cards were a kind of prototype for the Punchouts but there are a couple of key differences as the latter were printed in color (except for the small player photos on each) and there is a wrapper proof or two known.

Right now there are 15 documentable subjects of 1961 Dice Game out there, while the checklist definitively stands at 18; no packaging has ever been seen to my knowledge.  I'm sure these missing three cards exist as the checklist is derived from an 18 card uncut sheet owned by Fritsch Cards and which was in their possession as of April 2018 (and likely still is). Examples not on this sheet can be found with staple holes (from internal Topps memoranda no doubt) or not, and some are hand cut.  I'm pretty sure an example or two once resided in a Woody Gelman "Idea Book" but have now been liberated from whatever page they resided upon. I doubt there's more than four of any one card in existence and only some subjects are known as multiples.

The checklist is a doozy (an asterisk indicates examples without a scan or picture known):

Earl Battey - Minnesota Twins
Del Crandall - Milwaukee Braves
Jim Davenport  - San Francisco Giants
Don Drysdale - Los Angeles Dodgers
Dick Groat * - Pittsburgh Pirates (Update 3/6/19, Groat has been verified as a Cardnial)
Al Kaline -Detroit Tigers
Tony Kubek - New York Yankees
Mickey Mantle - New York Yankees
Willie Mays - San Francisco Giants
Bill Mazeroski - Pittsburgh Pirates
Stan Musial - St. Louis Cardinals
Camilo Pascual - Minnesota Twins
Bobby Richardson - New York Yankees
Brooks Robinson - Baltimore Orioles
Frank Robinson - Cincinnati Reds
Norm Siebern * - Kansas City Athletics (Update 3/6/19, Siebern has been verified)
Bill White * - St. Louis Cardinals (Update 3/6/19, White has been verified)

Groat, Siebern and White all have their teams inferred.  Groat was a Pirate in 1962 and a Cardinal in 1963, Norm Siebern was a member of the Athletics through 1963 and Bill White was a Cardinal through 1965 so I'm pretty comfortable with those assignments. There are nine players from each league in case you were wondering but only a dozen teams of the 18 in existence as of 1961 are represented. Missing: The Cubs and Phillies from the National League and the Indians, Red Sox, Senators and White Sox from the junior circuit. Scans of the "known" 15 are below. (Update 3/6/19-better scans of Davenport and Mazeroski have been added below)

The Mazeroski and Davenport examples just surfaced and are quite interesting as both look like a kid updated a result on the back of each. Compare to the Mays reverse:

Hopefully the missing three scans turn up soon.  If they do, I'll post again to complete the visual checklist.

A Recount Is In Order

Following the solution of the 1967 Topps Baseball Punchouts player distribution a little while back, I have been pondering from time to time the prior year's set of uber-rare Punchboard prototypes. Given how the positional array of players in 1967 was so minutely worked out before fate intervened in the form of some interleague trades, it occured to me that 1966 might exhibit the same characteristics.

To refresh your memory, the 66's looked like this:




Each two player panel had nubs at various points, showing where they were attached to each other just before being separated at the factory. You can see two above Roseboro if you look closely. I did an analysis of these based upon the location of the nubs on each card and came up with a basic array that looked like this for the 14 known cards:



Those 5 in the lower right could be picking up some that should have been in the upper left corner (inverted, in other words) , which I noted in my original post. I suspect now that was the case as no other position has more than three cards showing. Let's come back to that momentarily.

The positional analysis, which was key in deciphering the 1967's, may also apply in 1966. Here is the array of known positions (2 players per card):

Position	NL	AL
P	2	2
C	2	1
1B	2	2
2B	0	2
3B	2	1
SS	2	1
OF	4	5

Excepting the outfielders, no more than two positions per league exist. Since the 67's counted each OF position separately, despite not identifying who played left, center or right, the number of outfielders were triple that of any other position on the diamond (five players per position, per league). If that applies in 1966 and we assume the two per position theory holds, then there should be six outfielders per league. Therefore, we are missing an AL catcher, two NL second baseman, third and short from the AL , two NL outfielders and one from the AL. That's eight holes, which fit on four full cards. Adding it all up (2 players known on 14 cards) yields 36 players on 18 cards.

If you look at the "nub array" and assume each place on it holds three cards (signaling three small sheets of six each) then you get 18 cards. All conjecture but based upon the 67's, I think it possible the final count of cards in this set will be prove to be 18 someday. Now, who are the eight men out.......

