A Penny Here, A Nickel There

As we come up on the Fourth of July, which is perhaps my favorite holiday, I though I'd kick back today, practice my 12 oz. curls and just show a little eye candy representing items that are infrequently seen.

This is a box of some scarcity and it held 100 (maybe 120) tabs of Pixie Bubble Gum, each with an X-Ray Roundup card inserted between its wrapper layers. I can't swear I've seen another example of this box; this made an appearance on eBay a couple of months ago.

Dig the artwork:

They never missed a chance to get an advert in for Bazooka but as you can see here, were still making their original, Topps Gum in '49, although it would soon transition to a Chiclets style chew before going away completely in the early 50's. I think this box pre-dates the once-cent Bazooka tabs that were introduced in mid-1949:

Topps stopped including cards with their one cent gum tabs late in 1949 and I'm fairly certain they curtailed the postage stamp sized License Plates set accordingly and then reissued it in a larger size for 1950.  Flags of All Nations-Soldiers of The World also got this treatment as Topps transitioned so a larger card format. This format, measuring 1 3/4" x 2 7/8" was only used for these two sets. The 1949 Stop 'N Go wrapper (Topps named the cards and the gum separately back then) is tough, as is the 1950 version.

Bring 'Em Back Alive helped kick off off yet another, larger card size in 1950, one measuring  2 1/16" x 2 5/8" and which debuted with Hopalong Cassidy.

For some reason Topps used a date on their nickel packs but usually not their penny packs. That's a nice wrapper pardner!

This five-center is a lot more crinkly:

Any of those elongated five cent packs would have held panelized cards, a practice Topps ended by 1952. The practice of separately naming the gum and card set had disappeared by then as well.

Another Plane

This is proving to be a banner year for Topps test issues coming out of the woodwork.  I doubt there's been this much material available since the early 90's. This time it's the 1967 Fighter Planes turn.

Some recent eBay auctions have turned up various proofs from this set, which seems to be the easiest way to find anything as I still have yet to see an assembled one. Two of the proofs I've already posted about but two are new and the auction description also has an interesting tidbit.

Here is a proof of the Bell X-1 fighter:

The auction description mentions this was an (actual) Topps archives file copy and while that is good information, the better part of the description mentions the proofs are on glossy photo stock.  This is no doubt due to their having to be reproduced on thin Styrofoam. (UPDATE 4/5/25: Nope, they were printed on thin cardboard. )

The second proof gives the Skyray F-4D:

I'm not sure what those punched holes are for but some proofs have them and some don't.  The holes had some significance as they are cleared on the back of the piece against a backing board, so maybe they were to hold them in place for some reason.

That wrapper is just leaned up against the back, it's not attached.  25% of the set has now been documented in proof form. That's pretty good for something this obscure I think but it's weird proofs are found more readily than the product they were used to create!

Tub Bub

I picked up another cool item a short while ago, the latest in a string of offbeat Topps miscellania that has come my way of late.

The 1970 Baseball Stars Candy set is a farily tough customer these days.  24 candy lid cards, generally described as a test issue, made a brief appearance on the scene that year. It was the first of a small number of similar sets sold by Topps between 1970-74 that featured candy, something that harkened back to their old Topps Candy Division twenty years prior.

The lids are well known. I nicked this from 707Sportscards and cleaned it up a bit but it shows the way the candy touched the lid and how the tab would be bent lifting it off the container:

Here's a proof of the late, great Le Grand Orange that's cleaner and shows the "tri-star" back used in 1970.  The 1973 version of the set only had two stars:

What I managed to score was the tub that held the candy and sat under the lid:

The graphics showed three ghostly blobs.  This one may may be based upon Gary Nolan:

The other two, not sure but on the left is a possible Johnny Bench and on the right Tommy Helms.  I wonder if the artist hailed from Cincinnati?

As with the almost contemporary Gum Berries tubs, it's a No. 23 Dixie Cup!

Unlike the Gum Berries tub, this one sports no commodity code.

The tub appears to be unused.  Another has popped up since I procured mine and a small hoard may have been unearthed.  I know a fairly large hoard of the 1973 tubs was recently auctioned by Lelands:

That's 164 of 'em if you're scoring at home.  Those clear plastic dust caps may or may not be original to these tubs. Note the candy weight has reduced from 1.1 oz. to .95 oz.  Also, the 1973's contained Bubble Gum and not Candy.  I suspect the candy was a dud and the product was rejiggered accordingly. There's certainly a ton more of the lids form 1973 available to collectors than from three years prior, although the 1970 version we see lids from probably were more widely distributed than a standard test issue as they can be found with some diligence. The 1970's may have been just issued regionally with a wider rollout planned before Topps pulled the plug.

Yaz Sir!

The parade of things (mostly) never seen before continues unabated with a trove of scans (mostly) sent by Friend o'the Archive Al Richter concerning 1968 Topps Giant Stand-Ups.

As has been seen here previously, the set, while commonly described as being from 1967, was issued only as a test in 1968, as confirmed by the Oakland A's designation for the Jim Hunter card. Today though, our quarry is Yaz.  Here is his standard die-cut Giant Stand-Up:

These pop up very, very infrequently and any examples can properly be considered rare.  What's interesting though, is that an example of the Yaz (and presumably at least another batch of players) can be found missing a color pass:

Need more?  Proofs without the die-cuts exists as well, as this Heritage Auctions example from 2004 shows:

It was described as one of three Yaz proofs known at the time.  I am not sure if that figure has increased since then but I doubt it. These are thinner than the quarter-inch thick test issue. The other dimensions are 3 1/8" x 5 1/4" by the way.

