Wheel Of Confusion

Recently I posted about some of the 3-D prototypes that have popped up in various auctions this Fall, noting there was a little more that could be shown.  Well, here is something that's pretty way out that was part of one trove:

Like, wow man! Isn't that crazy?  Here's a closeup of part of the disc:

I really have no idea what's going on there but I like it quite a bit.  That disc actually rode atop the three 3-D Soccer prototypes that were recently discussed here. Here's an image of the full page from the marketing book, courtesy of  Friend o'the Archive Andrew Wolfe:

As I have mentioned previously, Look Magazine was owned by Cowles Communications, who in turn owned the only printing press - via their Visual Panographics subsidiary - able to produce such wonders. At some point Xograph, which had a similar 3-D process, licensed their tech to Cowles. Both Visual Panograhics and Xograph are mentioned on the back stamps of some 1968 Baseball 3-D cards, so I suspect a patent battle was staved off by that, or some specific form of the technology was needed to pull off certain feats. Xograph, in case you have forgotten, was the trade name for "parallax panoramagram", a particular brand of lenticular technology (other forms were developed by Vari-Vue and Kodak Eastman), so it's an open question as to what was being prepared to show to Topps versus what was being made available to all potential clients.

Football, You Bet!

Continuing from last week, the trove of 3-D protoypes recently auctioned by Heritage contained four subjects beyond the dozen Baseball players already dissected here. Let's start today with Football, U.S. style. Update: The PSA labeling references affiliation with Topps, I'm not sure if that's because they came from a Topps executive or whether Heritage has some details ting them in.

There are four known U.S. Football subjects in the 3-D prototypes, two of Bart Starr and two of Tucker Frederickson, who each appear in two different sizes.  The other Starr is larger than a normal card, more like 5x7 inches as is a Frederickson, although Tucker has the same pose on both sizes seen to date. This Starr is a lot nicer than the other, which has some condition issues:

You can see a little nub on the top border; these seem to have been produced much like the Kellogg's Baseball cards that would begin to appear in 1970, also using the Xograph process (which is a trade name used by Visual Panographics). As with the Baseball examples, the backs are all pristine, or close to it, with no back stamps. In a Freaky Friday kind of move, the larger Starr has no fake autograph!

If you scroll down the above link for the damaged Starr, a less damaged (and slightly tilty) Frederickson appears, showing pull marks at the upper left similar to those found on some issued Baseball examples. That's the same size as the one Heritage has, and it's a little more rectangular then the big Starr. I don't  have permission to show my scan of the larger Frederickson card but believe it measures roughly 7 x 9 inches.

This is all very interesting to me as the process was clearly being worked out with what was fairly new technology.  Topps had interest in overseas Football as well, no surprise as they had been selling internationally almost since their 1938 founding. Update: Again, the Topps affiliation on the label is noted.

We've seen this Cané before, although unlike the current example, with a backstamp.  Here's the unmarred example:

Note how squared off the card is. There is a Sarti offered by Heritage with the same characteristics:

Much like the "big boy" Frederickson, I don't have permission to show the scan in my files of the third European football, Rivera of Milan but it uses the same graphics as the Cané and is also squared off like these two.

Meanwhile, a really weird one from the Topps file copies is this Captain America:

The artwork seems a little off-model to me, although Cap was in the midst of a reboot, likely due to some legal maneuverings, starting in 1968, so who knows? What I do know is this Cap prototype sold for a whopping $52,460!

 I'll see if I can get the OK to post the mysterious 3-D scans mentioned above, stay tuned.

A Whole New Dimension

Heritage Auctions recently concluded an auction that featured the holdings of an ex-Topps executive, which is something that happens once or twice a year now it seems.  These consignments often yield rare, sometimes almost impossible, items and this latest batch contained several jaw-dropping pieces.  The executive is unnamed but Heritage theorizes he may have held a full array of examples from the entire run of prototypes that eventually resulted in the test release of 3-D Baseball in 1968.  That's incorrect as some, but not all, of the issued Baseball 3-D's are here and two of the known Football subjects are missing but the array is certainly impressive and appears to feature a good bit o'fresh to the hobby goodness. 

The consignment also has football (US and soccer-style) prototypes and a surprise non-sports subject.  Today I want to focus on baseball, given the wonderfully exciting World Series that will conclude tonight, capping the first MLB season to begin and end outside of the United States no less. Let's kick off with the semi-unicorn Brooks Robinson prototype-yowsa!

I last examined the 3-D Brooksies in detail way back in 2014 and found four extant copies were known, all of which have distinguishing features.  Among those features were varying degrees of damage and/or dirt on each each. It appears a fifth was hammered by Heritage in 2023 as well.

