What In The Sam Rosen Is Going On Here?

I was rolling through images on my hard drive the other day and pulled up a sell sheet from Sam Rosen (the antecedent, as a business, to Card Collectors Company and also the step-father to Woody Gelman) that had some curious series breakdowns for the the 1958 Topps Baseball set. The '58 set is a weird one as Topps was dealing not only with major league expansion to the west coast but also expansion of their signature annual set by 88 cards over the high of 407 cards they issued in 1957, tying it with 1952 as their most prolific at the time. Mix in their first All Star cards, the yanking of Ed Bouchee's card at #145, in-series checklists (ordered, for the most part, both numerically and alphabetically) and the much-ballyhooed signing of Stan Musial and it's clear Topps has a lot going on sixty five summers ago..

But I'm not sure what can explain the series pricing for the set sent out by Rosen in July that year:

Rosen seems to be referencing single and double prints in his pricing but they seem way too neatly divided to really reference the vagaries of the usual 132 card A&B slit printing impressions for each specific tranche of cards.

Compare the above to the way the numeric checklists lagged things vs. how the press sheets were run off for each series and you can see an interesting pattern pretty easily:

That was a fairly common structure with Topps for a spell, here with a 110 card first run, followed by three runs of 88 and what may have been intended as a final run of 66 before the 55 high numbers got the green light. Yes, the 22 card lag over the four initial series is reflected in Rosen's pricing structure, which also suggests a 3:1 ratio as well, Extra Print vs. Short Print. But those 88 and 66 card series really imply the cards should  have been printed in the same quantities.  And the 110 card first series essentially has 44 overprints if things were handed the way I suspect they were. And what is going on with the first 88 cards, where the pricing structure is an imposing 4:1?! 

Well, for a long, long time it was thought the first series was more like a traditional high number series, where less cards were printed than in all other series but pricing and population trends over the last couple of decades suggest pretty much all cards in the set are equally available, in one of the smoothest distributions ever pulled off by Topps. They likely learned from it though, as the high numbers get tough again in 1959 and we start seeing semi-highs with some reduced numbers as well. But I wonder if this was the start of the idea the cards in the first series in 1958 were scarcer began?

The one slit I have seen for series two has a classic set up, imagining 44 card blocks, of A B A, that suggests the other slit as B A B (noting Jim Bunning was slotted in to take the place of Bouchee as an off-the-cuff Double Print):

So either Rosen was pulling a fast one, made a mistake or got some bad intel from his stepson. It's certainly clear today that the precise divisions from San Rosen's price list exist. But it just seems odd, supremely so, that this was how Sam was selling the set in 1958.

Nuggety Goodness

After the recent, somewhat choppy look at the various Venezuelan Topps tattoo issues here of late, I've stockpiled some interesting scans that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.  So today I'm just going to wing it with some interesting Nuggets O'Topps related stuff.

You may recall the early card dealer Sam Rosen and the matchbooks he had designed every year for the annual Rathkamp Matchcover Society conventions starting in 1948. Well 1956's effort has now revealed itself, along with a very slight address change just down the street from a prior location, from where he was also selling aftermarket baseball and other trading cards :

Convention Committee Chair?  Sam seems like he was the kind of guy that would relish the role and was an eminently logical choice as the show was held in his hometown and he liked to have a good time with the boys.  I love stern visage and, even moreso,  the chair made out of a matchcover but watch that cigar ash Sam!  Some of his past made the reverse:

I'm hoping the 1957 and 1958 versions will eventually pop up as I suspect he would have had some made up for each do; he would pass at the end of 1958 so that year would be the absolute possible end of these.

At the end of a matchcover convention, I'd imaging you would want something to freshen your breath after all the cigars and cigarettes that had been smoked.  What better way then with some Scents gum, as seen here in a scan provided by Friend o'the Archive Jason Rhodes:

Scents looks very much like a reboot of the original Topps product, a one cent gum tab aimed at adults, then reformulated to mimic C. Howard's Violet Gum. Take a look at the box and gum it copied:

(Courtesy C. Howard)

Topps was adept at ripping off candy-coated gum, that's for sure.

And how about those Niners?  No, not the football team, the actual '49ers where the 100th anniversary of the California Gold Rush informed a 1948-49 sales promotion we've seen bits of previously:

Sales promotions would rapidly pivot to Bazooka after this as the ubiquitous one cent tab had been introduced before 1949 was shown the door. 

See ya next time!

Rosen Bloom

Last October I took a look at Sam Rosen, who was Woody Galman's Stepfather and ran the concern that Woody turned into the Card Collectors Company in 1959.  I've been deep-diving Woody of late and found a few more tidbits on Rosen I thought I'd share. This was triggered by finding another matchcover featuring Sam from a 1951 convention (the previous post had a '49), at which point I thought had a pretty good post teed up.  Then a whole bunch more of these turned up all at once and I was able to piece together a much richer (and more colorful) story.

