Bump-Da Bump-Da Bump-Da Bump-Da Baa Baa Bump-Da-Da Bump-Da-Da Bump Ba Da Da Da Dah!

Well now cowpokes, it's not every day that a handful of supremely rare Bonanza cards come up for auction, now is it?  Well that day is almost here and on February 18th Legendary Auctions goes live with four of these babies:

No. 2, oversized displaying proof marks

No. 13

No. 14

No. 16

In addition to those four, all of which have staple holes (indicating they were file copies saved by Woody Gelman)  a fifth card is known by name but not by number:

That little splash of red is part of the design based on what I previously posted here a while ago but it is not showing up on the Legendary examples. Since two of the verified cards ("Cheer Up, Hoss" and Ready for Trouble) are now known with and without the red accent, it appears the four new examples could all be proofs. Backs are not typical of Topps at all and may indicate these were produced for in house meetings or a pitch to the Bonanza braintrust:

Even the Adam Cartwright card above, which has not been sighted previously by yours truly, was previously know per a checklist in the Non-Sports Bible. When you piece it all together, it seems like there may only be five or six different cards,which supports the in-house production theory quite well. Still, these are finished cards so maybe they got a little past that phase. We'll know in a few weeks what the hobby values them at but I suspect these will be sitting in PSA holders shortly thereafter.

Test Pattern-The Mid 60's Black and White TV Cards From Topps (Part 4)

Rounding out the decade kids, with the rest (I think) of the B&W TV show cards produced by Topps in the 60's.

1967 brought a very strange show to TV: Captain Nice, starring William Daniels as a mild mannered superhero with a costume sewn by his mom. It looks to have been a mid season replacement and aired from January to May in '67, lasting 15 episodes. For some bizarre reason, Topps produced a 30 card set of this color show in glorious black and white!

I suspect the set, which was tested as a wrapper is known to exist, either sold next to nothing or was pulled from wider release due to the lackluster ratings of the show. The cards add a splash of color to the front:



That is just an ugly design! Nonetheless, these are very difficult cards, almost as hard to find as Flipper (and with the same card count of 30, no less). The back though, was quite colorful:



Very odd that a B&W card has a color back,no? It resembles the back on The Land Of The Giants cards issued a year later:



As a bonus, note the default Topps block print, back for a final visit! Here is a LOTG front, in color though:



LOTG is not as tough as Captain Nice but it's scarce. A&BC also did a Giants set in the UK a year later that is far easier to find. Many Topps test and limited release issues were repurposed for the UK and to a lesser extent Australia, Holland and Israel starting around 1967. That will be the subject of a lengthy series here someday.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:



Yes, Bonanza-the set I consider the rarest ever produced by Topps, although I admit Flipper and a couple of others give it a run for the money. That one little splash of color indicates to me production around the time of Captain Nice, maybe 1967, or within a year either way. Allegedly produced as an almost in house gag by Topps, Bonanza cards never were sold at retail.

Here is a back:



Bonanza was shown in color from its first broadcast in 1959 through its last in 1973 (431 episodes buckaroos!), which was unheard of at the time, so of course we get more B&W, although I can't swear to the print on the back being B&W, I have heard it is brown.

There are rumors of other test or proof sets out there for F Troop, Green Acres and I Dream of Jeannie. All but Green Acres had at least one black and white season. Not that it would matter if they were all shown in color to fit in with our grouping but if a card surfaces from any of these three shows, I would not be surprised if it is in black and white.

Pondering the Ponderosa

As many of you know, I consider the Topps Bonanza set to be the among the rarest of their many rare offerings and offhanded print jobs in a history littered with four figure commons and prized sets of rejected ideas that command five figures. It may even be #1 on on the rarity scale.

Rumor has it the set was created in-house as a kind of joke so I thought a look at the visual evidence was in order. Luckily there is an extant color scan of three fronts, I presume from a Topps Vault Auction:



There is the tiniest hint of red in the knot of the lariat near the lower right corner. A nice touch! Click to see more details.

The back of the card is described as being brown, although I only have a copy taken from the Non-Sports Bible, the excellent reference produced by Chris Watson:



That is the back of the leftmost card in the trio #13 "Cheer Up, Hoss". In addition to the other two shown, the NSB lists two other cards: Adam Cartwright and "Private Talk".

I don't see any copyright information nor indications the cards were printed by Topps so the in-house theory looks good to me. Numbers up to 16 are known and I would not be shocked if 28 subjects exist (a common number for some of these sets). Like many other TV sets in B&W, the date of attribution is 1965, although take that with a grain of salt. Some if not all known examples have staple holes and there may only be one of each card in existence. Topps Vault auctioned off their stash and that is that, as they say. A lot of their historical information has vanished from their site so some mysteries will continue to command attention.

The Non Sports Bible can be ordered via this e-mail address: non-sportsbible@comcast.net