Regional Lithographic

One of the longer lasting comments threads on this blog belongs to a post about Zabel Brothers from August of 2010. There are some very informative comments there, a good number by former Zabel employees or children of employees.  The latest comment posted by an alumnus really caught my eye as it mentions Topps printed the backs of their cards at a different plant than the fronts, whcih explains a few things but so far as I know, is something never before mentioned anywhere.

I'm still trying to determine all the nuances of this revelation but I have to say it's something I've never heard before.  The story is a plant in Connecticut printed the backs and then they went off down (and potentially up) I-95 to Philly or Providence or northwest to Rochester, NY.  There is much more to come on this but I thought I would revisit the various Topps lithographers here and see if anything else comes through the pipeline before revisiting.  So.....

Lord Baltimore Press (Baltimore, Maryland) - I believe they printed the majority of Topps cards from 1948-58 or so and also did gum tab wrappers (and probably a lot more) for the company, very possibly all the way back to 1938 but certainly in the 1948-49 time frame as their logo appears on some issues of that era.  Bought out by International Paper in 1958 and converted to a carton printing operation by 1960.  I have a bit here on them but check the links at right as well. They had a major sales office in New York when Topps used them.

Zabel Brothers (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) - A printer for Bowman, they almost certainly produced the 1956 U.S. Presidents set after Topps bought Bowman from Connelly Containers earlier that year and then slowly but surely became the main Topps printer until 1981 when a strike ended things.  This then led to the Engravers Union pillaging of a large historical store of printed, uncut sheets used for reference. Some sheets were later found after the plant was abandoned and before it burned down. The firm was founded in 1885 and was a major printer of sheet music, possibly the largest in the country before World War 2. Zabel was bought by Wagaman Brothers Printers of Lititz, Pennsylvania in 1980 and the Philadelphia plant was closed in the wake of the strike.

Wagaman in turn was bought by American Bag & Paper Corp. (later called American Packaging), also of Lititz, in 1981 and stopped commercial printing in 1983. Topps seems to have stuck with them until the shutdown, then switched to Panel Prints of Old Forge, Pennsylvania. The link at right is your best bet for more Zabel Brothers details. I found this over at oldadsarefunny.blogspot.com:



Case-Hoyt (Rochester, New York) - Founded in 1919, they were the biggest lithographer in Rochester and opened a New York City Sales office in 1954.  Some good information is found here. Purchased in 1984 by Bell Canadian Enterprises, they bought Great Lakes Press a year later. They survived until about 2004.

Lebanon Valley Offset (Annville, Pennsylvania) - The firm did work for Topps starting in the 1990's when production switched to smaller sheets.

Chromographic Press (Hamden, Connecticut) - Owned by P. Peter Shorin at the time it was shut down in 1971 (as Topps got ready for their IPO) I think this was previously the Stecher-Traung plant but am not positive. Some firm in Hamden did work for Topps from at least 1962, that I do know.

Federated Lithographers (Providence, Rhode Island) - Friend o'the Archive Bob D'Angelo best summarized their Topps involvement here.  They did a lot of work for Topps when the big baseball card boom hit in the mid-80's. Bought out by Quebecor in 1989.

A. Hoen & Co. (Baltimore, Maryland) - Not much is known other than they were founded before the Civil War, did some work for Topps at some point and shut down in 1981.  The best information I have on them is here.

Great Lakes Press (Rochester, New York) - The infamous 1962 Baseball second series Green Tints may have been printed by them.  Founded during the Depression, they were acquired in 1985 by Case-Hoyt.

Stecher-Traung (Rochester, New York) - Possible printer of the 1962 Green Tints (I'm starting to lean toward no though, after many years of thinking yes), also believed to have printed some portion of the 1952 Baseball set.

Topps Chewing Gum (Duryea, Pennsylvania) - Len Brown once indicated in an interview that Topps printed cards at their plant in Duryea at some point and Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins sent along some information about this I will get into fairly soon here. I believe this began in the early 1990's. (UPDATE 4/10/20: John Tassoni Jr., former pressman and union man at Quebecor in Providence says that the items purportedly printed at Duryea were actually printed at his plant and not the Topps plant). 