Punch Drunk

If you have been following the comments about my last post, there is a bit of friendly debate going on concerning packaging of the '66 Punchboards and tangentially the 67's. While I will get to a review of 1967 set and its intricacies soon, I figured it would be easier to jump the gun and show what scans I have nicked along the way of the 67's packaging. There will be some updates on the 66's as well, so consider this a "catch up" thread.

Here is a '67 cello, holding 6 cards:



And here is a picture of what I presume to be the '67 wax box, even though it a reproduction:



Now the box says a nickel and clearly shows a '67 card. My 2nd edition of Mark Murphy's Unopened Pack guide states that the wax pack sold for a dime and held three cards, so something is either amiss or Topps used two price points for the '67 wax. If anyone has a scan of the '67 wax wrapper, send it along and I'll update this thread.

UPDATE: Rob Lifson's response as to what the '66 wrapper looked like:

"Incredibly it was a normal standard fully-printed wrapper - not a blank white wax wrapper with a sticker - I always thought this was amazing because with this style of printing they must have printed many, yet all I ever saw was the one. I had the top of the box also, which as I recall also pictured the same Mantle card."

UPDATE 2: Rob Lifson sent another, quick update:

"I'm not sure I fully answered your question: It certainly was not a cello wrapper, but I'm not 100% sure it qualifies as a "wax" wrapper though it may - It was printed on a strong paper stock. I remember that the wrapper appeared to have been "sealed" with a piece of tape on the reverse - sort of like someone had actually just taped the pack shut by hand. "

We'll see what else turns up.

UPDATE 3: I have been advised by an advanced Topps collector that at least five of the '66 Punchboards are known with blank backs. I am not certain if the 14 I have shown previously all have printed backs or not, so stay tuned as I await details from both fronts.

UPDATE 4: Friend o' the Archive John Moran just sent me a scan of an annotated '67 box proof. The dating is March 7, 1967 and it was from the Topps vault (click to enlarge). The handwritten Phoney Records reference is intriguing. Goodness!



UPDATE 5: Topps enthusiast Larry Serota advises the five blank backed 66's were: Koufax, Mays, Stargell, Flood, Callison. Awaiting word if singles or full panels.....Thanks Larry!

UPDATE 6: The five blank backs were full panels.

Punched Up

Last year I posted about a very rare Topps proof set from 1966 commonly referred to as Punchouts but technically known as Punchboards. Since then, I have been receiving e-mails and scans from a gentleman (who shall remain nameless at his request) who inherited a small cache of these. After going through his stash he has managed to add 9 players, or 4 1/2 full cards, to the known checklist. He has also been kind enough to provide scans and I thought this would be a great time to show a visual checklist of the set and discuss some of its slowly revealed nuances.

As it stands today, the known checklist is comprised of 14 full two-card panels featuring 28 players. For reasons I will get into below, I do not believe this to be a complete checklist, although it may be close. Here is the latest, in alpahabetical order by the name of the NL player shown on the card (each has one NL and one AL player).

NL Player	AL Player	NL Pos	AL Pos	NL Team	AL Team
Banks	Stottlemyre	1B	P	Cubs	Yankees
Callison	Grant	OF	P	Phillies	Twins
Cardenas	Hansen	SS	SS	Reds	White Sox
Clendenon	Kaline	1B	OF	Pirates	Tigers
Flood	Skowron	OF	1B	Cardinals	White Sox
Hart	Mantle	3B	OF	Giants	Yankees
Koufax	Yastrzemski	P	OF	Dodgers	Red Sox
Marichal	Rollins	P	3B	Giants	Twins
Mays	Conigliaro	OF	OF	Giants	Red Sox
McMillan	Robinson, F.	SS	OF	Mets	Orioles
Roseboro	Richardson	C	2B	Dodgers	Yankees
Santo	Battey	3B	C	Cubs	Twins
Stargell	Mantilla	OF	2B	Pirates	Red Sox
Torre	Killebrew	C	1B	Braves	Twins

As you can see, the distribution of teams is not even and some are missing. Five teams remain unaccounted for: one from the NL (Astros) and four junior circuit teams (Angels, Athletics, Indians & Senators). The Twins, participants in the 1965 World Series along with the Dodgers, have four players in the set while the Giants, Red Sox and Yankees have three apiece. The Dodgers, Cubs, White Sox and Pirates net two players and the remaining known teams have a sole member represented.