We get a prismatic and geomterically diverse set of five for the Rathkamp Matchcover Society's (RMS) 1948 do in Cleveland:

I've shown the '49 cover previously but WTH here it is again; it coincided with Sam being named the RMS Outstanding Collector of the Year, which resulted in a commemorative plaque and a bestowment of 500 matchcovers:

So the question is, can you find multiple colors in every year Sam had these made up?  Based upon the array from 1950, I am going with "yes, yes you can":

You have to hand it to Mr. Rosen, he did not spare any expense!  I'm still thinking Solomon & Gelman created the artwork for these but they do not seem to be in either Ben or Woody's hand.  1951 brings up another question, namely if there are color sets for every year, are they all complete at a count of five? Check it out:

I believe by 1953 he was rolling with the after-market card business following his retirement from the garment business and he passed in 1958, so there's a fairly short post-war window of years where matchcovers of Sam could have been created. You could turn that 1951 image, featuring an album, into one for the hobby dealer known as "Sam Rosen" quite easily!

Speaking of 1952, we're not quite done.  This disappearing and repeating type of "infinity" illustration was quite in vogue at the time on the covers of comic books, which makes me think an artist from that field came up with this one:

1953 is presently our end marker and I have only a single example to present.  It's outside the color palette seen previously but I'll bet more exist (four, natch, at a guess). Note the address changed from 110 West 34th St. in Manhattan to #233, which is right across the street from the present day Madison Square Garden.  Since the card business was located at #110 I'm not sure why this change of address occurred. Also, I am reminded of the Topps Funny Foldee issues given Sam's visage here:

The back of the dome on the reverse is a nice touch!

What's amazing, beyond the fact these even exist, is that Rosen became a world class collector in eight short years and that was after starting from scratch!  Check out this blurb from a 2005 RMS Bulletin (in the "Hobby History" section):

That "tolerant' woman he married was Woody's mom.  She must have been used to it by then! I have to wonder if he had covers made up for events in those other collector societies.

The Decatur (Illinois) Daily Review ran a piece on January 12, 1953 noting:

That was from what looks like a regular column in that paper, written by Otto R. Kyle, who as near as I can tell was a local Decatur historian of some national renown, so exactly where that little tidbit originated would probably make for an interesting story.

The May 24, 1956 issue of the Madera (California) Tribune ran what must have been a syndicated article about presidential matchcover collectors which noted: "Sam Rosen of New York claims the title of holding the largest number of political match books.  His presidential series runs back to William Howard Taft."

You can see how Rosen's hobby could have led Woody to think he would be a good choice to sell off extra Topps cards (and eventually those of other manufacturers) as a way to keep Sam active in retirement.

For the record, the RMS annual conventions started in 1939 and with Rosen entering the hobby in 1942, he could possibly have attended 1942's (Wilkes-Barre, PA) but I doubt he would have had matchcovers made up during the war. 1943 and 1945 saw no conventions held and sandwiched in between was one in Asbury Park, NJ.  That same shoreside resort town got the nod in 1946 and '47, so it's possible by then Rosen was doing his thing.  As you can see above, it moved around after that and with Sam dying at the very end of 1958, it's possible the following conventions got the matchcover treatment as well:

1954: Indianapolis

1955: Los Angeles

1956: New York City

1957: Wilkes-Barre

1958: San Francisco

It's quite possible 1953 was the last year Sam worked in the garment business and stopped with the matchbooks.  Of course, excepting perhaps that very year, his Woody-inspired card company was run out of the same location as his garment business so who knows? (UPDATE 2/13/23: a 1956 matchcover has now been found).

2020 saw a pandemic cancellation but the RMS has been holding a convention every year since 1946 and a handful have been thrown north of the border. 1965's was even held in London, Ontario, home of O-Pee-Chee! If Sam made up covers for other societies' gatherings it would not be surprising but the RMS annual affair was clearly the "National" for matchcover collectors and fertile ground for a splashy promo.

Matchless

I'll take a slight pause on the Tatoo posts today as it's a lot to take in over four straight weeks like I originally planned and the topic is perhaps best served with a  break in between.  Instead, here's a little treat that, to me, was a completely unexpected find.

I'm doing a very deep dive on Woody Gelman right now and one of the things I have learned is that his stepfather, Sam Rosen, who ran the forerunner of Card Collectors Company, was the most renowned match cover collector in the United States after World War 2.  But the best part is, I think Woody (or more correctly Solomon & Gelman) looks to have designed a matchcover for him.  This is an awesome piece of work:

That is from 1949, when Solomon & Gelman were in full force and in the throes of doing work for Topps. I know this because it's quite specifically dated:

R.M.S. stands for the Rathkamp Matchcover Society, the oldest phillumenic organization in the world, and still going strong! Sam was being feted at their annual gathering in 1949 as their Outstanding Collector of the Year. I am advised this was Sam's normal look at the time, scanning the ground for match covers as he walked around. 

Here is Sam's business address, which later housed the precursor to the Card Collectors Company. He was in the garment business and this building's location, which I know well, is a match (sorry...that's a groaner) to that nabe :

He was in a lot of match cover organizations! I found an article describing how he got his start phillumenically speaking (boredom essentially) over at the Immortal Ephemera site. Impressively, he had only started collecting match covers six years earlier! He and Woody weren't blood relations but two massively accumulative collectors like them must have had some sort of compounding effect on each other.

