Tomorrow the NFL will determine which team is the champion of the 2024 (really 2024-25 now) football season when Super Bowl LIX (or "licks" as Gronk calls it) is contested in the Big Easy. Based upon the Championship Games two weeks ago and recent past history between the two teams, it figures to be an epic event. So I thought a little pigskin prose might be in order on Super Bowl Eve and it sure seems like an apropos time to take a look at a classic vintage release, namely the 1972 Topps Football set, now 53 years old (!)
The set as all collectors of it know today, consists of three series, with the high numbers being especially difficult. However, when it was issued in 1972 almost nobody knew anything about the last of those three, which we'll get into momentarily.
Series one contains 132 cards and features the rookie cards of John Riggins, Archie Manning, Ted Hendricks and several other Hall-of-Famers. The second series has 131 cards, thanks to the way Topps positioned checklists, as both those for series one and two are contained in the first series, with the latter also found on the series two press sheet, of course with its series one number (which is 79 if you're keeping score). The design is somewhat colorful, if a little unexciting, with many cards issued in a horizontal format:
The backs were quite legible, not something Topps was always able to pull off:
Like they did with the 1972 Baseball set, Topps included a good number of "In Action" cards, dubbed "Pro Action" for football. These were aptly named...
...but show in detail that Topps only had a deal with the NFL players and not the league proper; all the logos were airbrushed away!
Series two was not as flashy in terms of rookie cards but does have a major one in Roger Staubach, plus a couple other HOF types. And it was there things seem to have ended. However, Topps elected to run off an 88 card third series to cap things at 351 subjects, described in at least one contemporary hobby publication as a test:
Why Topps did this is unclear, although it was a time of various configuration operations experiments across all their lines, as we've seen previously with the 1972 Football cello packs, and they did expand the Football set to a massive 528 cards a year later. So technically it was a kind of test but the number of cards printed shows the difference between seeking approval of a new item among a small group of consumers (like the 1968 3-D Baseball set) versus one that helped them verify that new methods of packaging, box and pack changes.
The latter method, in what I think can be called regional testing, was important to Topps as they had to see what was viable before committing to the idea fully the next time out (1975 Topps Mini Baseball is a good example of a configuration test that wasn't successful enough to replicate the following season). But if they wanted to see how more Football cards might have sold, they ended up fumbling, and quite badly at that as almost nobody knew the third series in 1972 had even been issued!
A handful of markets did see them in 1972, in what was a wax pack only release of the series. A very old SCD article by Tol Broome (I've lost the date, sorry) mentions that three "test markets" were used by Topps. Hobby chronicler Rich Klein once wrote me and indicated he had obtained the highs in the Dallas Fort-Worth area while growing up. This makes some sense as I believe Topps had a regional distribution center nearby.
Another market was in the Milwaukee area (hold that thought) and the third seems to have been around Detroit (an area where the 1975 Mini Baseball cases also ended up in bulk). The environs around the Topps plant in Duryea, Pennsylvania would also dovetail with a kind of combined smaller (and local) retail test quite nicely, as would some Brooklyn test store action and I'm coming around to the idea Topps would use those two locales to sell a few boxes when they conducted regional tests. But the slowly revealed volume of 1972 highs over the years does not strike me as marking this anything but a regional test series.
Series three contained a couple of HOF rookies among its 24 All Pro cards, 14 Pro Action cards, a checklist and 49 player cards. The decision to market this final series seems like it was made after series two had been locked in place, given the lack of a checklist "preview" card being included therein:
The All Pro cards look pretty nice to my eye:
A nice write-up is found on the reverse:
At least one full 264 card press sheet is known:
You will note the two 132 card slits do not share subjects. Every All Pro card is found on the left side, with all the Pro Action cards (and the checklist) sequestered to the right on the B slit:
Neat-o!
Meanwhile, back in Milwaukee, the SCD article incorrectly mentioned the third series was distributed in mid-to-late December and that the cards did not sell, with a major Milwaukee wholesaler stuck with their order. Well this September 1972 ad in The Trader Speaks basically matches up the Sport Hobbyist piece above time-wise. So it wasn't December and the linked notion that a late release doomed the series seems incorrect as well.
Some of the article's inaccuracies seem to stem from the Topps PR-Spin Room of yore but I'm not sure that's where they all originated. One whopper stands out though, which was the assertion Topps would routinely pulp or destroy unsold inventory. That was definitely NOT their routine, and in fact it was almost an anti-routine they employed only when no further back channel or third party sales were possible. What was undoubtedly correct though, as they had inventory for decades (and still might), is that the Milwaukee shipment ended up with Larry Fritsch Cards. As told by Larry Fritsch himself to Broome:
That explains some of the distribution during the minimal sales window and some of the after-market shenanigans but not all of it. And of course the Card Collectors Company had an ample supply, per their January 15, 1973 catalog:
No price gouging or idea of a test there, that series and set pricing reflects there were 88 third series cards available and nothing else. CCC would usually point out what was a test issue, so the theory of a local test setup (i.e. the associated rarity) really does seem like bunk.
The cards may not have been moving all that well over the next decade as Fritsch also burned off some cases eventually, as this December 1983 ad from The Trader Speaks shows:
Check out the eye-popping (for the time) $5,080 for a case of the highs!
I'm sure there's more to this story and the idea of Fritsch's haul being practically the sole source for these cards is surely a fanciful notion but they are somewhat tough to find and this marked the first time Topps had gone to three series of release for Football. But this misadventure didn't stop their expanded effort for 1973 Football, so there must have been some measure of success, although the 73's were an "all 528" release as the series-by-series era at Topps was over by the time they came out.
Good luck with all your football boxes tomorrow!
