Highly Logical Outcome

As promised last time out, today we look at the press sheet array of the 1967 Topps Baseball high numbers.  This series set me on a path of unswerving nerdiness almost 40 years ago as I attempted to decipher a grainy photo of an uncut sheet and correlate it with the price guide short print designations of the day.  It would be many years before I realized Topps used a two slit (or sheet) press sheet encompassing 264 cards, with 132 cards per slit in a standard sized card array, 12 rows of 11 cards per slit.  132 card slits are called uncut sheets in the hobby, which is correct but doesn't account for all 264 cards, which I refer to as a press sheet. Within these parameters, cards sometimes became short or over printed as Topps changed the arrays from one slit to the other.

Why this happened is open to speculation but by the time 1967 rolled around I don't believe it was done to entice the kids to buy more cards looking for subjects that were suppressed in production. Rather, I think it had something to do with how they filled their various packaging configurations, at least in theory. Plus, I'd wager Topps really didn't want a lot of overstock or returns of the high numbers.

Many of the old price guide SP and DP notations were based upon the "tabulation" method where cards were observed as packs or vending boxes and cases were opened.  Depending upon the sample size, this was either accurate, or not.  I believe the idea of the 1967 Brooks Robinson high number card (#600) being super short printed - an idea which still somewhat persists to this day despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary - was due to the tabulation of a single 500 count vending box's contents.  

Well, there is still a wild card in the mix, which is a row or card's position in a sheet.  Corner cards,  those in bottom rows (but not necessarily tops) and the occasional random spot on the sheet do seem to have distribution issues sometimes and the 1967 high numbers are certainly affected by this. Topps must have had a way to segregate and pull certain cards, something that they had been able to do since at least the early 1950's, when various disputed player contracts with Bowman caused certain cards to be pulled due to court orders.

Putting that random production method issue aside for the moment, when this two slit brainstorm finally took hold, I searched for the second 1967 high number uncut sheet .  And I searched and I searched and I searched. Every example I found just showed the same sheet I had already deciphered as a young buck, like so:

It's an old scan but the basic row setup, with each letter representing a row and with the first, or head,  card in each identified, is:

A     Pinson

B    Ferrara

C    NL Rookies

D    Colavito

E    7th Series Checklist

A    Pinson

F    Red Sox Rookies

G    Orioles Rookies

B    Ferrara

C    NL Rookies

D    Colavito

E    7th Series Checklist

Then one day, over ten years ago, Friend o'the Archive Keith Olbermann sent along a partial section of a sheet with a different array-huzzah!  You can tell it's taken from the top left corner of an uncut slit:

That A row headed by Pinson is a match to the top of the other sheet but then the array changes.  So now we have a sheet that goes:

A    Pinson

F    Red Sox Rookies

A    Pinson

So a little odd but not 100% unexpected as the semi's seem to feature a 44x3 and 33x4 array and those Pinson rows get us to four. What to do now?

Well, I did an eBay count a couple of years ago and got this average count per row over 2,539 cards, with an overall average of 33 cards per subject:

A    77    Pinson

B    22    Ferrara

C    25    NL Rookies

D    22    Colavito

E    29    7th Series Checklist

F    34    Red Sox Rookies

G    26    Orioles Rookies

Row E has a slightly higher skew due having Brooks Robinson, a popular slabbing subject, in it and the checklist also being printed with the semi-highs (#531) but that Pinson row is such an outlier.  So where does this lead us? Well I thought here, using this pattern for the "other" sheet:

A    Pinson

F    Red Sox Rookies

A    Pinson

F    Red Sox Rookies

G    Orioles Rookies

B    Ferrara

C    NL Rookies

D    Colavito

E    7th Series Checklist

A    Pinson

F    Red Sox Rookies

Orioles Rookies

Or:

Five impressions:

A    Pinson

Four impressions:

F    Red Sox Rookies

Three impressions:

B    Ferrara

C    NL Rookies

D    Colavito

E    7th Series Checklist (contain Brooks Robinson)

G    Orioles Rookies  (contains Seaver Rookie)

But when you look at the PSA pops (from June 17, which total 42,165) it smooths out, just like with the semi's.  I'll save you all the math but when you factor out Hall-of-Famers, the Robinson and some other more widely collected cards, you get an average count per card of 405.  These are the per row averages using PSA's figures:

A    450

B    382

C    393

D    412

E    397

F    414

G    390

Ferrara is the lowest pop card at 293 and the White Sox Team is the highest at 530, factoring out all the "popular" cards but there is no discernable pattern, it's totally random.  The lowest pops are all over the place, as are the highest ones. The Seaver rookie leads the way among the glitterati, as you might expect, with 3,540 slaberoni's. Maybe the Ferrara was prone to damage or it's just not a card that's graded a lot, possibly due to centering issues. It occurs to me a production issue midway through printing could have occurred, requiring a quick fix of some rows on one of the slits, but good luck figuring that out if it even happened.

I once correlated the known SP and DP information as of December 2011 in a post and came up with 11 cards that didn't quite jibe among my source materials (i.e one source having an SP designation for cards from a specific row while another having the row as being full of DP's); all 11 cards that eneded up without overlapping SP/DP info were in the G Row. I still can't explain why the cards in this row caused set collectors the most reported difficulty (not counting the expensive Seaver card) other than confirmation bias playing a part, nor can I explain the relatively high A Row count, which is two standard deviations away from the mean where none of the other rows are more than one standard deviation away, although B is close on the short side and has the the lowest overall pop count average per PSA!

Summing up, the eBay dataset I used a decade ago was probably not robust enough. The PSA data suggest to me that rows A, D & F were printed 4x each and rows B,C, E & G were printed 3x each across the full 264 card press sheet, although A appears to be a bit of an outlier still (5% chance that it's random).  But it's not a guarantee and there could still be a 5x row, a 4x row and five 3x rows but there's too much noise I think to dissect this any further with the data at hand. I will say whatever old SP and DP data certain guides had in the past seem to be have been based upon incomplete information at the time. And it just feels like that Pinson "A" row is a fiver!