Who did what when is the thing to suss out! The standard sized issues were cut down from 264 sheets to 132 card half sheets, palletized and trucked to Topps in Brooklyn (until 1966 for the most part), then thereafter to Duryea, PA, before actually being printed locally in Pennsylvania.

Thanks to Karl Schoettle, who worked at Zabel Brothers, American Packaging and Panel Prints for much of the above information. He mentioned sometimes sheets were stolen enroute to Topps!

Order Up!

Ahoy campers-I have some really groovy stuff for you today!  Tom Goodwin wrote a long, heavily illustrated article in The Wrapper #308 about the production of the 1975 Topps Comic Book Heroes Stickers that really grabbed my attention. The highlight, at least from my perspective, was his inclusion of pictures of the Zabel Brothers production folder for the set. It was clear from his text that there was a bit more to this folder than was described or shown in the article so I reached out and Tom was kind enough to send a full set of scans.

I'll have to repeat Tom's main cover scan from the article but I don't plan to repeat his words. This cover has oodles of information about the printing and shipping of the set:

Actually, it's two sets (sort of)! We'll get to that momentarily. The 43" x 57" sheet size is important as it confirms the 264 card master sheet comprised a full uncut sheet.  24,000 of these suckers were ordered on pressure sensitive Ludlow stock, which was a type of stock Wacky Packages collectors will be familiar with. Looks like they came up 500 sheets short but it was made up by printing something else as part of the order, namely 500 additonal sheets of insert stickers for the Good Times set. (Update/5/18: It's actually 5,028 sheets of Good Times stickers and 500 additional sheets of Comic Book Heroes Stickers on different -acetate- stock. The delivery order is separate from the purchase order fro the printing of CBHS and Good Times stickers per Lonnie Cummins). We know this because of the bill of lading included in the folder:

I have to say it appears Good Times shipped 5,028 sheets so the additional 500 to make up the original order must have been added to a previous job of 4,528 sheets that was awaiting shipment. (UPDATE: 4/5/18-incorrect as per above update). CC stands for Commodity Code, otherwise known as the Production Code or Commodity number. This system allowed Topps to identify what type of packaging was to receive the cards shipped from Philadelphia by Zabel Brothers to their --wait for it--Brooklyn warehouse.

Brooklyn?!  Hold on Baba Looey, they were doing everything out of Duryea, PA at the time, or so I thought!  It would appear Brooklyn was still in the mix, which I'm quite surprised by.  Bristol Wholesale looks like the shippers, although it could be Bristol Wheels.

And now, math:

23,500 x 264 = 6,204,000 cards, or 112,800 of each impression of Comic Book Heroes on the sheet. It was a 44 sticker set, so six impressions of each would appear on the master sheet.

Good Times stickers?  1,327,392 of them, or 60,336 of each as there were 22 of them in the set.

I wonder if the Comic Book Heroes checklist/puzzle cards and Good Times cards were also printed and shipped together? It would sure make sense if they were.

Are these full production numbers or just one run?  Hard to say.  The folder has some other clues but nothing that will answer that question.

You can see there were a number of shipping batches.  This is a typical count and four such cards are in the folder:

It appears roughly 2,450 uncut sheets were packed per skid (pallet) and you can see which press was used to print the stickers. Card Processing is listed as the Bindery but that is Topps Brooklyn HQ, as we know from the bill of lading.

Here's some old school computer printouts showing a variety of production information (obviously these were two larger sheets):

It appears a proof sheet also made it into the folder:

That date stamp is for September 17, 1975-that must be the approved final artwork proof. It's worth noting I was in my third week of high school at the time-hoo boy!

I find this kind of stuff exciting but then again I'm pretty weird!  Many thanks to Tom Goodwin for peeling back a huge piece of the "cardboard curtain" that surrounds so much of the history of Topps.

