Garber Talks!

Further to my previous musings on the Topps Rookie award and related trophies, which you can find here, an example showed up on eBay recently of the minor league style "cup" that was adapted into the full Rookie Award, both represented iconically on Topps cards of the last 60 years.

Here is the award in question, presented to Gene Garber on the occasion of his selection to the 1972 National Association AAA All Star team.

This design was carried through (with an added wooden base, of which more in a split second) to the 1973 baseball cards, replacing the much classier (and more expensive) "top hatted batter" trophy that had been implemented on the 1960 cards and which mirrored the first award trophies given out in 1959.

The Gary Carter Rookie Award I showed previously came atop a wooden base, with plaque, and matches the icon on the 1973 and later cards, but I don't think this one ever did.  It does though, being unplinthed, present us with some basic information.  Here is the bottom view:

Ah yes, there are markings!

It's eroded a little but reads:

EPCA

BRISTOL

SILVERPLATE

BY POOLE

67

Deciphered, it means Electro Plated Copper Alloy with a layer of Silverplate applied, i.e. a real cheapo award. that is degraded even more when you realize "Bristol" Silver was a less expensive substitute for actual silver plate and contains no actual silver. Silverplate has a very minimal silver content but it is there. The advantage of Bristol is that is does not tarnish.

The Poole Silver Company was founded in 1893 and based in Taunton, Massachusetts (perhaps not coincidentally an area where a number of Topps test issues got released around the time they presented this trophy). They started producing Bristol Silver products in 1950 and this design (#67) is actually a serving bowl (!) and produced from that date through 1970. The company was taken over by Towle Manufacturing in 1970.  Here is a straight up cup of the era, see how it's identical:

So there you have it, a talking (sort of) serving bowl that exemplifies excellence in baseball!

A Tale Of Two Trophies

As anyone who collects baseball cards and is also a reader of this blog knows, Topps has trotted out All Star Rookie trophy logos on their cards since 1960, when the players who got the nod at the 1959 Rookie Banquet were highlighted. It's been sporadic sometimes and they've missed putting the logo on a fairly large contingent of players' cards over the years but it's a pretty impressive run.

The trophy looked like this from 1959-72:

Here's the trophy logo displayed on Willie McCovey's 1960 Topps card; you can see how it replicates the actual awarded version:

Topps made a game attempt at reproducing the engraved words from the actual trophy on the card but it's pretty obvious they failed.  Jim O'Toole's card had a little bit more clarity but the presentation of the rookie all star winners in 1960 (in a 10 card subset no less) highlighted things well enough:

Topps went all out to promote the rookies in 1960 who had won the award in 1959 as they had included millions of ballots in packs for the Youth of America to fill out and send in (and populate the burgeoning Topps marketing databases with valuable information). This is the 1960 ballot but the one from '59 was very similar:

The in pack ballots would be eliminated the following year but no matter, the annual tradition of crowning an all rookie team after every season was already well established and, in fact, continues to this day.   By year two though, Topps came up with a more familiar way to honor the 10 players who won the award for 1960:

Things continued apace through 1972:

But then.....

So what happened?  Two theories emerge:

1) Topps couldn't get the "top hat" trophies made any more, or
2) After the company went public in 1972, they cheaped out.

I'm really not sure which would be the correct theory but I suspect it's #2.

The trophy itself now looked like this (nice photo Heritage!):

The year designation was gone in '73 and things got generic right quick:

While the major league winners are well known, the banquet and associated awards and recognition programs went deep into the minors and even into scouting territory.  The minor leagues are where Topps got the inspiration for the new design of the trophy.  Here check it out:

(Courtesy www.keymancollectibles.com)

So the minor league trophy became the major league trophy!  As posited by more than a few folks, 1972 really was the last good year.....