Short Sighted

There's been several concerted efforts these past two or three years by some intrepid researchers over at Net54 Baseball trying to piece together various uncut sheets arrays for Topps series' where short prints either reside or are thought to.  I chime in on these threads sometimes and there's been some impressive debunking of various SP and DP theories as a result of a kind of crowdsourced look at miscuts and sheet remnants.  Since my interest in off-the-beaten-path Topps stuff started with trying to decipher the 1967 high number SP's four decades(!) ago, I love following these discussions.

The 1967 highs have been pretty much put to rest in terms of SP and DP rows and I'll get into that next time out as I've not posted anything on what I hope and believe are the final findings, but today I want to look at the 1967 semi-highs.  These span nos. 458 to 533 and include eight Hall-of-Famers. Like the high numbers in 1967, it's a 77 card series, which seems to be a magic number for Topps tomfoolery. Of particular note is the long held impression in the hobby that card #476 of Tony Perez was short printed, often the only one from the series identified as such in the guides.  A single SP in a full series is a rare thing with Topps and it implies the "broke the pattern" for some reason.  Before eBay and the internet, it was hard to prove or disprove such things.  Not so anymore.

You can pretty much assume, with a couple of exceptions, that any standard sized Baseball sets (2 1/2" x 3 1/2")  issued by Topps in series will not have short or double prints if the series count was 66 or 88.  The former gives you four impressions of each subject across a full 264 card uncut sheet, the latter three. Outside of those two, the only other series that is an even number is 110 , which Topps used to lead off the first every year from 1958-69, although once they started printing checklists as discrete cards (1961), those series run only 109 cards, with a preview checklist covering the next series tipped in. Those generally result in 44 (or 43 with the extra checklist added) over prints (vs. a more unwieldy-to-describe 88 - or 87 - short prints) in the series as the first wave in most years was produced in massive quantities, which seems to smooth out the press run.  Rule of thumb: if it's not detectable in the pricing, then there aren't short prints in the abstract sense, as there were too many cards produced in the series to matter.

The odd number series are where all the fun is, especially those that are 77 (76) in number.  55 subject series tend to be like the 110's in that they produce over prints.  There's only one 99 card series (the 4th in 1969) and then we get into the 1970-72 era, which had 132 card first series runs.  There's an anomalous 121 card series (the 5th) in 1971 plus the drawdown from 7 to 6 series in 1971 & 1972, before the bottom dropped out in 1973 with a mere 5 series as Topps went over to issuing all cards at once, although there is certainly some SP-DP fun thereafter. So we get some good, old-fashioned variety!

So here are the 77 card (76 in all cases) series:

1961 5th

1961 6th

1962 5th

1962 6th

1962 7th

1963 5th

1964 5th

1964 6th

1965 5th

1965 6th

1965 7th

1966 5th

1966 6th

1966 7th

1967 6th

1967 7th

1968 6th

1969 6th

1969 7th

That's 20 distinct 77 card series!  I'll try not to step on all the work done over at Net54 so am limiting the discussion here to 1967.  I ran the semi-highs through an eBay search on June 13th and came up with this:

I designated the two World Series teams from 1967 (Cardinals and Red Sox), Hall-of Famers and Yankees to make sure to weed them out if they had weirdly high counts.  I wanted to see if the semi-highs were as strange as the highs when it comes to double printed and short printed rows.

It sure seems like the Coombs, McFarlane, Dodgers Team, Rigney, Hicks and Martinez should be in a "super print" row based on eBay's listings, while Palmer as a HOF skews some numbers in the Merritt/Santiago row it's been determined he resides in.  Palmer is really popular to grade for some reason and I don't think there is a true super-print row in the semi's based on his positioning and counts I will show below.  I still suspect the 67 highs had a production issue that really changed two planned row counts but believe the semi's were not similarly affected. I say this because of the PSA populations.

If you take the HOF'ers out for a minute, the top 11 counts from eBay are (with eBay to the left, PSA pops to the right):

Coombs 106 - 199

McFarlane 105 - 295

Dodgers Team 101 - 523

Rigney 94 - 230

Hicks 91 - 245

Martinez 89 - 276

Senators Rookies 80 - 260

Landis 80 - 303

Bowens 72 - 259

Wert 70 - 253

Davidson 61 - 237

The Dodgers Team probably skews high due to Koufax being in the team picture. 

But based upon research over at Net54baseball.com Hicks (91 eBay hits) is in a row with Menke (60) and Talbot (50), whose PSA pops are: 245, 253 and 279 respectively.  That is a major eBay disparity on Hicks, like Palmer.  Maybe there's commons that are so lowly literally nobody buys them?

Conversely, the lowest 11 counts are, with PSA pops to the right:

Twins Rookies 15 - 235

Arrigo 16 - 227

Stephenson 17 - 265

Cloninger 18-235

Clemens 19 - 227

Humphreys 21 - 225

Lachemann 21 - 194

Campbell 22 - 194

Braves Team 22 -251

Pirates Rookies 22 - 196

Houk 22-317

I think this relative smoothness among the two sets of counts means that 33 x 4 and 44 x 3 is the likely row setup for the semi's then over the 264 card press sheet array.  Nothing really jumps out when you look at PSA's figures.

The Guiding Lights

This third and final part of my study of pricing structures in the hobby, which will be much more compact than what has come before, will show a dramatic shift from traditional hobby publications to the slicker formats of newsstand magazines and retail books. By 1981 the hobby had effectively "grown up" and was a big enough phenomenon to routinely enter mainstream publishing circles and monthly and annual price guides became the norm. It also became easier to track pricing in certain conditions, although there was enough variance between all publications to make it necessary to extrapolate pricing in some grades.

