SABR Haber

Following up on the Topps Teamates near set auction discussed here back on April 26th, Rob Lifson, president of REA has advised regarding the missing, 18th (and last) card in the set:

"I can’t be 100% sure but it may be the Sports Department! I say this because I think the missing card may be the one with Bill Haber (and others). Bill wrote the backs of the cards and I think was officially in the “sports department”. He was definitely in the set, and though I am not looking at the lot or the writeup as I type, I think that card is missing. I owned this set (minus one) ages ago and I probably got it from Bill Haber. Maybe either he kept that one card or I put it aside and misplaced it – I can’t remember – but he was on it!" 

My theory that it was the Sales Department that was missing looks to be incorrect.  REA has kindly furnished back scans and I will add them to the prior post (which has a visual checklist) soon, so check over there if you want to see the backs.

Bill Haber was a Topps employee for quite some time and wrote a lot of what appeared on the backs of baseball cards. He was responsible for bringing many Topps test and proof issues into the market as he was an early dealer; he spun some tall tales about the origins of these sets i certain cases, thereby obfuscating the real story but giving us raison d'etre here at the ol' Topps Archives. Here is a picture of Bill I found at the Baseball Revisited blog showing him as one of the founding members of SABR in 1971:

Sadly, Bill Haber passed away in 1995 at age 53 from as asthma attack.  A tribute can be found here.

Growing A Checklist

As mentioned last time out, it is now possible to present a mostly complete checklist for the 1970 Topps Teamates cards, aka Grow Power.  According to the REA write-up for their near set, the cards should measure 4 5/8" x 2 1/2" or basically the same size as the "Tallboy" Topps cards (think '64 Hockey, '65 Football and '69 & '70 Basketball).

One card is still unidentified; my presumption is it should be #17 representing the Sales Department as the known numbering follows an alphabetical pattern and there is a potential gap in that spot, not to mention their Admin, Anne Rockfeld is shown on her own card. Cards where the numbering is surmised but not confirmed are shown with an asterisk. If anyone ID's card # 17 we will post it here.

Rob Lifson (who owns REA) is going to try and get back scans for us; they will be posted here as well but his auction is running right now and it may be a little while.

#1 Accounting & Budget:

#2 Administrative Assist. Sales:

#3* Advertising:

#4* Art:

#5 Credit:

#6* Customer Service:

#7* Data Center:

#8* Ediphone Operator:

#9* Financial Administration:

#10* International Administration:

#11* Mailroom & Fileroom:

#12: Marketing Management:

#13* The Odd Couple:

#14 Premium Records:

#15 Product Development:

#16* Purchasing Management:

#17* "Unknown" - possibly Sales:

???

#18* Secretaries:

Where Woody? There Woody!

Yonks ago, when I was sussing out the vagaries of the 1970 Topps Teamates (a.k.a. Grow Power), an internal set produced in house to foster camaraderie among employees at Bush Terminal, I thought I had spied Woody Gelman in an art department card but it turned out I was wrong.  However, thanks to the current REA auction, Woody has been found, along with 17/18ths of the full set:

That is Woody, second from the right and before a series of strokes would affect him a few years later.  Len Brown, who was a Topps employee since 1959 and who would succeed Woody, sort of, is also shown, second from left.  We also get a look at  Fay Fleischer, the group's secretary who guarded Woody Gelman's famous bank of file cabinets (a wellspring from which Many rare Topps issues and oddities sprung).

I can also report there is no sign of the Shorin family present in the set; upper management did not need any grow power I guess!

I will present a visual checklist of the set before the month is out as I want to try and sort out the numbering first  Besides, I think the spotlight should sometimes just fall on Woody......

Here's To You, Mrs. Rockfeld

Much to my surprise, a gaggle of the 1970 Topps Teamates cards (aka Grow Power) showed up as BIN's on Ebay recently. While the condition was low and the prices high, four additional cards can now be revealed. Leading off with card # 1 we have the bean counters from Accounting & Budget:




Card No. 2 is a solo act; call it a rookie card even. Anne Rockfeld, here's to you!




Coming in at #5, Credit:




Very important to Topps, Marketing Management comes along at #12:




We now have one-third of the fronts checklisted and five of the backs. Your intrepid blogmaster will keep scouring the dustbins of the internet for more of these.

Production Error

Well campers, sometimes things are not as they seem. A few clicks ago guesses were made as to the identity of Woody Gelman on a 1970 Topps vanity issue. Well, it was all so horribly wrong!

First of all, it turns out Woody Gelman, while he may have been the Art Director at one time, was head of the Product Development Dept. and not the Art Dept. when these cards were made and was for the Non-Sports side of things. The Art Department was a separate group that worked under Ben Solomon and toiled on the baseball sets (and presumably other sports as well). Mr. Solomon was responsible for final proofing and packaging of cards.

Second, that means Woody is not depicted on the Art Dept. card. Well, rats!

Third, we do have some detail on two denizens of the Art Dept. Here is a numbered scan:



The prior guess was that #9 was Woody Gelman. Not so, obviously and he remains a mystery. Ben Solomon is #12 according to his daughter and # 3 might be a fellow named Ted Moskowitz, who like Mr. Solomon looks to have been an animator before he came to Topps. If anyone has other ideas or some guesses as to who's who, let me know.

