Certifiable

Topps did not climb to the top of the confectionery ladder in the 1950's by accident. They had advertising and sales departments that were very, very good at doing their jobs and left nothing to chance. One of the first things they likely ever did to help promote sales was to include in their unopened packaging certificates that could be redeemed by a retailer for prizes. The theory was that the more the retailer ordered, the more certificates he could redeem for prizes.

The earliest certificate I have is from 1945 and was issued during World War 2. Paper and sugar during the war were rationed among the US population but businesses were also subject to quotas. Topps was able to circumvent this with an aggressive strategy of buying up struggling businesses during the war, which allowed them to assume the rationed quotas of paper and staple goods assigned to those businesses. It sounds a bit predatory but it is a sound business practice. This allowed them to keep selling gum and candy and to keep printing redemption certificates to help those sales along. Here is the '45 Certificate, or to be precise 1/2 Certificate:



The smaller portion on the right looks like a coupon but it is not. Some Topps Certificates have these "sidebars" and some don't. In this instance its really a PSA that tells how many certificates you can use to obtain $1 worth of Victory Stamps.

I'm not sure if Topps ever resided at 134 Broadway in Brooklyn. They definitely were housed in the Gretsch Building at 60 Broadway in the early to mid 1940's before they moved to Bush Terminal in the late 40's but #134 may have just been where the premiums were mailed from by a third party administrator. (UPDATE: They were indeed located there, having moved offices from 60 Broadway, which housed machinery and provided warehouse space.) It could have just been a mail drop as well. If you click the image above and blow up the scan, you can see the high quality anti-counterfeiting paper that was used. There was nothing cheap about these certificates at all; Topps considered them to be valuable.

The reverse has some nifty prizes. That coffee maker looks scary!



Here's a Certificate from a little later on (1950):



You can see that Topps Gum is still the featured brand. Bazooka was just starting to devour the market as the 50's dawned. The mail-in address has changed to a PO box.

The back is a little more interesting than last time. Check out those gams!



The introduction of photography on the reverses just shows how highly Topps valued the Certificates and the redemption program. In case you are wondering, these measure about 4 3/4" x 2 3/4".

Some of the certificates were more specific than others. You only needed five of these to get a Chef's Knife, or you could put it toward the regular premiums.



Notice how the address in 1952 is Topps HQ in Bush Terminal now. The back of this particular example is blank by the way.

I'll close out with some Geranium:



It sounds flowery, doesn't it? I'll bet in reality is was just a bunch of overstock Topps or their supplier got real cheap, or they struck an advertising deal to promote this style of dinnerware. It's probably the same stuff they used to give away in movie theaters during the Depression.

You can see from the scan that Bazooka is much more prominently featured at this point. I am not sure when Topps brand fruit and mint gum ceased to be but Bazooka Joe and the gang were in full swing by the time this Certicate was issued in 1955.

The back is boring, it's just a couple of lists:



I'll have more to say on these down the road. They were issued into the early 1980's according to that Interstate Man of Mystery, Jeff Shepherd. With that span of time to cover, there's plenty more to talk about anon.

Gonna Roll the Bones

I thought I would kick 2009 off with a quick look at a super rare Topps set-1961 Dice Game.

This set of 18 black and white cards (yes, I am on a B&W roll of late!) does not bear any Topps or TCG indicia but the typography and seemingly good hobby intel over the years pegs it in my mind.

This Frank Robinson card is from the collection of Bob Fisk:



You can see staple holes in the upper left-to-center of the card; I would think one full set of these has staple holes, or two at the most. Why? Because I believe such examples came from the Topps internal archives, probably through Woody Gelman and Card Collector's Co. Topps would keep an archive copy in a book, sometimes with a matched display of fronts and backs stapled or taped to a page for executives to refer to. Woody's m.o. was tape (and I think he might have had his own archives in addition to the official ones) so maybe the cards came from another Topps big wig. If front and back copies of each were included in the reference material, then it stands two copies of each card would have the holes.