I used the following books and magazines plus Bill Henderson's Pricing Grid in The Trader Speaks for a portion of 1981 and 1982 as it was practically set up like the TTS Grid, to track prices from January 1981 to May 1990 (where my run of hobby publications ends for the most part):

1981: Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide, The Trader Speaks, Baseball Cards Magazine (two issues per year during baseball season)

1982: Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide, The Trader Speaks, Baseball Cards Magazine (two issues per year during baseball season)

1983: Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide, Current Card Prices, Baseball Cards Magazine (two issues per year during baseball season)

1984: Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide, Current Card Prices, Baseball Cards Magazine (four issues per year, issued bi-monthly April through October) 

1985: Baseball Cards Magazine (four issues per year, issued bi-monthly April through October) 

1986: Baseball Cards Magazine (four issues per year, issued bi-monthly April through October) 

1987: Sports Collectors Digest Baseball Price Guide, Baseball Cards Magazine (8 issues as it went from baseball season to bi-monthly to monthly this year)

1988: Baseball Cards Magazine (12 issues)

1989: Sports Collectors Digest Baseball Price Guide, Baseball Cards Magazine (12 issues)

1990: Sports Collectors Digest Baseball Price Guide, Baseball Cards Magazine (5 issues January through May)

Full disclosure-I worked for Current Card Prices (CCP) for two-and-a-half years (covering the first 25 issues) where I assisted with the initial development of pricing and then a large portion of the monthly updates thereafter.

I gave up on TTS pricing in this study after 1982 as Dan Dischley was clearly losing momentum and the price grid practically disappeared thereafter. He sold out in September 1983 and the new owners (his neighbors) tried to turn it into a price guide publication like CCP but it was not to be and I was not able to verify their hobby bona fides. It ceased publication after the March 1984 issue when Krause Publications (Sports Collectors Digest parent company) bought the mailing list. You can also see my Sport Americana Guides are bereft after 1984, when I stopped purchasing them.  After 1990 I will only show sporadic pricing as my run of publications is not as robust as it could be. I'll conclude with PSA's current pricing, which will amaze and or/anger many of you, depending upon when you sold off some of your cards!

This mostly 80's overview will be presented in the form of yearly averages with commentary regarding each along the way.  It was an unexpected challenge to wrangle the pricing for Ex-Mt, NM and Mint conditions into a cohesive whole. For pricing through 1986 I used Ex-Mt as the baseline, then NM thereafter.  I extrapolated prices for the other grades according.  From 1981-86 the NM price was extrapolated to 120% of Ex-Mt and Mint to 140%.  After that, the spread between Ex-Mt and NM grew and I calculated Ex-Mt at two-thirds of the NM price and Mint at 120% of NM.  It's not perfect but it's close enough to show what I want to show. Rounding to the nearest penny or dollar sometimes occurs, especially for the latter years of the decade, as it seemed silly to show trailing cents for $100+ cards.

1981

As noted in my last post, the 1981 edition of the Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide had a key article that revealed three 1952 Topps high numbers had been double printed, including one of my research subjects. This had a deleterious effect on the pricing of this card in what also turned out to be a little bit of a down time for 50's and 60's cards that lasted into 1982. That revelation, coupled with a huge amount of interest in current issues thanks to Donruss and Fleer issuing sets along with Topps, plus a little thing called Fernando-mania, together with the player's strike mid-season and poor economic conditions generally, resulted in that utmost rarity, a Mantle card pricing depression.

The averages for the year are as follows (order is Ex-Mt/NM/Mint) and I've put the 1980 Sport Americana pricing in parentheses.  I decided to add the 1961 high numbers, which at one point later in the decade were considered in some collecting circles to be the hardest of all the 60's high numbers and in fact considered replacing the 57 mids with them (and didn't) but they debut here, blog-wise. I didn't track the full year, nor did I do so for 1982 either. Tough noogies.

1952 Highs: $42.50/$51.00/$59.50 ($55.00). Slight uptick as collectors continued to chase these for sets.

1952 Mantle: $1,095/$1,315/$1,534 ($2,500). Mantle prices plummeted and were down to $750 or so for an Ex-Mt example by December.

1957 Mids: $2.17/$2.60/$3.04 ($1.80). As with the 1952 highs, sets were being filled in by collectors.

1961 Highs: $6.00/$7.20/$8.40 ($4.00). Gotta start somewhere.

1966 Highs: $1.94/$2.33/$2.72 ($1.80). Gotta get those high numbers for your set!

1966 Perry: $43.39/52.07/$60.75 ($10.00). Only Sport-Americana picked up on this trend, first noticed at conventions around the summer of 1980 and even commented upon in The Trader Speaks yet bizarrely not addressed in their pricing grid.

1967 Highs: $1.42/$1.70/$2.00 ($1.50). Their pricing would lag the 66's for the entire decade.

1967 B. Robinson: $63.58/$76.30/$89.01 ($120.00). Brooks was plummeting along with the Mick.

1972 Highs: 37 cents/44 cents/52 cents (22 cents). You could still buy large quantities of mint high numbers in 1981 but these and the 1970 and 1971 highs were poised for increases.

1982

I want to show you the Bill Henderson Pricing Grid, which was ubiquitous for many years in the hobby guides and magazines. He was the self proclaimed "King of Commons" and boy was that an appropriate moniker, especially if you saw the mountain of cards he used to bring to the National and other major shows:

Some of those pricing ranges on 60's high numbers were due to grouped together All Star or Rookie cards bringing more then regular commons. His 1967 high number pricing spread may indicate Bill knew about the short prints as there's just plain old commons, tough cards, Rookie Stars and Team cards randomly sprinkled throughout.

On to our pricing averages for the year:

1952 Highs: $38.13/$45.76/53.38.  Down a smidge, possibly just due to the relatively high price per card.

1952 Mantle: $677/$812/$947.  The low point for the Mick came in the November TTS, where he was listed at $695 in Ex-Mt. Still a lot of money at the time but just an absolute bargain in retrospect.

1957 Mids: $2.61/$3.13/$3.65. Holding their own.

1961 Highs: $5.93/$7.12/$8.30. See 1957.

1966 Highs:  $2.00/$2.40/$2.80. See 1961.

1966 Perry: $31/$36/$43. Overheated too early, cooling down period ensued.

1967 Highs: $1.39/$1.67/1.95. Steady as she goes, just down a couple of cents.

1967 B. Robinson: $59/$71/$83. The idea this was a true short print was wearing thin.

1972 Highs: 47 cents/56 cents/68 cents. Up a little but ample supply in Mint was still out there.

1983

The first full year of tracking the 1961 highs here, after a high-atus (sorry). 

