Blankety Blanks

I had long thought the saga of the 1971 Topps Winners Cards (OK, technically they hail from 1972 but no one refers to them that way) was concluded here but as it turns out I was, wrong about that.  Oh, the set's subject count remains complete at 19 and we know all about the original distribution and populations of these cards but the one thing that has eluded study has been the entry blank.

The special retail box that promoted the contest was only released in select areas for a limited time.  It's not clear why Topps elected to limit this promotion but the geographical array of contest winners certainly indicates only a select few locales had any chance of entering the contest.  To refresh your collective memories, this was the box in question:

It was plain to see that you had to ask the "storekeeper" for an entry blank and it's assumed they resided inside the box when first delivered, with instructions.  (UPDATE 6/10/24: They were stuck to the box top-see below for further details.) Thanks to a recently online auction, we can finally show said blank:

Sorry for the kludgy "watermark" but so it goes....

So you had to either send in your entry with five Baseball wrappers or just print the word "Topps" on an index card. Interestingly, there was both an upper (15) and lower (6) age limit for entrants:

No clue on what the poster would be and that 350 commodity code doesn't seem to marry up with the wax box or wrapper codes.  The "regular" codes I've found are:

1-401-37-01-1 (wax box advertising "Extra! Real Metal Coins"))

1-402-37-01-1 (wax box advertising "Collect All The Top Stars)

0-402-09-01-1 (wax wrapper with "Collect All The Top Stars" slug)

0-402-90-01-1 (wax wrapper with "Extra Insert in Each Pack" slug

1-368-15-01-1 (small blue box that held a cello pack of 30 cards)

The wax retail box hawking the contest had this code:

1-347-37-01-1

Topps tracked expenses for each issue using the codes so 347 clearly is a misfit in the 401/402 wax box/wrapper sequence.  I suspect the 350 code was assigned to track expenses for the firm that tabulated the results but the initiating 4 is curious. I hope to investigate all this further at some point and welcome any comments about the 347 and 350 codes.

Update 6/10/24: Lonnie Cummins advises the forms were in a pad that was stuck to the display box.  He further notes: "The reason the forms pad might have had a beginning ‘4’ is because that was normally the commodity for a sticker uncut sheet and if there was a sticker on the back of the form pad, then, there you go" Makes sense to me, thanks Lonnie!  He sent a nice scan as well to illustrate:

If I had enough brain cells left, I would have recalled the Baseball Card Exchange wrapped boxes from last year's National!  Nice price if you can get it! Lonnie also found the name of the firm that coordinated the contest: D.L. Blair, which was founded in 1959 and closed in 2016. They may have carried on as an advertising consultant based out of Long Island. So Blair of Blair!

Resident Wilke

While the kinks have previously been ironed out of the 1971 Topps Winners set, additional information keeps seeping in. We know the 19 cards in the set were actually issued in 1972, although I'm keeping it as 1971 here because I don't think:

a) anyone cares and
b) any references out there in printed guides, on the web or what have you all refer to 1971.

As mentioned previously, winners of this contest received 1000 cards of themselves, plus a "spiked" box of 1972 Baseball, where their card was inserted into each wax pack.  Thanks to Friend o'the Archive Jake Ingebrigtson we have a little more information on that part of the process and a better scan of one of the four subjects that popped up recently, finalizing our set count at 19, namely one Steven M. Wilke:

I was hoping the back scan would provide more information on the locale of Steven but I don't think there is enough there to be sure:

It's possible he was from an area in the Baltimore Orioles TV broadcast beam (and at least one other subject in the set was likely from the Baltimore area) but they were the hot AL team of the time so it's not a certainty.  The Reds could indicate an Ohio or West Virginia locale, which has been an area where another winner was located.  The seemingly main distribution area of Pittsburgh and California are two other hotspots for this set as well.  It's pretty clear the entire country did not get a chance to enter the contest given the clustering of subjects, although why remains a mystery. Although......Jake advises he found the Winners card in a collection of 2000 cards he bought from a collector who grew up in Minnesota.  To wit:

"He (the collector) grew up in a town in southern Minnesota named Red Wing. He has had the cards I purchased since he pulled them out of the packs as a kid in the early 70's. When I talk to him I'm going to ask him of any alternative way of getting cards (such as fun packs). He was old enough to remember buying all series at 1 time in 1973 (and being surprised by it) and having a hard time finding high # packs in 1972. Him and his brothers seemed to pay pretty close attention to what went on in terms distribution as their goal was always to complete a set."

Well that is quite a paragraph, no?  If some Winners cards made it out to a retail setting, then they have to be among the scarcest Baseball insert sets Topps ever issued. What could the total print run have been, 20,000?  Winners keeps coming back and surprising us!

Mark Of Distinction

Remember a couple of months ago when I wrote we had reached the end of the trail on the 1971 Topps Winners set?  Boy, was I wrong!