If you want to speculate (and I do) then there should be at least four full cards to add as that is the minimum to make sure all teams are included. That would bring the total to 18 full cards, with 36 players on them, a number that is not implausible. However there is another wrinkle that throws a spanner in the works, namely the distribution of positions:

Position	NL	AL
P	2	2
C	2	1
1B	2	2
2B	0	2
3B	2	1
SS	2	1
OF	4	5

A definite pattern emerges here. The six "infield" positions each are represented by no more than two players per league, while the outfield slots top out at five. If we were to add two NL second baseman to the mix, we would need at least an extra card beyond 18 (assuming one of them was on one of the four theoretical cards added to round out the team distributions). 19 is a very unwieldy number for a small Topps set (although not impossible as the 1968 Plaks have shown) but there is yet another clue, which is the uncut sheet configuration.

As will be made reasonably clear in the visual checklist, there are nubs on one, two, or three sides of each full card as they were attached to each other at some point. I made a jigsaw puzzle from the scans and while it required a couple of educated guesses on "nub positioning" I believe the known cards were oriented as shown in the schematic below but cannot determine how many middle columns there were (I ciphered with the NL players at top and each number indicates how many cards have that position on the "sheet"):


Now, if the cards were oriented differently then the distribution could change as a bottom right corner could become an upper left, etc. and I also do not know if more then one middle column was printed. Another complicating factor is that two to four copies of each card may exist as our mystery man has two copies of some and I have identified a couple myself from other sources. In addition, Topps would usually keep one or two reference copies, two of which have been known for a while (Marichal/Rollins and Roseboro/Richardson). It's enough to drive you batty! What is clear though is that no card has four sides with nubs so two rows high looks to be as tall as a sheet can get.

What does this tell us then, other than the fact I am clinically insane? Well, it might mean there are 30 cards in the set (5 sheets of 6 cards each) or that maybe there are only three sheets of either six or eight cards apiece (if there were two middle columns). A yield of 18 works if you eliminate one of the missing NL 2B positions and add four cards as discussed above but I don't like the missing NL 2B position if you do that, as I have to believe the 2 players per league per position for the infielders is a set figure. You can get a nice distribution with 24 cards/48 players though if you assume there could be 8 pitchers, 10 infielders (excluding pitchers) and 6 outfielders per league which would also allow for common multiples of 4, 6 and 8 but that is adding a lot of cards and my source thinks he has most of them.

But what if there three middle columns giving us 10 cards on a sheet and there were two sheets? Two more pitchers (balancing lefties and righties at two each per league), two infielders per non-pitching position (10 total) and six outfielders per league would certainly fit the pattern (even moreso if you assume 2 each of LF, CF & RF) and give us 20 full cards (4 pitchers, 10 infielders and 6 outfielders) while filling in all the positions and teams. But then there are too many corner pieces (at least three bottom rights or top lefts depending upon orientation). Aaaargh!

Adding up those puzzled out permutations gives a possible 36 cards/72 players at a minimum, which seems excessive to me. Given all this, I am going with the 20/40 count for now as it jibes nicely with the two-per-position theory and necessarily assume there were some double prints created, but this is not iron clad.

Anyway, enough speculation. On with the visual checklist:















Some of the nubs and edges have been trimmed off since I cleaned up the scans a little. I can assure you no nubs were harmed in the production of this post.

You will note Frank Robinson's airbrushed cap, no doubt a result of his trade from the Reds to the Orioles on December 9, 1965. Since he is shown as an AL player, the cards had to be produced after that date. It is also worth noting Joe Torre is depicted in a Milwaukee Braves hat as the team moved to Atlanta for the 1966 season. I would guess therefore it was a late December '65/early January '66 production cycle for these cards.

Now, given that a box flat was produced, these cards very nearly made it to the retail test level, although I don't think they actually hit the streets given how few surviving examples there are. Instead, I think the game proved unwieldy and was reconfigured for release in 1967. A look at the instructions on the back probably shows why:



The problem was you needed nine cards each to play the game, which is way too many cards to obtain a dime at a time before you could even start properly poking holes in the cards! The re-jiggered set as issued at retail in 1967 allowed you to use a single card each with a lineup of players on it, a much more realistic scenario for game-playing purposes. Still, these '66 Punchboards were almost finished products, with the possible exception of a score line to separate the two halves. I would love to see a wrapper proof someday; Rob Lifson believes he once had one from Woody Gelman's archives that featured Mantle on it, much like the box flat. I do expect some more players to be uncovered though; time will tell if my prediction of 20 full cards proves right.