1952 Highs: $36.74/44.09/51.44. Still down a little.

1952 Mantle: $941/$1,130/$1,318.  The comeback at last.

1957 Mids: $2.62/$3.14/$3.67. Rock steady in the extreme.

1961 Highs: $4.62/$5.54.$6.47. A down year, not sure why.

1966 Highs: $1.82/$2.18/$2.55. Just down a hair.

1966 Perry: $41/$49/$57. No hair, but growing.

1967 Highs: $1.61/$1/93/$2.25. First time these went up and the 66's went down it seems.

1967 B. Robinson: $78/$938/$109. Looking up for Brooksie in '83 with his HOF induction no doubt helping.

1972 Highs: 48 cents/58 cents/67 cents. Another steady series.

1984
The big change this year was the introduction of Short Print and Double Print Pricing for the 1967 high numbers in Current Card Prices. This was partially the result of my research at CCP, which was the only publication to track these at all in the 1980's from what I can tell and only identified the Double Prints in the last six months of the year. The publisher and I disagreed on some of the Single and Double Prints and he listed far less of the former and far more of the latter than I had uncovered based upon his years of experience as a dealer. Fair enough as the current research indicates there may be three or possibly four levels of scarcity, some of which may be related to a production problem and not the array of the press sheets.

The standard pricing in my figures down below is essentially a blended figure of "DP" and "regular" prints.  I've not parsed it further as the pricing in this study from 1985 onward does not include anything further from CCP; I have the January 1985 issue, which was the last one I worked on but have not included it in any figures here.

If you include the #531 checklist, there are 77 cards in the 1967 high numbers. CCP identified 23 DP's and 5 of the cards broken out in the individual listings were shown as as Short Prints: #553 Yankees Rookies, #558 Orioles Rookies (Belanger), #563 Adcock, #581 Mets Rookies (Seaver) and #586 Jimenez; the dot meant a card had been added to the listings. The rest of the highs were just treated as "regular" prints" although there are six other cards I believe to be true short prints and 11 others that could be as well. I regret that I do not have all of my original notes anymore.

Meanwhile, things were decidedly looking up for Mickey and friends in the '52 highs:

1952 Highs: $43.02/$51.62/60.23. They would never be this cheap again.

1952 Mantle: $1,360/$1,632/$1,904. It's off to the races from this point. Still racing...

1957 Mids: $2.62/$3.14/$3.67. Stagnation nation.

1961 Highs: 4.67/$5.60/$6.54. Very little movement.

1966 Highs: $2.03/$2.44/$2.84. The separation between these highs and those from the following year was starting to grow.

1966 Perry: $45/$54/$63. Steadily going up in the first year of his retirement.

1967 Highs: $1.61/$1.93/$2.25. Nowheresville, as all the action was in SP/DP activity.
1967 Short Print Highs: $4.07/$4.88/$5.70. The short prints priced here are really just three commons.

1967 B. Robinson: $76/$91/$106. A little down. It seems to me that a good supply of 1967 high numbers were still out there, whereas the 66's were drying up.

1972 Highs: 58 cents/70 cents/81 cents. It doesn't seem like much but this is a 20% increase from 1983.

1985
A big focus on 80's rookie cards (yawn) was developing in the hobby and articles about speculating on same were starting to permeate Baseball Cards magazine.  That trend would continue for the rest  of the decade.

My "grid" now excludes the 1967 Short Print highs.

1952 Highs: $43/$51.00/$60. Hopefully you stocked up on these in 1984.

1952 Mantle: $1,200/$1,440/$1,680. Same here.  Wonder if FOMO was starting to take hold?

1957 Mids: $2.50/$3.00/$3.50. Surprisingly down just a hair.

1961 Highs: $4.75/$5.70/$6.65. Unsurprisingly up by a hair.

1966 Highs: $2.13/$2.56/$2.98. These just kept up their slow grind upwards.

1966 Perry: $48/$57/$67. Following the herd.

1967 Highs: $1.60/$1.92/$2.24. This is getting ridiculous.

1967 B. Robinson: $74/$88/$103.The decline continues.  

1972 Highs: 68 cents/82 cents/95 cents.Almost a 20% jump again.  It's amazing but the 1970-72 high numbers, which were all trading in this kind of range, were creeping up on the 67's.

1986

This was the last year default Ex-Mt pricing was a thing.  It was a useful description back in the days of letter-writing and hobby publications that were all text but more and more it came to signify cards that were "pack fresh" but with potential to be wildly off-center. And with millions of new cards issued every year, everybody wanted "NM or better" anyway.

1952 Highs: $49/$58/$68. They just kept going up, up, up.

1952 Mantle: $1,800/$2,160/$2,520. 50% increase from 1985. Mickey was a fixture at card shows at this point, certainly helping his popularity.  I saw him at a show once around 1983-ish (I was waiting on line to get a Duke Snider autograph) and he was a good signer, great with kids, probably due in part to his ever present glass of "water."

1957 Mids: $2.56/$3.07/$3.58. Down just a tad.

1961 Highs: $4.75/$5.70/$6.65 UNCH, as the old daily stock market tables used to show.

1966 Highs: $2.38/$2.86/$3.33. Grinding, grinding.

1966 Perry: $49/$59/$69. Just about unchanged. 

1967 Highs: $1.60/$1.92/$2.24. Essentially three years in a row of stagnant pricing.

1967 B. Robinson: $78/$94/$109. The ebb and flow of Brooks continues.

1972 Highs: 70 cents/84 cents/98 cents. These had cooled off a bit.  

1987 (Standard Pricing is now NM, other grades are calculated from that baseline with a 20% increase for Mint and deduction of one-third for Ex-Mt. Grading spreads were changing as condition became paramount to collectors. "Mint freaks" were once derided by some Long Island dealers I knew but the joke turned out to be on them).

There's finally some decent movement on a lot of my subjects.  1987 was the year when things exploded in terms of new card production and it seemed interest in the hobby was growing almost exponentially.