No, we don't have any cards to add to the checklist of 19 subjects, although it looks like we finally know why the remaining six winners did not have cards. However, what we do have is an actual winner from the contest!  Yes, thanks to the dogged efforts of Friend o'the Archive Jake Ingebrigston the final missing details of this contest have now been revealed.

Jake tracked down Mark Audia:

Mark was nice enough to forward some of the correspondence he received from Topps. The initial notification from Topps in November of 1971 was quite full of information:

We have confirmation now that 1000 cards were created for each Winner, plus an additional 24 inserted into each pack in a box of 1972 wax packs. 1000 cards, presumably delivered in two vending boxes, of something this esoteric is actually a high count to my mind.  Of course, it's the surviving copies that determine scarcity and not too many have survived over the years.

However, the mystery of the missing six Winners (25 winning entries were advertised) looks to be solved as the Winner could choose either a full 1971 or 1972 Baseball set instead.  Obviously Mark took the cards of himself over a complete set.

It's interesting too that a full set of six series was completely printed by the beginning of March. (Ed. Note: Per Keith Olbermann, some shots in the 6th series were taken in Spring Training 1972, indicating the 1972 set was to be shipped in series, or at least chunks) 

The second letter was really just a heads up that his cards would be arriving:

The final letter was from Sy Berger himself and it's a whopper (the Topps letterhead portion is actually in color):

Topps took Mark's two favorite players, as shown on the back of his card (and taken from the questionnaire), and incorporated them into the letter.  Easy stuff to do in the computer age but Sy's secretary had to actually type 19 different versions of the same letter (and six of a slightly different one)!

It's worth noting Clarksburg WV is located about 60 miles Southwest of Pittsburgh, which was one of the main distribution areas in 1971 for the boxes and packs of baseball cards that had the contest entries. Why the contest was not fully nationwide is beyond me, even with "thousands" of entries but it clearly was not, with only a handful of locales able to enter based upon the geographic concentrations of the winners. I have to believe the Winners contest was, at the end of the day, yet another marketing or sales tabulation exercise conducted by Topps.

Finally, the set should really be a 1972 issue but I'm not going to go trying to change 45 years of conventional hobby wisdom.

NOW, we're done!

Product 19

It looks like we finally have resolution on the subject count for the 1971 Topps Winners set, covered here often but most recently here. The checklist jumped from 15 to 19 subjects a little over two years ago when I received what looked like spy camera versions of four new subjects. That count looks to be entirely correct as a proof sheet scan has working it's way to me from the same source as last time.

I think you'll agree there are 19 cards in the full set after looking at this:

The contest that led to these cards being produced offered 25 winners their own cards.  Distribution of the contest boxes, which were specially marked by Topps, and the close proximity of some of the the hometowns of the winners makes it clear only a select few areas even got a chance to enter as random chance would not yield the geographic concentrations seen.  I suspect, based upon this odd distribution, Topps was running some kind of test or survey in the areas of distribution to see if a contest would increase sales. I'm guessing the results were not what they wanted since they could not fill out a full slate of winners.  And let us not forget the Bole sisters. A large, random contest would probably not see two sisters each win.  Maybe their Mom or Dad made a good case for them to both be included!

The sheet has the backs so it looks like a final process:

Cards from this set have been going for big bucks after being essentially ignored for years.  I don't see that they have made the PSA Registry but no doubt attempts are being made to have the set included.

This likely ends the saga of this strange set.  I'm happy I was able to suss a lot of its secrets out over the years.

Four Front

Right when I thought it was safe to declare the 1971 Topps Winners checklist complete at a truncated 15, four more subjects have popped up.  I received cell phone photos of four additional winners last year that for a trusted source, although that source wishes to remain anonymous (and is not one of my "usual suspects").

The four new subjects are:

Philip T. Edgerly

Patricia I. Cox

Carl R. Scatena


Steven M. Wilkie


There's a reason for the secrecy, which may be revealed this year but mum's the word right now.  We have 19 identified subjects out of a possible 25 and I am now thinking the other 6 could be lurking out there (or not, Topps and its mysterious ways and all....).

Here is the updated checklist:

Mark D. Audia
April T, Bole
Lisa C. Bole
Patricia I. Cox
Allen G. Csuk Jr.
Philip T. Edgerly
Theresa D. Faulkner
Vernon Grover
Tim J. Harlan
Jeff Hooper
Darren K. Lazzari
Jeffrey M. Mihalik
Jerry R. Nachtrieb
Ricky E. Nobile
Brucette C. Rumenyak
Carl R. Scatena
Fred A. Sinopoli
Christine Ulicny
Steven M. Wilkie

Topps continues to surprise, even more than 40 years later!

That's The Ticket

Well non-sports fans, we are back in action on the Winners front!

