Joining A Fan Club

The well of Topps affinity products is a never ending source of wonder.  Case in point: some 1974 ballpark promotions featuring team branded Baseball Rak Paks!

Three teams were involved from what I can determine: Orioles, Tigers and A's.  Scans from the A's promotion seem to be non-existent and word is they are the hardest of the three to find so no luck there but I can show you the other two.

Here's the Orioles Rak, courtesy of Friend o'the Archive Rex Morgart, front:

and back:

The front of the header card is plain to see but the reverse is interesting:

Man, remember Labor Day doubleheaders?!  Also, dig the Topps commodity code running along the right side there:

Keep that code (and T-Shirt night) in mind as we move on to Detroit:

That's from an REA auction (Spring 2019) and is an impressive collection of nineteen of these scarce items.  The price?  A cool $20,600 semolians!  I should note a Winfield rookie, a second year Schmidt and several other HOF'ers were showing but that is an impressive haul. All are BBCE overwrapped as well.

Here's a legible look at the front of the header-note the Pepsi Cola connection here that is lacking on the Orioles giveaway.  I do not know if the A's were associated with Pepsi or not but Detroit sure was, in a very local way:

The back of the Tigers header is, uh, not a list of upcoming promotions:

Here too, a commodity code!  The Orioles code is the same, except for the revision number of 01, so this at 02 followed in turn. I am going to say the A's would be 03.

Now about that T-Shirt promotion noted on the Baltimore header.  Detroit went Pepsi-branded again for theirs:

Not related to the Raks but neat-o!

Rak 'Em Up

After a four year run utilizing essentially the same header cards for their rak paks in all sports, Topps changed things in 1974.  Partially driven by rising costs and partially driven by a new business model where baseball and other sports cards would no longer be sold series-by-series, a redesign was undertaken as this baseball rak shows:

Ch-ch-changes from 1970-73:
1) Blue header, no more yellow.
2) "New" wording has been retired.
3) "All 660 Cards" wording added (and then some, since this pack contains cards from the bonus "Traded" series.
4) A dozen cards have been excised from the pack.

Even more changes would happen by the time the football raks came out as the header turned red, wording was removed  and the card count fell by another eight compared to baseball:

Basketball seems to have been completely changed over without any Raks being offered.  Instead, Topps started to use the "wax tray" concept, where a number of wax packs would be overwrapped. Such trays will be covered in a future series of posts.

The same fate appears to have struck the hockey cards as well. I'm not sure why these changes occurred but it is entirely possible basketball and hockey were not selling enough units to warrant rak paks.  Also, basketball and hockey weighed in at a mere 264 cards while baseball was 660+ and football was a muscular 528 in number.