1952 Highs: $58/$87/$104. First good increase in a couple of years.

1952 Mantle: $2,121/$3,180/$3,816. If Mickey was a hobby (race)horse, he'd be Secretariat.

1957 Mids: $3.44/$5.15/$6.18. Perhaps the most amazing story here, a noticeable increase after half a decade.

1961 Highs: $5.77/$8.65/$10.38. These too were showing signs of life.

1966 Highs: $2.93/$4.40/$5.28. Up almost 20%, just like the other highs above.

1966 Perry: $52/$78/$94. Priming the pump as the HOF got closer.
1967 Highs: $1.68/$2.52/$3.02. Still lagging the 66's.

1967 B. Robinson: $79/$104/$125. As the highs went, so did Robinson.

1972 Highs: 68 cents/$1.02/$1.22. A surprising, albeit slight, retreat.

1988
If 1987 was the year of great hobby interest, 1988 was the year prices really stared zooming. I became a part time dealer starting in the Fall of 1988 and there were literally people walking around shows with large paper bags full of cash.  Somehow, in the year of crisis following one of the biggest stock market crashes in US history (Black Monday anyone?) people were shelling out huge bucks for old cardboard.  This may seem like a familiar theme to us all in this pandemic year.

1952 Highs: $91/$136/$163. Up close to 35%.

1952 Mantle: $3,928/$5,889/$7,067. Mickey was almost double from the prior year's average. With a bad stock market, invest in good cards I guess.

1957 Mids: $6.26/$9.38/$11.26. Huge jump for these.

1961 Highs: $9.59/$14.38/$17.26. And these.

1966 Highs: $5.26/$7.88/$9.46 Same.

1966 Perry: $102/$153/$184. Samer.

1967 Highs: $2.59/$3.88/$4.66. Not quite as much as the other subjects above but a healthy bump.

1967 B. Robinson: $87/$130/$156. A 20% boost.

1972 Highs: 92 cents/$1.38/$1.66. Close to a 40% rise from the year prior.

1989
Things cooled a little as a recession was teeing up.  The trend was still up though. Of note, 1966 Short Prints were finally being broken out and priced.

1952 Highs: $99/$149/$178. Up 10% or so after a hot 1988.

1952 Mantle: $4,336/$6,500/$7,800. 10% as well on the upside.

1957 Mids: $9.81/$14.71/$17.65. Almost a two-thirds rise on a percentage basis.  I can't recall if this was a particularly hot set at the time but it sure seems like it was.

1961 Highs: $12.10/$18.14/$21,77. Lagging the 57's, practically a first.

1966 Highs: $12/$18/$21.60. These more than doubled-wowsers!
1966 Short Print Highs: $13/$19.50/$23.40. Baseball Cards Magazine picked up on these at the beginning of the year, although I'm not sure of their source. The SP/DP spread would grow but eventually wane a bit.

1966 Perry: $160/$240/$288. His HOF vote inched ever closer and prices escalated accordingly. 

1967 Highs: $3.20/$4.80/$5.76. Best bump yet.

1967 B. Robinson: $110/$165/$198. Following along with the highs still.

1972 Highs: $1.29/$1.93/$2.32. The best year yet for this psychedelic favorite of mine.

1990
Given the recession was essentially in full swing by Summer, my meager collection of Baseball Cards magazine that ends in May is not a huge help for annual pricing studies. Still, here's a snapshot before things went awry.  I can tell you that shows in the latter half of 1990 were not good from my perspective as a part-timer. The trend would continue into 1991 after which my partner and I gave up; a lot of smaller shows were dying at this point too.

1952 Highs: $100/$150/$180. This is not really movement at all.

1952 Mantle: $5,136/$7,700/$9,240. The road to five figures was paved and just waiting for traffic, recession be damned.

1957 Mids: $10/$15/$18. Stagnation nation regeneration.

1961 Highs: $13.44/$20/$24. These were still going up a little.

1966 Highs: $10/$15/$18. The SP/DP split was affecting the DP pricing it seems.
1966 Short Print Highs: $13.34/$20/$24. It's worth noting there is still no true consensus on which SP''s are really SP's. A debate over which high numbers and their respective SP's are harder to find in 1966 vs. 1967 rages on.  These two years have oddly printed and/or produced and/or collated and/or distributed high numbers, for reasons that are still unclear.

1966 Perry: $167/$250/$300. Little bit o'bumpage.

1967 Highs: $3.34/$5/$6. Same as Perry.

1967 B. Robinson: $117/$175/$210. Same as the highs.

1972 Highs: $1.50/$2.25/$2.70. Nice increase on these toughies.

And now I punt...half the fun of this exercise was re-reading all the old hobby publications.  Price guides are just not the same and from about 1987 they really supplanted the tradition hobby 'zines in terms of setting the pricing pace.

Fast forward to 2011 and things are, well, interesting when looking at The Standard Catalog, which basically supplanted the old SCD Guide and is sorely missed by me and the hobby in general.  I'm only going to use NM pricing as the spread to Mint turned into a chasm and Ex-Mt was but a distant memory.

1952 Highs: $400 - you need a Brinks truck full of cash to collect the high numbers in any kind of decent shape.

1952 Mantle: $35,000 - Make it two Brinks trucks for the Mick.
1957 Mids: $25 - They finally grew up!

1961 Highs: $20 - They finally calmed down.

1966 Highs: 12.50 - Equlibrium.
1966 Short Print Highs: $16 - Shrinking spread.

1966 Perry:  $170 - Great pitcher but not all that popular in the hobby other than with certain team and HOF collectors.

1967 Highs:  $12 - Parity with 1966 achieved.

1967 B. Robinson: $250  Compare to the Seaver rookie at $500.

1972 Highs: $12 -  As I mentioned w-a-a-a-y back in the first of the posts in this series, these were thought to be the hardest (i.e. printed in lesser numbers than 1970 or '71) of the 70's high numbers.

I'm going to jump ahead here again and show PSA pricing as of August 2020, in NM 7. Once grading really came to the fore in the mid 90's, the old "raw" guide prices became somewhat outdated in a way.

1952 Highs: $300 - eBay has made it clear these are not as difficult as believed by prior generations of collectors. In demand certainly and definitely not common but not the ne plus ultra of major tough postwar cards either. as collectors of the 50's and 60's once thought.