The front of the Heritage example is almost pristine, as is the back:

There's some extremely light foxing that's just barely there-this sucker is clean! This essentially unblemished look makes this a sixth extant example of this card by my reckoning. I don't normally get involved with prices here except for exceptional things like this and the hammer ended up being an impressive $134,200.

Next up is our old friend M. Clough, who usually goes by the moniker Yaz. At least one of these was known already and you can see it here, along with some other goodies we'll get to next time out. As with the Robinson card, the Clough/Yaz is also very, very clean:

That little white dot on the bill of his cap seems to be on the original source image.  $34,160 brought this one home, no doubt impinged by the lack of Yaz's name appearing.  It was pretty common to use fake names on such creations back then. The reverse looks even brighter than Brooksie's:

However, look at this image and the Robinson, you will note the absence of the Xograph back stamps on these, which identified the firm and also indicated they were samples to be returned to them.  The previously known "Clough" and one of the B. Robby's has a stamp (and another Robinson has remnants of one showing), so these were apparently meant for Topps to retain after that part of the process played out.

There were also ten 3-D Baseball cards in the batch, the three of which make up the known proofs that never made it to the test packs. I'll pass on copying all of them out here, just click over to Heritage to see.

The Robinson and Clough garnered AUT grades, whereas the three prototypes that come close to resembling the final product received two 4's and 5 from PSA.  The remaining seven issued 3-D cards range from PSA 4 to 8, although the backs all look pretty clean as well, save for some light foxing on a couple. So I'm not sure all of these were Xograph samples but it really doesn't matter, given the ongoing popularity of the 3-D Baseball set.

Football from all sorts of places next time out, plus the surprise!

Go Go Gadget Go

Topps was a big proponent of 3-D lenticular technology in the 1960's. They experimented with the format over a number of sets, perhaps most famously the 1968 3-D Baseball issue, which as many of you know have "Xograph" printed on their faces. Xograph was the trade name for "parallax panoramagram", a particular brand of lenticular technology (other forms were developed by Vari-Vue and Kodak Eastman, if I am interpreting the research correctly).

The cards would have been printed by Visual Panographics, which held the Xograph trademark (which is why it was seen on the cards), and was responsible for all Xograph printing. Visual Panographics in turn was a subsidiary of Cowles Communications, which published Look magazine. If you are unfamiliar with it, Look was a major competitor to Life magazine, back when magazines were still a major form of information and entertainment. Cowles Communications was the first company to successfully mass produce a 3-D photo, which appeared in the February 25, 1964 issue of Look and featured a bust of Thomas Edison. Eight million copies allegedly were sold:

Here's the skinny, right from the magazine:

You can see from the blurb that Look (Cowles Communications) owned the sole printing press able to manufacture lenticular pictures. This development would have caught the attention of Woody Gelman, I am sure. Topps first started to experiment with the technology around 1967 and diligently started work on the 3-D Baseball cards during this time. As we have seen previously, many of the proof cards from this set have Xograph/Visual Panographics stamps on the back:

The set famously had production issues and after playing around with the technology for a couple of years, Topps basically gave up on it. Kellogg's stepped into the breech of licensed 3-D sports cards of course but the technology as a whole was pretty much done with as a viable commercial venture by the end of the 70's, although Kellogg's and later Sportflics would soldier on with it into the 80's.

However, what is intriguing to me is that, while 3-D Baseball had no Topps markings at all on the (blank backed) cards, a 1969 3-D set called Go-Go Buttons did have Topps indicia:

I can only assume Topps used a competing technology to produce the set and would think it could have been from Vari-Vue, which was really known for fusing lenticular technology with buttons. Despite the "Japan" designation, Topps was not in the habit of using knockoffs so I have to believe the 3-D effect was properly licensed and Vari-Vue indeed issued licenses in that country. There was also a Japanese company called Toppan that manufactured and printed lenticular work in Japan (and elsewhere) and may actually have sold the technology to one of the US "3-D" firms following the expiration of a licensing deal. I'm not positive but it seems to me the photographic process, which used a single lens and required a very specialized and expensive camera, differed enough from the"stereoscopic" method, which used two lenses and interlaced the resulting images, that the latter was a lot cheaper to use in production.

Go-Go Buttons are quite groovy and their packaging was outtasight man:

The reverse had a handy checklist:

Topps was a distributor when they imported items from Japan; it saved on customs duty if I'm not mistaken.

There is an excellent doctoral thesis on the various lenticular processes here, which really helped me see how the different technologies came about.