Bak to Raks

1969 was the last year of the 3 x 12 rak pak arrays.  Starting in 1959, when three 12 card cello packs were overwrapped for point of sale purchase displays, Topps had stuck with this winning formula for over a decade.  But 1969 was the last year of many Topps pricing schemes; 1970 would bring a shift to larger and more expensive packaging across all lines.

The 1969 raks are essentially the same as the 68's:

That NEW tag stayed with the 69's; can't go wrong with a good thing! You can really see how loose the cards would get inside each pocket.  Football was again a match for baseball:

The only real changes in the header card from 1968 to '69 would have been to the Topps production code (a very helpful dating tool) and at some point in the year a switch from Brooklyn to Duryea as the place of manufacture: I need to find clearer scans to determine when they did this on the raks; it was about the the time the fifth series baseball cards were issued but if they had old stock showing Brooklyn, they may well have let it run out unless there was a compelling business reason not to. The baseball and football raks above came from Huggins & Scott's site.

Once again the hockey cards also came in raks (just Topps I think, not OPC):

As with almost all my tough hockey scans, that is from Bobby Burrell's fabulous Vintage Hockey Collector's Price Guide.  Hockey raks would have been produced in tiny numbers relative to baseball and even football.  Remember, if you are buying these off eBay, watch for fakes-there are far more of those and repackaged "Christmas" raks than legitimate ones out there.

Rak Attack

Looking up details on Topps Rak Paks for my previous post led me to some more images and I feel like this is about to turn into a multi-post look at Topps biggest retail packs.  I certainly bought the majority of my cards this way from 1970-74, many of them from a fabulous store called Coronet.

The modern Rak Pak, as we saw last time, debuted in 1968.  Ditching the old, three-cello overwrapped style pack, Topps lost the individual cello's and created individual pockets for three cells of cards:

The "new" label is clearly to show the pack itself has been redesigned but why do they still say 3/10 cent packs? I guess Topps wanted you to know you were saving a penny!  You got 12 cards per pak, so 36 per rak.

The football raks were similar in '68:

Believe it or not, Topps sold hockey cards in raks as well:

The ability to sell any type of product using one template was very appealing to Topps as it helped to reduce costs.  Rak paks were designed for variety and toy stores and were prevalent from what I recall of them. I have tried to identify a Non-Sports rak from 1968 but there do not seem to be any sets that would really work, except possibly Hot Rods.  A lot of Topps sets that year were odd-sized or short in length.  I would think sports had a longer shelf life generally and the raks would be a better fit for sports cards due to the length of the seasons.  I will keep looking though.