It's good Bob and a few other sources have scans of these-I doubt I'll ever own one as my estimate is that from 2 to 4 copies exist at most for any player. A lesser conditioned Leon Wagner (vg-ex I would say) than the one below went for a little over $2000 about three years ago in a Ebay auction. I don't know where this scan is from though:



A vg-ex Mantle went for almost $25,000 a while back. I don't think it was this one, again from an unknown source:



The back of Mick's card gives an idea how the game would be played:



As there are 18 cards in the set with seemingly matched pairs of AL and NL players by position, I would surmise the intent was to sell the entire set, with two regular dice, one die for pitch selection, another for something else (those little trifurcated boxes must be significant) and possibly some score sheets, as a self contained toy. I would guess 29 cents at retail would have been the going rate.

Here is a Willie Mays front/back combo as well, from a Mastronet auction a few years back.



Did the cards ever make it to a full retail test? I am not sure but it's possible as the presence of vg-ex examples could indicate handling by purchasers. The test, if it made it that far, must have failed. It's also quite possible the cards only made it to the final proof stage. I seem to recall an uncut sheet existing at one point that may have been cut up for singles but have no source to confirm that.

No matter how they entered the hobby, these are some of the rarest cards Topps ever produced. PSA has one registered set (50% completed) with a number of 1 grades (possibly for staple holes, I do not know) and SGC has zero. I would say examples only come up for auction once every two years or so on average. I am in awe if you own one of these.

Wrapping It All Up

Those pesky B&W 1960's Topps issues just won't go away. No sooner do I scatter blogs on this subject throughout the last month like Hansel & Gretel at a 4C convention, than Les Davis and Kurt Kursteiner et al come up with a killer article in The Wrapper #240 tying up the loose ends. Well played Gents, well played!



In addition, the current issue features some crazy Fleer confectionery items from Jeff Shepherd's collection (this blog would be half blank if not for Jeff's killer scans) and about a kazillion other essential non-sport articles and ads. You all need to send send Les Davis $23 (plus some orphaned postage stamps) and get with the program.

I'll just state for the record that those oddball Flash Gordon packs


discussed here, have been shown to have also appeared in Topps baseball boxes in addition to Fun Packs; Bob Marks noted in The Wrapper #124



that four such boxes at 120 cards per box had been found in 1984, in the first known instance of a double wrapped Topps trading card product. I would say at most two or three additional boxes worth have been found over the years, so the total number of Flash Gordon cards out there could be in the 720 - 840 range. However, that count may include an empty box so the number could be less than 600. In my experience, if there is a population of under 1000 cards total for a 60's or 70's test set, then there is extreme competition among collectors for them and they bring prices in the $150-$200 range for singles when they pop up for sale or auction.

In theory this would yield around twenty or thirty 24 card sets, but card # 24 seems to be in short supply, as do nos. 6, 10 and 11, especially the latter two. I would be shocked if more than a half dozen complete sets exist in the hobby as a result of the distribution of the short prints among the known cards. This is not unheard of - the 1971 Bobby Sherman Gettin' Together set has the same collation problems, although it seems to be available in about triple the supply of the Flash Gordon cards.

The bizarre manner in which these Flash Gordon cards entered the hobby seems to smack of Woody Gelman funneling items to his trailblazing card dealership, the Card Collectors Company



which had an offshoot called Nostalgia Press that handily reissued the American Card Catalog among other things. From what I can gather, once Topps sold the retail product, the rewrapped product, the Fun Packs and whatever other channeled discount blowout they could muster, Woody Gelman took control of the detritus and sold it to the far flung hobbyists of yore. That is our blessing and our curse.

Card Collectors Company sustained a fire in the early 1970's that destroyed part of their warehouse and consumed much precious inventory while creating some legendary scarcities within the Topps oddball canon. That story will be told another day.

Happy New Year folks!

(Updates made to the 2 paragraphs below Wrapper #124 illustration 11:00 AM 12/31/08)

Small Order

When I started this blog a few months ago, I figured I would mostly post on Topps test and oddball baseball issues. As it has turned out, while compiling scans and doing research for my posts, I started to really dig deep into the history of the company and have zeroed in on the late 1940's recently. I have discussed some of these before, in a slightly different context.