1952 Mantle: $115,000 - This speaks for itself. Holy crap.
1957 Mids: $32 - This feels about right if you ask me.

1961 Highs: $28 - This too, as their perceived scarcity has also been both unmasked and affirmed in a way by eBay.

1966 Highs: $15 - These look like they hit an early peak and got stuck on the mountain.
1966 Short Print Highs: $25 - I still don't know how the SP's are determined.

1966 Perry: $135 - Party's definitely over for Gaylord.

1967 Highs: $20 per the series tranche at the top of the listing, $16 per the individual player listings and no mention of SP's or DP's.  Curious.

1967 B. Robinson: $250 - Stability has been achieved. Seaver is a $900 card in this grade with a lot more potential to grown that Brooks in my opinion

1972 Highs: $5.  Didn't see that coming.  1970 at $6 and 1971 at $12 have surpassed them but those both have full bleed color to the edges.

 I thought it would be interesting to show the PSA 7 results for all high or scarce numbers from 1952-1973 to finish this study off. I'll repeat the above figures from August 2020 for the sake of clarity, without getting too deep into Short Prints, Double Prints or Extra Prints:

1952: $300
1953: $110
1954: $45 for the "series" running from #51-#75. These are not really high or scarce series cards in actual fact but the print arrays beyond the first series of 50 cards are quite bizarre this year, with huge numbering gaps.
1955: $50 but there's not really much a spread on these vs. the lows.  1954 and 1955 were short sets and Topps didn't have to issue more than four series in either year.
1956: $30 for high numbers that are relatively abundant in comparison to prior series. Again, 4 series and not 5 or more helps smooth things out.
1957: $32 for fourth series of course.
1958: $14 for everything beyond the first series, which shows at $18.  With Stan Musial signed and a high number all star card of the Donora Greyhound was triple printed (same with the Mick), at the expense of four other subjects on at least one slit (132 card half sheet) or press run. Topps pumped the last series hard in the first year of truly national major league baseball.  First series issues were probably due to all the new pictures and write-ups that had to be made. The four cards that got short shrift in the all star shenanigans are listed at $25 each.
1959: $16 for the first high numbers of note (in terms of print run) since 1953. Noticeable color change on the back as well.
1960: $12 in a year where the highs are not too difficult.
1961: $28
1962: $16. PSA has a bunch of SP's listed higher ($20) but I don't know how they figured them out.
1963: $10, or $2 less than the semi-highs. There is semi-active research going on over at Net54 on the 1963 press runs and sheet arrays.
1964: $12 for another fairly easy year.
1965: $10 for an abundant series of highs priced just $2 more then the semi-highs.
1966: $15 for another year being dissected over at Net54.
1967: $20 (or $16) for a popular set and another being looked at over at Net54.
1968: $6 for the last two series vs. $5 for all below.
1969: $9 vs. $7 for all other series.  These are not hard at all but the year is very popular.
1970: $6
1971: $12
1972: $5
1973: $3 vs. $2 otherwise in a year where a good percentage of cards got distributed all at once from the get-go.

Other than 1952, 1953 and possibly 1954, it's not too hard to find highs or the tougher series in decent shape, although if you like truly good centering you may feel differently. Other years where production seems to have accelerated are 1959, 1965 and 1969. 1961 is still a bit tough, 1962 and 1963 have full bleed borders on some or all of the edges that makes nicer looking cards harder to find.  As always, your experience may vary!

Wax On, Wax Off

It's funny what's turned up in Topps packs over the years: plain white gum separators through the mid-50's, cello wrapped caramel in 1951 and a string of contest and premium offer cards in the late 50's into 1960.  Topps then moved into more familiar inserts starting with the 1960 Football cards, which for the most part ended in 1971 for Baseball and Football. In retrospect these were clearly sales stimulators so long as costs allowed. In 1967-69 though, something else made an appearance that not too many folks know about.

Ads, specifically in-house ads for upcoming inserts and sets, are what came in certain wax packs these three years. The first one I'm aware of is this little bit of wax paper from 1967, roughly the size of the era's penny Bazooka comics:

Love the Tigers player and his knowing look!  My research, which is admittedly a bit limited as I am just in the training wheels stage when it comes to the series-by series specifics of vintage Topps wax packs, shows the Pin-Ups were issued throughout the season (they are known in 2nd, 5th, 6th and 7th series cello packs for sure), so I'd imagine these were found in 1st series packs.

QUICK SAME DAY UPDATE:  I found this commencing with the Classified Ads in the March 1972 Issue of The Trader Speaks.  Same pitcher, slightly altered facially and on the uniform and I suspect Woody Gelman had a hand. He appeared, along with his battery mate, in TTS until the last Dan Dischley published issue came out in September 1983, save one or two occasions):

1968 brought an ad for the Game cards, complete with cursory instructions:

From Mantle, Mays and Aaron to Campy, who was a helluva player but not in the same zip code as those guys, and I suspect at least one other player, if not more, was named (see batter's ankles and feet at the top). The Game cards seem to have started showing up in 4th series packs, so these would be from the 3rd series. However, that wasn't all. The 6th and 7th series wax packs carried two tones of Football preview:

These are noticeably larger (much taller) than the Baseball waxy inserts and according to Darren Prince's 1993 Wrapper and Pack Guide, came in 6th and 7th series packs. Dig the commodity codes and fold lines - were these printed and actually folded in with the wrappers?! 1968 was the first combined NFL/AFL set issued by Topps and they clearly intended to make a big splash.

1969 seems to be the end year for the waxy inserts, possibly due to rising costs; remember, ten cent "cello" packs debuted this year to mimic the Baseball wax in a large scale pricing experiment and the dime wax pack debuted for real with the '69 Football release (and some Non-Sports issues).  Friend o'the Archive Dave Schmidt sent me a scan of the installment from '69 as I have not yet found one of these (the others are from my collection):

The Deckles debuted in Series 3 but there were also the Decal inserts in 1969 so it's possible another  ad insert exists for those.  Prince has the Decals ("Magic Rub-Offs" actually) as appearing in 2nd and 5th series packs so I'm not sure what's going on with that.