Purchase History

I stumbled across a very interesting scan while tooling around the ol' WWW recently, namely a Topps Purchase Order from 1975 issued to Zabel Brothers that I found over at http://www.wackypacks.com/. There is a lot of good information on this single document:

Quite clearly these are for the Rotsa Root checklist/puzzle cards that came with series 14 Wacky Packages. The commodity number (a.k.a. Production Code) matches that for these puzzle cards and shows just how important that was in the production and tracking of the different components of each issue from Topps. You get to see the rough number of cards that would be produced on the standard 264 card full sheets (15 Million), the number of full sheets required to meet this goal (57,000) and the specifications for the inks and varnish.  There would some orphaned pieces as each puzzle took nine cards to complete.

The films (artwork) were provided by Topps and, surprisingly to me at least, the stock came from them as well. FOB Shipping point means that the sale was consummated when the sheets left the Zabel Brothers shipping dock. Topps would assume the risk while in transit should any damage occur during the short trip from Philly to Duryea. Topps was still processing all of their finances in Brooklyn though. And there was a three week turnaround!

So of course I had to dig further and lo and behold, this Purchase Order, for the Wonder Bread Wacky Package insert stickers popped up from the great Lost Wackys site:

It's a slightly earlier order and the form is a little different. No commodity number was used because the order was destined for a Continental Baking packaging facility.  The layout is way different to boot, a "160 up" sticker sheet was used.  This array was 16 x 10, which we know thanks (again) to Lost Wackys. That site also states this was a unique sheet size and that the sticker stock was already on hand.  The stickers were cut into panels of two so the usual Topps 11 x 12 Topps array would have been problematic.  The packaging instructions were also very specific.

This order was to be completed in six weeks. Perhaps the annual Baseball card production would slow things down at this juncture, who knows? I also get 760,000 (160 x 9,500 / 2) as the panel count so I'm not sure why there is a discrepancy.  And at $1.76 a throw (per thousand) for cutting and packing (normally done by Topps) Zabel Brothers charged $1,100. I only wish the actual pricing for the sticker printing was shown.

These are just pieces of a larger puzzle.  There could be additional orders as sales were tabulated, for one, but the Rotsa Root card order gives a rough idea as to how many cards or stickers a typical Topps run would comprise.

Printers Link

One of the more esoteric things I like to look at sometimes is the actual production of Topps cards. Artwork was worked up by firms such as Solomon & Gelman in the 1940's and early 50's before Topps took this vital function in-house but the printing of the cards was always outsourced, at least in the vintage era. I've taken some quick peeks before but wanted to get all of the details I can into one post.

There were two main Topps printers early on: Lord Baltimore Press (alternatively Lord Baltimore Printing), with offices in New York and a printing plant in Baltimore; and Zabel Brothers Lithographers of Philadelphia, which functioned as Bowman's printer.  It's fairly clear to me that, after they acquired Bowman from Connelly Containers in early 1956 Topps, first used Zabel Brothers to print the 1956 U.S. Presidents set. Bowman's main card size at the time of the purchase was of the same height used by Topps but 1/8" lesser in width, which matches the dimensions of  U.S. Presidents in '56.

(Lord Baltimore Press logo from 1949 Topps Stop & Go wrapper)

The other Topps Giant Size issues from 1956 (Baseball, Football, Davy Crockett "A" Series, Round Up and Flags of the World) were manufactured  in the regular size used by Topps for such cards since 1952 and almost certainly were all the work of Lord Baltimore Press (LBP). Topps went to standard sized cards measuring 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" when Elvis Presley came out in late 1956 and never looked back, so any differences in size were rendered moot.

LBP was purchased by International Paper in 1958 and within about two years had been switched from high quality commercial lithography to producing shipping cartons and the like. I suspect Topps sporadically used Zabel Brothers in the 1957-60 period before switching over somewhat permanently but right now it's impossible to tell.  Complicating matters are three other printing firms that come up.

The first of these, Stecher-Traung Lithographers of Rochester, New York may have been involved with the production of the 1962 Baseball green tints series and few other sets. Stecher-Traung also had a facility in Hartford, Connecticut and until about two months ago I never would have associated that state with the printing of Topps cards.  However it turns out another printer in the Nutmeg State, namely Chromographic Press, Inc. of Hamden produced some cards from roughly 1966-71 and was owned by Topps director P. Peter Shorin.  The plant may have been in New Haven but that's not clear to me right now. The Shorin connection is interesting as Topps co-founder Philip Shorin held at least two patents relating to printing technology.