As it turns out, the Product Development and Art Departments remained behind in Brooklyn after the move of production facilities to Duryea in 1965. There were clear reasons for Topps to do so, both from a talent persepctive (starving artists did not live in Duryea, PA in the numbers needed by Topps) and business one (connections to Major League Baseball and presumably other sports leagues, Wall St., media and ad outlets).

I am starting to find a connection between the worlds of animation, golden age comics, MAD magazine, underground comics and Topps that all comes to a nexus at the behest of one man: Woody Gelman. More to come on this as the picture develops.

Where's Woody?

Two or three posts ago there was a picture of a rare 1970 Topps Teamates/Grow Power card depicting the one and only Woody Gelman. Let's play a little game to see if we can ID him. Here is a shot of Woody from 1972:



And an earlier one, date unknown:



Credit to the wackypackages.org website on those two-check their site out there is some fab stuff there!

Now, since the back of the Art Department card was not visible, some guess work is in order and I think Jeff Shepherd, in a comment to the original post nailed it. The guy behind the desk is likely Mr. Gelman, which makes sense since he was the Art Director and they most likely posed in his office. Here is a closeup from the Art Department card, previously seen:



And here is the entire card for reference:



Think the guy behind the desk is Woody? If not, there are not too many other choices!

Woody Gelman was an interesting dude and I've posted the link to his Wikipedia entry before but another click is in order, even though it does not address his role with the Card Collector's Company, which was instrumental in developing the modern trading card hobby.

Intriguingly, there is a print defect in the center of the card. A major faux pas for the Art Dept. shot, don't you think?! Check it out:



The Brooklyn notation on the top scan of Mr. Gelman above is providing me more fodder for a post or two on Topps production facilities. While they moved most of their operation to Duryea, PA in 1965 a corporate office still was maintained at Bush Terminal in Brooklyn for many years after.

Since I've been trying to determine the various locales and sub-contracted firms that did some of the pre-Duryea work (and some post-move work as well) as well as obsessively trying for thirty years to suss out the secrets of Topps uncut sheets, this upcoming series may well be a collaborative, post-as-we-go effort. So if anyone has good, concrete evidence of how Topps printed cards in the golden years, fell free to shoot me a line.

NOTE (4/8/10): Woody Gelman is not shown in the Art Dept. card. More details here.

Team Building Exercise

Here is a rare one...

While I lost the scans in a hard drive meltdown a few years back, I managed to save a printout of an odd Ebay auction from about 2007. I should have bid higher than I did but that's spilt milk at this point.....Anyway I thought this card depicted a group of workers from an insurance company:



But for reasons that will be revealed below they actually worked for Topps and must have kept all those great mail in premiums flowing back in the day. Topps Teamates seems to be the name of the set based on the above but a look at the back reveals otherwise:



I'll decipher the back for you. On the left below the PREMIUM RECORDS banner we have some identification of the subjects and some amusing text. Below that we find out this is "# 14 in a series of 18." On the right we have the Grow Power logo which clearly has the old school Topps logo embedded within , plus the year.

I had never seen another auction of these until a recent search found an old Legendary Auction with some examples, described as:

"The rarest card set that Topps ever produced does not appear in any catalog listing. It is the incredibly rare "Topps Teamates (sic)" set from 1970, produced only for the employees of the Topps home office and never distributed outside the company's doors. It is labeled "Topps Grow Power '70" on the cards' reverse sides and was probably used to boost the spirit of the troops, promoting the team player aspect. The horizontal cards (approximately 4-5/8 by 2-1/2 inches) came as a set of 18, with each picturing the staff of one of Topps' main departments. The set is missing card #18, and has a duplicate of #4. It is quite possible that the employees traded cards with one another to get duplicate photos of their own department's staff. That scenario is more believable than the idea that Topps couldn't put an 18-card set together without error. Whatever the case, this set's duplicate is of the Art Department, that crazy bunch that was responsible for drawing, pasting, proofing, and polishing all those great sets from the 60's and beyond! It is particularly amusing that the only card in the set with a photographic flaw is that of the Art Department, the very department that was supposed to catch this type of error. The flaw appears to be a flame floating above the seated lady's head. Maybe it was on purpose? Maybe it was the fault of someone in the Production Department? Maybe it was the fault of the same guy that didn't know how to spell "teammates!?!" The absolute best feature of this set (other than the visions it conjures of all those freelance "underground comix" guys working in a button-down environment like this) is that the set features the rookie card of Product Development director Woody Gelman! That's right, he's pictured here with all of his staff, the card guru himself. You've heard all the stories about all of the wonderful products he designed for us. Now you can finally see what he looks like! This set is Topps' version of a High School Yearbook, and it offers a unique look into the offices of 1970. As we are with our own High School Yearbooks, it's probably a sure bet that no one at Topps would ever want these photos to again see the light of day! Near set of 18 (17 different) in NM condition."

The size is basically the same as the "tall boy" Topps cards issued in 1965 for Football and 1969 and 1970 for Basketball. Here is the Art Department in all their glory:



Woody Gelman is depicted on this baby! I have an idea which one is Woody but want to compare some old pictures first. If you have a clue, chime in!

By the way, SCP Auctions had a similar set (maybe complete) around the same time that sold for about double the price of the one above. I doubt more than 100 of these sets were printed, maybe less and find it intriguing two came up for auction in the same time frame.