I've also just gotten this one in from across the pond, it's from Topps UK:

That little, oddly-fonted ID number off to the right says "UK 24" which didn't help with dating but I found a Footballer wrapper from 1979-80 over at the awesome Nigel's Webspace that helped zero in on it:

Sorry for the murk, I found a better scan of the offer, which is not an exact match to the insert but fairly close:

While being fairly non-conversant with the ins-and-outs-of the English First Division teams of the time, I did know Celtic & Rangers were both from the Scottish League so I had to do a little research. The last season Topps issued Scottish League cards was 1979-80 (in their own set) and the English League teams (first and second division) were in the set this wrapper enclosed. so the timing fit. I then found 21 of the 22 first division teams that played that season on the insert, missing only Bolton, which was by far the worst team in the league and ended up relegated (and likely just ignored by Topps UK) along with Bristol City and Stoke, both of which made the scarf cut as a booby prize I guess. This waxy insert must have part of the Bazooka Joe comic series over in the UK in either 1979-80 then, or the next season if they were burning off excess premiums.

Cartoon Reruns

Happy Wednesday folks-more inspired research from Friend o'the Archive Roy Carlson today.

Take a look at these three Topps cards from 1966 and '67:

No apparent connection, right?  Well Mr. C has certainly found one. Check this out:

Yup, those cartoons on the '67 Ribant are recycled from 1966!  Let's take a closer look.  Here's what ended up on his 1967 card:

So poor Sammy Ellis had his cartoon hijacked and then changed.  At least both of the noted events were no hitters! Here's a little peek-a-boo or two:

Roy notes regarding the Ribant that "the 1967 finished card's left cartoon has an extra 2 hash marks by the pitcher's left arm. Those are actually a portion of the number "3" from "377", the card number that was written on Turk Farrell's 1966 cartoon. Also, based on the crudely cut and glued 1967 text board, a portion of the pitcher's glove gets covered.  One needs to look at the 1966 card to fully enjoy the full glove detail.  Plus, the 1967 text on the right cartoon was written on separate board, then apparently cut poorly, slicing a bit of the boxed "I" in the word "IN".  The artist or editor had to re-draw the left portion of the I box on the final cartoon."

Here's more from the Ribant card's back, you can see the glove is cut off on the left cartoon and the redrawn point of the I is broken on the right side one:

More cartoon fun soon!

Sign Here Kid

Happy Wednesday kids!  Back at it with some midweek cheer from Friend o'the Archive Roy Carlson.

Hobby veterans are aware that Topps used to sign up almost any and all promising minor leaguers (Maury Wills excepted!) with a contract stipulating a $5 payment to retain their rights.  Famously called "Steak Money" as the idea was the player could go buy a nice steak to celebrate, I think it's possible that term is actually a neat enhancement of "Stake Money" but no matter. Today we get a peek at one of these contracts, that of Hall of Famer Ferguson Jenkins no less.

Jenkins was a Barbadian Canadian from Ontario whose mother was descended from a "passenger" on the Underground Railroad. Ferguson was a tall (6' 5") righthander who came to baseball late but clearly found his path once he started playing.  His height and inexperience relegated him to first base duties initially but his arm got noticed by Gene Dziadura, a Phillies scout who roamed the province and who would work out with the young Fergie, having him throw pitches into ever shrinking targets for accuracy, chop wood to hone his delivery and heave a heavy hammer to develop his curve.

Jenkins signed with the Phillies in 1962, although his referring Scout was apparently Tony Lucadello, who also had the distinction of recruiting Mike Schmidt. His signing caught the attention of Topps of course and he signed with them on June 22nd of that year.  Here is his steak money deal; I have never seen one of these before:

Sy Berger signed a LOT of autographs on contracts over the years.  Not sure who "Parnell" was but I can advise it is not former major leaguer Mel Parnell. Perhaps a witness?

Fergie was under 21 and needed a parental signature to make it legal though:

Jenkins was actually 19 at the time - LOL!

Here is the key clause in this one:

It's a little fuzzy but in addition to the $5 Jenkins would receive $125 once he had 31 consecutive days on the active roster of a major league club. This is a phrase I have seen before in Topps contracts and it's important as it partially explains why Topps often didn't issue full cards of players who were not yet major league ready.  This applied to some degree to players that had retired but like anything else with Topps there is consistency in their inconsistency.  To wit:

1) Lou Piniella: 1964 Topps card #167 (shared with Mike Brumley as Senators Rookie Stars).  Piniella did not debut until September 4, 1964, after Washington had traded him to the Orioles. I'm assuming some rookies who had "Rookie Stars" multi-player card debuts had not yet fulfilled the 31 day requirement but must have had a side agreement to allow their premature Topps debut. Fodder for another post for sure.

2) Sandy Koufax: Retired November 18, 1966.  Team Captain on the 1967 Topps Punchout cards but nowhere to be found in the 1967 regular issue.  The Punchouts seem to have been developed and produced in late 1966, before the regular issue even.

3) Mickey Mantle: Retired March 1, 1969, Topps #500 that year. Late retirement in terms of the upcoming season but still had a card that could seemingly have been pulled given the later series it was in. Possibly the customary two year contract extension from Topps allowed this.  Too bad most other stars didn't get the career summary card. Additional fodder for the future.

Payment made:

That bank was fairly close to Topps HQ.  They used Manufacturers Hanover for their business financing but I guess the allure of a local branch of what eventually became Citibank was too convenient for them.  Note the check was issued months before he actually signed with Topps and the "pay to" field was blank. Someone (Parnell, a secretary, Berger?) other than Jenkins (see below) looks like they filled it in. I guess Sy Berger wandered around with a pile of fungible $5 checks!

Ferguson was able to endorse his own check for deposit, although I'm puzzled how he got anywhere near Williamsport at the time. I'm not positive but it looks like the local bank stamp for deposit was done on July 13th.

So the check was cut in March, paid to Jenkins upon signing in June, cashed in July but his parent didn't sign and make it legal until August-whew!