A Rosen By Any Other Name

Some very old (and old school) hobby catalogs have crossed my threshold recently, including a special one from Sam Rosen, who was Woody Gelman's Stepfather and started selling baseball cards as a retirement project prodded on by his Stepson.  Kind of handy to have a Stepson who worked for Topps if you were selling cards, right?

Sam issued a series of catalogs from (I believe) mid-1954 on and I suspect did fulfillment for the Trading Card Guild (note the initials) brand that was used by Topps to market ten cent cello packs with no gum, both a ploy necessary I'm sure to stave off legal action with Topps reselling their overstock and returns. I also believe the Guild fulfilled individual orders for various promotions run by Topps in those early years of card production.

This thread on www.net54baseball has some great old hobby catalogs shown and discussed within and there is some really nice Sam Rosen stuff in the mix. You will note, if you click through, a reference to 1958 catalog inserts from Rosen, specifically the 1956 Baseball Buttons Topps had pulled the plug on before one-third of all the ninety promised pins had been produced.  I recently obtained a single page sheet from Rosen detailing the set, which also served as a checklist, a hard to find resource for a lot of issues at the time:

The limited quantity of complete sets may be the result of three buttons issued in lesser quantities than the other 57: Chuck Diering, Hector Lopez and Chuck Stobbs. All three were bottom row subjects and being an edge subject  with Topps usually led to some production issues.  But I digress.

Sam Rosen died suddenly on New Year's Eve in 1958 and Woody Gelman took over the company, dubbing it the Card Collectors Company (CCC) and moving HQ from Midtown Manhattan to Franklin Square, Long Island. P.O. Box 293 was likely just that as Woody lived the next town over in Malverne and wouldn't want to give up his home's location.

In March of 1959 Gelman issued CCC catalog #10, picking up some kind of numbering scheme I cannot decipher from Sam Rosen (who was up to #12 well before 1958) and you will note the quick message at the top of the first page referencing the predecessor company:

Well, a look at page three shows that those limited sets of Baseball Buttons were holding on, albeit at higher prices than 1958's:

The 1960 CCC catalog #11 just had a line item for sets and singles (with unchanged pricing) and by catalog #12 from 1961 there were no more Baseball Buttons on offer, so I guess Woody finally dumped them all.  I would think a lot of the high grade examples in the hobby came from Rosen and Gelman.

Speaking of CCC catalog #12, they were well ahead of the Topps Vault and Guernsey's as there were "Topops" spot art cartoons being offered for a buck apiece, or three for $2.50, which was a steal considering that is some prime Jack Davis artwork being featured:

That's from McCovey's 1960 All Star card by the way, although it's flipped, no doubt because Willie batted left. I'm not sure why they didn't portray him as an African-American but there's no guarantee the batter in the cartoon was originally drawn to caricature Stretch.

Big Mac could really rake, huh?

Secondary Information

I keep missing out on some eBay auctions of old Card Collectors' Company price lists.  It's not a huge deal as there are usually enough scans provided for the auctions that I can get at the information I want, namely the extant supply of scarcer Topps cards as each successive price list was issued.  There's also some ancillary information in some of these lists and one that definitely fits that bill is No. 10, dated March 20, 1959.

You will notice it states "(Formerly Sam Rosen)" at the top; that makes this the first CCC price list.  As it turns out Rosen, who was Woody Gelman's Stepfather, had passed on on New Year's Eve 1958:

I had his death date as 1955 in my book but clearly that was wrong.  You can click over to the book's update blog here or by clicking the link at the top right of this page.

That announcement is from another page that has quite a few interesting components:

The first paragraph announces the formation of a collector's newsletter dubbed The Card Collector: 

I'm not sure why it was decided to keep the price list and the newsletter separate, perhaps it was to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest. The second paragraph announces the death of Sam Rosen as shown above but there is more though. While paragraph three is a rather mundane sales pitch for old football programs, we see a buy ad just below it:

Rosen had a lot of inventory at the time of his death.  You can link here to an ad of his from a 1957 issue of The Sporting News and see that he advertised over 1 million cards in stock.

The eBay auction that yielded the price list also had a good scan of the mailing envelope and I was able to get a real good scan of the CCC logo, which was rubber stamped onto it:

That is clearly some Jack Davis artwork that Woody scored.  If you clicked the link to the Sam Rosen ad above, you will see that mailing address changed from 110 West 34th St (Manhattan) to the town just down the road from Woody's hometown of Malverne, NY. The Manhattan address was almost certainly just a mail drop as I can't see a midtown rent working out when cards were selling for two cents apiece. That locale is just across the street from  Macy's and next to the (at the time) Gimbel's department stores and was (and still is) as heavily trafficked an area as there is in New York City, being just off Herald Square.

Too bad I missed out on winning this price list but I am happy enough to mine its riches even in defeat.