Ugly Times

OK the season has passed but since I'm on a roll with my research on the free-lance artists hired by Topps back in the vintage days, Hallowe'en 1966 is going to get a looksee today with a peek at Ugly Buttons, a set of 24 metal pinback buttons with superb artwork by Wally Wood. Actually I think the set was designed to last past the traditional end of October as it doesn't have spooky theme but one of humorous monsters instead.

What piqued my thoughts about today's post was a just ended Hake's auction that moved a piece originally from a 2005 REA auction. namely a full proof sheet of all 24 button artworks. REA also had a half sheet I'll show two halves of it first as there's something else I want to tell you about as well.

The proof sheet is a full one but clearly segregates the buttons into 12 unit groups:

This is the top half of the sheet- don't you just love the artwork? Some of the color backgrounds look a little raggedy but they would be excised in the final production.

The bottom half is just as sweet:

Some of the backgrounds look cut off at the extreme edges but again, production would deal with that.

Now, here is something I haven't seen before (probably because I wan't paying attention!), namely information on how big a proof run was produced.  Check this baby out:

26 proofs, which I cautiously assume are full color finals but also consider that count could include partial color progressions and the like.  The population of most Topps proofs in the hobby is essentially hidden. So I guess the question would be: were roughly 25 full proof sheets printed for the press runs of every Topps product or series?  While you can never figure what survived, it would be nice to know what kind of numbers are in the potential universe for each run.

Here's what the finished product looked like:

It's an unfortunate fact that people like Wood, one of the great comic book and advertising artists of all time, were paid mere pittances for their artwork and often lived hand to mouth.  Even the great Norm Saunders, a Topps mainstay and " art fixer" for many years, received single digit sums sometimes for each piece he worked on.

Proof Positive

Last fall I did a short post on some 1967 Paper Baseball proofs that had come from the Woody Gelman collection. These were printed on high quality white paper and featured four low numbered 67's. There has since been an informative thread on Net54baseball.com that shows a few more of these style proofs and since I'm always happy to use the scans of others, it makes perfect fodder for Opening Day (sorry, I do not like opening night-as far as I am concerned the season opener should always be in Cincinnati).

The earliest proof shown across the way is from 1957. Other than a 1956 Topps Pin Proof of Gus Zernial, it is the earliest proof I am aware of from Topps, so it's a neat little item:



If you can link to the Net54 site above, you will see these came from a Richard Gelman ad in a 1979 issue of the Trader Speaks. This would have been just after his Dad Woody passed away so clearly a treasure trove existed. You will see as we go on that the Groth card also has a printed reverse, unseen among the paper proofs I have seen so far.



The Groth is from the collection of Mark Rios, who kindly granted permission for me to post the images here. All of the offered paper proofs in the TTS ad were from the 1957 high numbers. Of course, you could have purchased 1970 Cloth Sticker proofs from the same ad!

Next we get to annoy some Mantle completists with a '66 Mick (#50), from the collection of Steve B (thanks Steve!):



We may have some more cool proofs from Steve a little bit down the road. That Mantle is #50 and blank backed here.

Super Topps collector Al Richter has a '67 paper proof sheet that is a sibling of mine:



Once again, these, like mine, are from the first series sheet and blank backed.

I find the '67 set endlessly fascinating. The cards look great, the photography is outstanding and the graphics just kill me. Plus, there's the crazy high numbers that year. Without a doubt, 1967 is one of the top five classic Topps baseball sets in my mind.

Proofs are one of the final Topps frontiers-many are in ungraded form and salted away in older collections. There must be a ton more of them out there; if they show up we'll post 'em here in some update threads.

Four Square

There is no shortage of oddities in what your webmeister considers the golden (1949-57) or silver (1966-72) ages of Topps, especially the latter. One such item is this 2x2 proof panel I have of 1967 Topps baseball cards printed on thin and extremely high quality paper:



The "cards" are standard sized but the bottom has a little extra to it. The reverse is pristine white (that blotch is some dirt it must have picked up along the way). It really is there, so keep scrolling:




Looks like the proverbial polar bear eating mashed potatoes in a snowstorm, doesn't it? That panel was once Woody Gelman's by the way.

I would think these were part of the proofing process. In later years (mid 70's) I know there are proof cards printed on ultra white cardboard but the process may not have been 100% refined in 1967 so Topps used high quality paper. I have seen a couple other 4 card panels like this over the years, so they are not exactly common.