Jenkins was traded by the Phillies to the Cubs on April 21, 1966, after appearing in seven major league games the year before and one prior to the trade.  He was sent along with John Herrnstein (a scrub essentially) and Adolfo Phillips (a useful player for several years but let go in the 1969 expansion draft) for Bob Buhl (37 years old and totally shot) and Larry Jackson (three good years for the Phils, with 41 wins but still), in one of the worst trades ever in major league history.

Here's the 1966 Topps debut of Jenkins:

1967 gives us another look at his sig ("Fergie" now), and Shea Stadium, plus his new togs:

Jenkins is a guy I would see pitch a couple of times at Shea, my dad always seemed to buy tickets for games where an opposing ace would face off against Seaver or Koosman and the Mets would zip through a game in about 2 hours and 20 minutes! Sometimes we both skipped school (he was a teacher!) to go.

I saw some memorable games in the 70's as a result. I can't quite recall but I remember the Mets dropping one to Fergie 1-0 and another where I think they won in 10 but I'd need to scour Retrosheet to figure all that out.  No matter, Jenkins could pitch with the best of them and often did!

Cello There

Some really nice vintage Topps cello packs popped up recently at REA's fall auction. They are killer items of course and sometimes they give a glimpse as to when certain inserts were popped into the packs. Plus they look great! This got me thinking about a look at some of these packs that didn't push gum and were "only" brimming with cardboard.

Topps issued Baseball cards in (mostly) 12 card cello wrapped packs from 1953 onward, although 1952 cellos are alluded to by both Darren Prince and Mark Murphy in their unopened pack guides, while it's unclear if any have been seen or photographed. PSA doesn't list any in their pop reports but a non-sports issue from that year, the massively overproduced Wings set, is there.

From 1953-57 Topps issued cellos in retail boxes using Trading Card Guild packaging. This 1953 box shows one way this was done, using clear cello wraps, which is how they were issued most years:

They continued apace in 1954-56 then in 1957 Topps put some graphics on the cellos, although I am not sure why but probably an early attempt at branding their various lines:

I'm not sure how 1958 and 1959 were handled by Topps.  They were dealing with a true geographic western expansion of the game past the Mississippi River and their distribution was getting pretty far afield. They issued cellos in these years but I'm not sure if they had ten cent retail boxes that used the Trading Card Guild (TCG) boxes, stuck them in "long sleeve" 29 cent rak paks or both. At a guess I'd say both.

1959 seems to be more abundant no matter how they were issued though and that year was a seeming high point in terms of the sheer number of cards issued in the 1950's measured against the US population. By 1960 those long sleeve raks were how a lot of cellos got distributed, still in generic red, yellow and blue TCG-style livery through at least 1962 and which I will get to in a jif.

Here's a 1961 cello, I can't seem to find any with the stamp inserts and Topps may have only included them in the wax packs:

 

(Courtesy Mile High Card Company)

1962 was a different story though:

 

(Courtesy Memory Lane)

Many cellos can be found "reversed," with the folds on the front of the pack.These are the Trading Card Guild colors I mentioned earlier along with the"long sleeve" rak paks (sports raks of the era named the sport instead of saying "Hobby Cards"):

Talk about burying the lead with the currency insert!

Retail cello boxes held 36 packs at this time. It looks like the rak headers went to a kind of hybrid look in '63 then in 1964 and '65 sometimes went to set specific graphics that mentioned the Trading Card Guild again; this bastardized rak packing lasted through 1967-ish. Check out this Topps sell sheet for 1963, courtesy of Friend o'the Archive John Moran:

I haven't had any luck finding a '63 cello with a Peel Off on the back and the insert marketing schemes by set and series seemed to vary each year in the 60's. I'll keep looking as I want to document more of these. 

Topps changed the cello livery in 1964 for Baseball.  It was a special year for Topps with the 1964 All-Star Game being held locally at Shea Stadium and they did a lot of extras that year - some big (1964 Giants) and some small, like mixing up the packaging:

(Courtesy Robert Edward Auctions)

I'm not sure if the cello material is a little stronger due to the coin duo inserted within but red is the theme here!  The back mentions Topps and not the Trading Card Guild:

(Courtesy Robert Edward Auctions)

Meanwhile, back in Liverpool, the cello boxes were still using leftover stock I guess:

(Courtesy Lelands)

But the Beatles Color Photo raks had a nice header and then some while still identifying the Trading Card Guild:

(Courtesy Robert Edward Auctions)

The '65 Baseball raks seem to be relatively hard to find (one is shown here, but here's a fugly reverse wrapped cello from the first series: 

(Courtesy Mile High Card Company)

(Courtesy Mile High Card Company)

1966 raks are much easier but we're here for the cello's:

(Courtesy Robert Edward Auctions)

It has nothing to do with this post really, but my dad was a teacher who brought home all the stuff he took away from his junior high students every three or four years when he cleared out his desk. When I was 10 or so, one of the items he hauled back home was a 1964 Jerry Lumpe card.  I thought his name was the funniest thing I had ever seen at the time.  

The back includes a Ruboff of Moose Skowron. Poor guy's upside down!

(Courtesy Robert Edward Auctions)

There were 120 Ruboffs that year, issued in their own series structure in a way, 20 or 24 at a clip just doing the math.

Anyhoo....sometimes it's what's not there that tells the tale. Check out this first series pack from 1967:

(Courtesy Robert Edward Auctions)

On the back?  Bupkis:

(Courtesy Robert Edward Auctions)

Just having the cards come out in the spring was enough incentive I guess.   Actually, Topps sometimes included inserts in the first series cellos and sometimes they did not. However, in 1967  the high numbers had an added extra.  Check out this amazing pack:

Doubly amazing actually as that Seaver rookie looks centered!  Underneath it all, was a Pin-Up:

That browning seems to be caused by the acidic pulp paper used by Topps for the posters reacting with the adhesive holding the pack together. Other cellos from other years with different inserts don't exhibit this problem. 

From 1967-69 Topps issued 48 count cello boxes and went to the three pocket "loose" 3-cell rak pak style that didn't overwrap cellos anymore. 1970 brought the bigger 33 card cello packs that came in their own little box through 1972 and I'll pick up with the 1968-69 cellos next time out.