Then there is the mysterious case of A. Hoen & Company of Baltimore, also commercial lithographers.  An obituary for Thomas Townsend Hoen, known as "Townie" and noted to be the last President of A. Hoen & Company appears in the May 25, 2011 issue of the Baltimore Sun and mentions the firm printed cards for Topps. A. Hoen certainly did high quality work as they printed maps for National Geographic. Chromographic Press went into bankruptcy around 1971, likely a planned one as Topps consolidated expenses in advance of their 1972 IPO.

Zabel Brothers was shut down in 1982 after being sold to American Bag & Paper, also known as American Packaging (around 1980) while A. Hoen printed its last in 1981.  Stecher-Traung looks like it managed to hang on until about 1985 after it merged with Schmidt Lithographic of San Francisco (printer of the glorious Obak tobacco cards from 1009-11) and an offshoot or two may still be around today. What Topps did post-Zabel I am not 100% clear on. Len Brown mentioned Topps printed their own cards in-house at some point in Duryea while I recall some hobby press articles about high quality printers used by them in the 1990's when the technology really leapfrogged mid-decade.

(courtesy http://www.sheaff-ephemera.com/)

Large scale commercial lithography of course was done in eventually by more modernized methods of reproduction and printing but despite it being a business, it was also an art form. Just look at the detail in the advertisement above.

Fresh Prints

It looks like we have another entrant or two in the list of firms that printed cards for Topps back in the 1960's.  In re-reading one of Keith Olbermann's Sports Collectors Digest posts about the 1967 Roger Maris Yankees card, I happened to notice a comment about some uncut proof sheets made up by a printer in Connecticut. I did a double take as I had missed this information the last time I had read Keith's article, which came out in 2008.

The Olbermann story is thus: a house being remodeled in Connecticut is found to have sheets of old cards being used as insulation in a false ceiling; in addition aluminum printer plates from some Topps sets were found in the void space as well; 1962 being the "year-zero" for aluminum Topps plates, this piqued my interest even more. It would turn out the previous owner had worked for a company that printed cards for Topps.

I still need to do a deep dive into the printing of 1962 Baseball Green Tints but there is a great article by Pete Putman that appeared on the PSA website a while back that delivers an in depth look you should go an check out. Pete mentions within his article the Rochester firm of Stecher-Traung, which I believe did overflow work for Topps in the early 1960's after Zabel Brothers of Philadelphia took over for Lord Baltimore Press (LPB). LBP was bought out by International Paper in 1958 and slowly transitioned out of commercial printing thereafter resulting in Topps utilizing Zabel Brothers, which had produced some of the best Bowman sets, as their main printers for decades (this comes straight from Irv Lerner, who used to do Zabel's tax work).

Stecher-Traung likely printed the green tint second series baseball cards in 1962 but this has not been definitively proven.  Pete also mentions they may have printed some 1952 Baseball high numbers, at least the ones that ended up in Canada and that theory makes a whole lot of sense to me. Anyway poking around after re-reading the KO piece, I stumbled upon a very, very interesting auction on eBay that concluded last month and has shed some additional light on this Connecticut firm, although a name has not yet presented itself.  What has presented itself is intriguing, namely a bootleg 1966 Batman Black Bat series Cinderella card featuring the Caped Crusader on the commode:

It's a little blurry obviously but I suspect that was a Norm Saunders creation:

 The back has some bleed through:

This creation, along with some cut up proof cards from the 1966 Batman Bat Laffs series were found together and originated with the family of an employee of the Connecticut firm.  Now get this, the family member's relative auctioning off this piece is domiciled in, you guessed it, Rochester, NY!

Stecher-Traung did have a corporate presence in Connecticut but I can't decipher if that was before their merger with Schmidt Lithographic of San Francisco (likely printer of Obaks) or after (merger was March 1, 1966) so there is more work to do. But there is no way the Rochester connection is meaningless or random.