Since Topps didn't officially introduce baseball cards until 1951, the pre-baseball era is almost all non-sport in nature. At first I thought Topps had issued a few sporadic sets in '49 but it turns out they had all sorts of things cooking. After introducing Bazooka comics around 1947, Topps started inserting plastic coins and cards into their non-Bazooka penny packs a year or so later and by 1949 were issuing stand alone products in both penny and nickel packs on a regular basis.

I want to focus on the penny packs here, in particular the tiny little cards that came inserted between the outer wrapper and the individually wrapped gum pieces (or "tabs" in the confectioner's jargon). Before I do that though, there was a non-card issue in 1948 that amazes me:


(From the Jeff Shepherd Collection)

Choking hazard aside, this may have been the first Topps penny pack to have an insert. It also shows how the packaging was assembled. There was nothing holding the coin in place save for the inner fold from what I can tell. This penny pack likely came out in 1948 and continued to be sold through part of 1949.

Around the same time Topps issued the first Magic Photo, in Hocus Focus Gum:



The cards looked like this:



Interestingly, I am now finding information that Magic Photos may have come with both square and rounded corners. In addition, there may be some back variations and at least one obverse variation. If there is any correlation between the corners and variations I hope to find out, so stay tuned.

1949 also saw the release of X-Ray Round Up, which must have sold well as there are more of these around than any other tiny Topps cards from what I have seen. They came in packs of Pixie Gum (note inner green wrapper):


(from the collection of Todd Riley)

The fronts had Pirates, Indians and Cowboys on them and were quite colorful.



You put some magic X Ray paper over the back to reveal a picture:



Here are some proof and uncut versions from the 2004 Robert Edward Auction, plus a 100 count sheet of stamps, that may or may not have been issued by Topps:





There was also a License Plate set issued in 1949, featuring the first Topps scratchoffs no less. The set was also issued without the scratch off feature (1950 saw a reissue of both type in slightly larger format).

Outer and inner wrapper (Topps usually printed something on the inside of the paper wrapper):


The cards were as you would expect:



Looks like a switch to foil from wax for the inner wrapper:




Want some gum with that?



Last but not least, we have Flags of All Nations/Soldiers of The World. The "front" of the card is on textured, silvery "foil" and the back looks like a normal card's front. Bizarre! I don't have wrapper scans for this set at the moment and will add them when I can. Here are the cards:



There was so much more in 1948-49, including some early text-based little cards and a number of wrapper interiors. Fodder for another day's post. Enjoy these for now!

To Test, Perchance to Dream

Well, it has been a hectic holiday season here at the Topps Archives homestead....everyone is fast asleep, snug in their beds but I remain vigilant, thanks to an eggnog induced power nap this afternoon that left me refreshed and ready for action.

Just before Christmas I received a cache of old The Trader Speaks magazines in a trade. TTS was an important cog in the hobby machine from the late 60's through the end of the 70's. It survived into the mid 80's only to be absorbed via a mailing list purchase by Krause Publications and Sports Collectors Digest before briefly seeing the light of day again as an SCD insert in 1989. TTS was really a 'zine, a grass-roots collectors marketplace and trading post that served a growing hobby populace just when the general public was starting to pay attention to collecting old baseball cards. It was a seminal publication that published a few brief but highly informative articles in most issues. I have been tracking down old copies of late in the hopes of finding some prime research material and have been amply rewarded. Here then is one story.

One of the better known odd ball Topps issues, a 1972 issued eight card "reprint" set of 1953 Topps cards, has been rumored for decades to have been a table favor at a Topps banquet in the early 70's with print runs estimated at anything from 200 to 1500 sets . All hogwash! The July 1973 issue of The Trader Speaks reveals the true story.



In a short article authored by Dan Dischley, these cards are described as a test issue sold at "certain retail stores" in Brooklyn in 1972. It begs the question as to whether or not a wrapper or box exists for this set as they have never been sighted. It's possible the cards were indeed printed for use as a table favor, never used and then sold in generic Trading Card wrappers but the fact they were actually tested is intriguing as the market for an eight card set of ball players from twenty years earlier would seem awfully slim.