A nice set of box scans has shown up in the current Legendary auction and reveals new details about the contest:



As previously speculated upon, there was indeed an entry blank provided by your friendly neighborhood shopkeeper. Now, given that we have two sisters who won this contest, I have to wonder if perhaps only a couple of entries from each test retail market made it in to Topps HQ in Duryea . I have to further wonder if this whole scheme was merely an early effort to track buying demographics on the part of Topps. Oh yes, we also have a lead on a consolation prize poster premium featuring the 1971 baseball cards, with a maximum print run of 1000. I have never even seen one! And despite the promise of 25 grand prize winners, we are still stuck at fifteen known subjects thirty eight years later.

There is some nice graphics work on the box and the pop up tab of a Pete Rose coin is classic.



As previously detailed here the Winners cards were actually distributed in limited quantity inside 1972 baseball packs that were given to the contest winners along with two vending boxes worth of their individual cards. This means they were the last Topps baseball inserts until the UV era.

A Winning Combination

Well, the set that will not go away returns! Yes, every time I scan my respective in-boxes, new details emerge on the 1971 Topps Winners.

Collector Doug Goodman was kind enough to send along some scans to top off the visual checklist of known cards, which remains at fifteen. Here is Jeff Hooper:



And here is Darren K. Lazzari:



There is a twist this time though-another collector (let's call him Bill Mullins) did some ace detective work and found a newspaper article about Master Lazzari. This is from the Valley Advertiser of May 3, 1972 which served Monessen, Pennsylvania at the time. Monessen is a Pittsburgh suburb so we are zeroing in on one pocket of sweepstakes distribution.



As the article states Darren was "happily passing the cards out to his school chums" and "packages with his picture will be appearing in stores throughout the country" it would appear that while the Winners were from 1971 they were distributed within 1972 Topps baseball packs. It also seems possible they had national distribution but I have to wonder if that was limited to the two or three areas the contest seems to have been held.

Other nuggets in the article indicate Darren received 1000 copies of his card and a carton of bubble gum containing packs of 10 regular issue baseball cards plus one of his. This ties in with the recollections of the Bole girls in my earlier posts. The fact that these were inserts in baseball card packs makes them a bit of a different beast than just a contest card.

More as it happens!

Another Winner, Visually

Collector Rhett Yeakley sent me a note indicating he had purchased nine of these cards, previously discussed thrice on this blog. While he had no new names to add to the list of Winners, he did have a card image heretofore unseen, of one Christine Ulicny:



I like the vintage Bucco's cap! I suspect this and the fact her favorite NL team is the Pirates places us in Pennsylvania again and although the back of the card states Grosston Public as her school, I don't get a hit in Google. It's likely been renamed after all these years.

Thanks Rhett!

Sisterhood

One of the fun things about this blog is you hear from all sorts of people and many of them have extremely useful information or interesting stories. Such was the case when I heard from not one but two of the subjects in the 1971 Topps Winners set, discussed previously (and with more to come), a surprise I alluded to a few days ago.

Last time out the checklist for this set was fleshed out to fourteen subjects, among them a certain Lisa C. Bole. While Lisa was not illustrated in the previous post, she was kind enough to send me a scan of her card:



As it turns out, Lisa is from California and that is the state she resided in when her mother entered the contest. Lisa wrote:

"I was one of the Topps 1971 winners, and so was my sister, April Bole (her card might have said April D. Bole, I don’t remember). Mom was really great about entering sweepstakes and had good luck winning! I was only 8 years old in 1971, and my sister was 6 years old. I remember our cards came in the wax packages, mixed in with real cards and a stick of gum. All the wax packages were in a box. Mom put the two boxes in a closet and was going to try to save them, but my little brother got into the boxes and took everything apart so he could eat all the gum. So I no longer have any sealed packages, but I still have some of my cards."

Yes, she has a sister and yes her sister has a card too and yes her sister also contacted me. April D. Bole is the fifteenth subject in this set now:



April writes:

"I was also a Topps 1971 winner and was surprised and amused to find that there were people out there actually interested in this. I was six years old in 1971 so I'm not sure how accurate my memories are but am happy to share what I can remember about it.

I believe it was a nationwide contest which makes it all the more surprising that both my sister and I were winners. Like my sister said - my mom was really into entering contests back then and she was extremely lucky. I'm guessing from your picture of the box proof that there were 25 winners in total. We were in California.

No baseball or software experience (or even interest) was required. All that was needed to enter was a parent willing to fill out an entry blank and mail it in along with a photo of their kid (in my case it was my kindergarden class photo). Although I did become a huge baseball fan a few years later... my mom made those up (Angels/Dodgers/Jim Fregosi/Don Sutton)...