Now, for a bigger issue.  It has long been suspected within the hobby that numerous test issues produced for Topps in the 1960's and 70's were specifically printed for sale via the Card Collectors Company and/or Bill Haber (long time Topps employee and early card dealer).  There are numerous black & white test issues from the mid 1960's that I have long felt were not produced by Zabel Brothers so I wonder if our mysterious Connecticut firm had a hand.

It gets even better-I have found some old news stories online suggesting another Baltimore firm also did some work for Topps, one A. Hoen & Company. Whether they did some overflow in the 1950's or other work is an open question but one I hope to answer as they were in business from before the Civil War until 1981.  That is a tantalizing thread to follow as it has been offered up by other writers and researchers that the 1967-68 Topps Action All Star Stickers saw limited distribution in the Chesapeake Bay area.

And we get into even another possible connection or two, namely a Grand Rapids, Michigan subsidiary of Stecher-Traung Schmidt called Wheeler-Van Label Company.  Let's not forget Michigan was a main distribution area for the 1975 Topps Mini Baseball cards, as was California (Schmidt's original base). So how many wheels-within-wheels are we dealing with? More to come...

Zabel of Contents

Over the years I have been researching the history of Topps and their card production, there have been tantalizing hints of printing done by a firm called Zabel Brothers Lithographers of 1620 N. 5th St., Philadelphia. Well, last weekend at the National I was able to get the back story and for all of their Brooklyn heritage, most of the cardboard memories created by Topps over the years came not from the Borough of Churches but rather from The City of Brotherly Love!

Founded around 1895, Zabel Brothers was a large and well known printer of sheet music in the 20th century. According to Irv Lerner ("The Ring Man"), who has been actively chasing, collecting and selling Topps cards since 1959, Zabel Brothers printed cards for Topps from the mid 1950's through at least the early 1980's. Their involvement came to light in an article about 1962 Topps Green Tints that appeared in SCD awhile back.

The '62 Green Tint story is well told in SCD and I will not get into it here right now, except to note I believe, but have not yet confirmed, the firm in upstate New York that actually printed the greenies was the Strecher-Traung Lithographic Company, who were eventually bought out a few short years later by Schmidt Lithographic, the same company that made the 1909-11 Obak cards.

While I do not have much interest in the 1980's portion of the story, I am curious as to when Zabel Brothers started printing cards for Topps. Mr. Lerner does not believe they produced the 1951 Baseball Candy issues and we already know that in 1954 the baseball cards were printed by the Lord Baltimore Printing Company of Maryland. I would hazard a guess that the 52's and 53's were printed by that same firm or another firm that was not Zabel Brothers.

In 1955 however, Topps went from 200 card press sheets to 220 card sheets, which were also used in 1956. It is possible due to the change in sheet size that 1955 is the first year Zabel Brothers started doing the work. It is also possible 1957 could mark the beginning due to the change in card size to what is now called "standard". One other possibility is 1959, when it seems to me production exploded and the card stock became noticeably slicker.

Not only did Zabel Brothers print the baseball issues, they printed everything else too, with the exception (possibly) of some test issues and odd-sized cards. Uncut sheets would be delivered to the Topps plant (Brooklyn prior to late 1965, Duryea thereafter) for cutting and inserting into the packaging. I have thought for a while that a lot of the uncut sheets in the hobby today were unused, unsuitable or otherwise damaged sheets from a prior series or set used as top and bottom cushions on the pallets during shipping . These sheets were used to protect the cards actually being cut for packaging from the banding that held the stacks together. These protective sheets were then discarded by Topps but picked up by various parties who literally saved them from the city dump.

I am not certain at all if Zabel Brothers also produced the wrappers and boxes, nor if they created the Topps advertising in this period but will try to find out. Basically, just about every card made for Topps over a thirty-plus year period was produced in Philadelphia. I have to suspect they also printed cards for Fleer and Philadelphia Gum. I am not so sure about Bowman as their connection with the George Moll Agency may have led them to a different printer.

I googled the street address of Zabel Brothers but it looks like the building is gone and the neighborhood is being reclaimed by the weeds, alas. So much hobby history was created here and now nothing remains:


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