I have owned half the set over the years but have since winnowed things down to a "Carl Furillo" card.



For some odd reason, this card does not feature the Reading Rifle but rather Bill Antonello. Two other players in the set are also incorrectly identified: Al Rosen is really Jim Fridley and Clyde McCullough is actually Vic Janowicz (which should set Heisman Trophy collectors into a tizzy).

The back of my "Furillo" has a penciled "Pee Wee" notation and a bold "Bill Antonello" in red crayon defacing it. I wonder if this particular one came from the real Topps company archives.  (UPDATE 5/27/18-It may or may not be from the actual Topps archives but that is Woody Gelman's handwriting) My previously owned McCullough also had a red crayon correction on the reverse.



The backs of the cards echo the reverses of the 1934-36 Diamond Kings ("Diamond Stars" to quote the cards proper) . Just another example of Messrs Berger and Gelman invoking their boyhoods it seems. Check out the back of this Diamond Star card of Van Lingle Mungo to see what I mean. The fonts are similar even though the Topps cards do not have any batting tips on them.



In the TTS article, Bill Haber is noted as selling the cards at the New York convention and another note in the issue indicates $5.25 would get you a full set (it goes for around $2000 today). Haber stated 300 sets were printed and that the mislabeled cards were intentionally produced with the wrong names, for reasons that are unclear to say the least. Despite that, this is a wonderful article that succinctly provides the facts of this particular test issue.

Here is the whole set, in some scans I found in one auction or another last year:





The contents of this issue also indicate a TTS print run of 5000 copies and mentions that when the first issue was mailed (November 1968) , only 1000 serious collectors were known in the US. I'll have more TTS inspired posts in 2009.

Ho Ho Ho

Well, the daunting holiday honey-do list has surpassed my ability to blog in a timely fashion, so check in after Christmas for the latest. Until then:



Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays one and all!

Boxed In

A little while back I posted about an obscure "vanity" issue Topps created in 1971, commonly referred to as Topps Winners. As you may or may not recall, the theory was you could somehow have Topps create a card for you after being nominated as being a "winner" or sending in a contest card. They looked like this:



Well, it may be a little more complicated than I first thought.

Fearless reader John Moran kindly passed along a scan that is enigmatic but enlightening at the same time and I also found a version of this hidden on my hard drive (a fearful, lawless place) after John's scan jogged my increasingly slow memory. I'll show the one I had first, which looks to have been cleaned up before framing and auctioning, then John's (who found it in an old auction catalog I think):





What you are looking at is an alternate box proof for 1971 Topps baseball wax packs. The baseball coins advertised on the box were inserted early in the Topps packs that year (series 1, 2 and possibly 3) before the reissued Scratch Offs made an appearance, so this proof was likely created at the same time the regular box was designed.

The regular 1971 baseball boxes, which may be the nicest display box Topps ever made, look like this (scan swiped from Ebay):



If you look real hard at the alternate box, it reads 25 grand prize winners would be selected in the contest and receive real baseball cards of themselves. 1000 other winners would receive full color major league card pictures. ( I think the last word is pictures but can't fully suss it out though) . Presumably that was just regular ol' Topps baseball cards.

I am unsure though how the contest would work since I cannot read the box bottom clearly. It appears to be an order form for a Bazooka catalog but could also be a nomination form or entry for the contest. If so, then would your local neighborhood candy store owner have been responsible for the nominations? That seems bizarre and severely limiting so perhaps there could have been pack inserts to nominate people instead.

So, if the contest actually occurred (perhaps it did, more information and research is needed) then the set has 25 cards in it. Given that two examples I have seen have text on the back confirming Pennsylvania residents on them and that there is not a surplus of the alternate boxes or contest cards known in the hobby, is it possible the boxes were never made and distributed and some dummy cards were merely made up as exemplars for internal use at Topps? If so, I would like to think maybe the kids shown are the offspring of Topps employees in Duryea at the time but that is just idle speculation.

So, what is the real story here? Did the boxes make it to retail and were there nomination forms printed as well? Any thoughts and comments from our vast readership are welcomed.