As winners we each received one sealed box of Topps baseball cards. Within each box were several sealed wax packages (I'm not sure the number but think it was probably the normal amount that came in a box of baseball cards). Each wax package contained 10 big league baseball cards, one of your personal baseball cards and a stick of that wonderful sugary cardboard gum. In addition to the box with our cards sealed into it we also received an additional stack of our baseball cards. The number floating in my head is that it was 1000 extra cards - but when I picture the stack in my head I think it was maybe half of that. As far as I know, our cards were never released into general circulation. We had our stack to hand out to our friends or to do what we wished with - but that was it....For a long time I had the box and a few of the wax packages taped together (my brother opened them all to get the gum) but am not sure where they are now."

Well well! As it turns out both April and sister Lisa are going to kindly send some additional scans to me and I am told one of the original boxes still exists. I can only assume the boxes were 500 count vending boxes but we'll see.

I now believe our pal from my initial post, Vernon Grover, could have been from Maryland and with the Bole sisters confirming the Golden State was their home in 1971, this looks like it was a national and not regional contest. I now have hopes the other 10 Winners will be identified someday. More on this a little bit down the road, i.e. when I have some more scans to share.

Winners Re-Revisited

Mere days after I last posted about the 1971 Topps Winners set, some new information has come to light. In a post on the Network 54 Vintage Non Sports board, four additional names have been added to the checklist. I wish I had scans but for now text will have to do. Our new additions are:

Lisa C. Bole
Jeff Hooper
Darren K. Lazzari
Christine Ulicny

You will note if you follow the Net 54 link that 14 cards may comprise the full set. I'll try to get scans up if any get sent to me.

Winners Revisited

I posted a couple of times last year about the 1971 Topps Winners set and the alternate 1971 baseball box that hosted the contest allowing some youngsters to have their very own baseball cards. You can click here and here for more on the back story.

After my recent southern sojourn, I returned to the Topps Archives Research Complex to find a box of auction winnings. Within were ten of these elusive cards, possibly comprising a full set. Based upon some astute comments left against my original post, it appears the contest was conducted in the Pittsburgh area but it is still not 100% certain this was the only area.

The lack of baseball poses on some cards is confusing as my impression was this was a baseball themed contest:



These two cards have an early 70's vibe but for different reasons:



Two classic poses here:



Jerry is new to this blog but for Ricky, third time is the charm:



And lastly, the last two, exhibiting similar production flaws such as fish eyes and miscuts as found in the regular baseball cards:



The backs are similar in most cases and likely depended upon a form filled out by the winner, resulting in less information for some than others:



I find the change in fonts slightly odd and am unsure of the significance. The only major change in backs otherwise is on our catcher from above, perhaps his handwriting was not legible enough for Topps to decipher everything:



I wonder if this is the entire set?

Boxed In

A little while back I posted about an obscure "vanity" issue Topps created in 1971, commonly referred to as Topps Winners. As you may or may not recall, the theory was you could somehow have Topps create a card for you after being nominated as being a "winner" or sending in a contest card. They looked like this:



Well, it may be a little more complicated than I first thought.

Fearless reader John Moran kindly passed along a scan that is enigmatic but enlightening at the same time and I also found a version of this hidden on my hard drive (a fearful, lawless place) after John's scan jogged my increasingly slow memory. I'll show the one I had first, which looks to have been cleaned up before framing and auctioning, then John's (who found it in an old auction catalog I think):





What you are looking at is an alternate box proof for 1971 Topps baseball wax packs. The baseball coins advertised on the box were inserted early in the Topps packs that year (series 1, 2 and possibly 3) before the reissued Scratch Offs made an appearance, so this proof was likely created at the same time the regular box was designed.

The regular 1971 baseball boxes, which may be the nicest display box Topps ever made, look like this (scan swiped from Ebay):



If you look real hard at the alternate box, it reads 25 grand prize winners would be selected in the contest and receive real baseball cards of themselves. 1000 other winners would receive full color major league card pictures. ( I think the last word is pictures but can't fully suss it out though) . Presumably that was just regular ol' Topps baseball cards.

I am unsure though how the contest would work since I cannot read the box bottom clearly. It appears to be an order form for a Bazooka catalog but could also be a nomination form or entry for the contest. If so, then would your local neighborhood candy store owner have been responsible for the nominations? That seems bizarre and severely limiting so perhaps there could have been pack inserts to nominate people instead.

So, if the contest actually occurred (perhaps it did, more information and research is needed) then the set has 25 cards in it. Given that two examples I have seen have text on the back confirming Pennsylvania residents on them and that there is not a surplus of the alternate boxes or contest cards known in the hobby, is it possible the boxes were never made and distributed and some dummy cards were merely made up as exemplars for internal use at Topps? If so, I would like to think maybe the kids shown are the offspring of Topps employees in Duryea at the time but that is just idle speculation.

So, what is the real story here? Did the boxes make it to retail and were there nomination forms printed as well? Any thoughts and comments from our vast readership are welcomed.