Going back to Al Richter's scan-ucopia, here is the box that was planned for the set.  I cannot tell if this was assembled from a flat or was the actual box.

Topps Vault had sold a flattened box at one point but it was in worse shape than this one:

The packs are Mick-free and strangely feature what I think is a caricature of Johnny Pesky, a Red Sox legend and coach with the Pirates at the time.  Eh, maybe it's Jim Lonborg:

The pack was sealed with an instructional sticker:

I'm not sure why Topps thought this set was a good idea but they did follow up with an insert in 1968 Football that was somewhat similar.

Be careful out there kids, this set and its packaging has been reproduced!

For Art's Sake

In case you haven't noticed there's been some killer auctions of late as tax refund season brings out the big consignments.  The BST Spring Auction was no exception this year, with the bulk of it related to football items (their specialty). They offered  so much good Topps stuff this will be a two-parter.  For today's entry, let's look at some killer original art.

Lew Carpenter is #95 in the 1959 Topps Football set:

That is Woody Gelman's handwriting there on the backing board folks-pay attention to the instructions on the right side border. That picture has been severely Flexichromed-hoo boy!  

No hanging on to Topps property.....

The finished product:

See how Carpenter's head and foot pop out of the background?  That's what Woody was instructing the printer to do in the right side border above.

Here's John David Crow (what a great name), also from 1959.  He won the 1957 Heisman trophy don't you know but here he's been flexichromed to within an inch of his life:

He's more prosaically identified on his card (#105):

Here's ol' King (of the ) Hill, #117:

Moving on to 1962, here's Roman Gabriel:

That's no longer Woody's writing.  Maybe Len Brown?

Here's cad #88 in 1962, you can see why the photo is a square:

Does anyone want to hazard a guess why Y.A. Tittle is shown on the inset photo?!  The numbers don't even match!  More inset photo madness can be found here if you are interested.

Finally , here's # 155 in 1965, Lance Alworth.  Woody's writing has returned but who did the fingerpainting on the backing board?

"1 Flexi Matt" is what the script writing says. I mean, that is almost dayglo, they've touched it up so much:

All that paint (and some of it was used to obscure the tops of his numbers): was used to make this into a football card:

Here's how it all came out, tall boy style:

Notice how you can see some of the obscuring white paint on his uniform, plus some areas that were not touched up.  FLexichrome as a supported process was discontinued in 1961 but Topps must have laid in a gargantuan supply. Crazy!

More auction goodies next time out kids!

The Proof Is In The Cutting

The semi-annual offerings from Robert Edward Auctions are always two of the most anticipated hobby events of the year.  This year's recently concluded spring auction was proof of that many times over. REA offered the beginnings of  a major postwar baseball collection that has, as the pitching coaches say, breadth and depth.  Case in point, the three short printed 1951 Topps Major League All Star cards in proof form.

All three players have a Philadelphia connection.  Jim Konstanty pitched for the Phils for seven seasons and would have been referred to as a relief specialist back in the day:

Wrinkly, no?  The key to the whole set of course, is Robin Roberts, Hall of Famer and all time Phillie:

Not a Philllies player but definitely a Philly native, The Pest:

All three backs are blank:

The handcut nature of these proofs is obvious.  There's only one or two other examples known of each from what I can determine and of course the legend is that Frank Nagy, one of the first big time postwar collectors, got wind of the short prints and wrote to fellow collector and Topps consultant at the time Woody Gelman, who got him an example of each.  Since each of these three proofs are described as being from Woody's personal collection, that story seems plausible.

In any event, these were clearly never released to the public and their yanking, no doubt due to contractual wranglings with Bowman, likely killed off the larger, over-arching Baseball Candy issue the MLAS (and Connie Mack All Stars) were a part of, just like Red and Blue Backs and the Team cards. In fact, the MLAS standups only came with Blue Backs in a five cent configuration.  All of the MLAS cards are difficult but these three are impossible. Personally, I don't consider them part of the set.

As you can see from the link above, prodigious pricing prevailed!

Stamp Act

Among the myriad wonders offered in the Spring 2018 Robert Edward Auctions catalog, I think we can all say there was one that got away. In my case there were many more than that, although I did catch a big fish.  Of particular interest to me were the two 1955 Topps Baseball Stamps, surfacing after many years of being landlocked in a private collection.

In addition to producing the 1954 and 1955 paper inserts for four issues of Sports Illustrated magazine, Topps produced what I believe to be a 40 subject sheet of baseball stamps that were never released to the public. These were direct copies of the 1955 Baseball cards that were perforated on at least one side and had gummed, blank backs.  A sister internal sheet of the same year's Rails & Sails stamps was also produced, which was, you guessed it, 40 subjects long.

The known checklist is 24 subjects, 23 of which have been sighted and/or previously checklisted by Beckett or the Standard Catalog.and are listed below.  All appear in both the regular Topps issue plus the Double-Header set as well and I've included the corresponding numbering for both.

REG. DH "CORKY" VALENTINE REDLEGS 44 46 "RUBE" WALKER DODGERS 108 15 ALEX GRAMMAS CARDINALS 21 107 BILL SKOWRON YANKEES 22 21 BILL TREMEL CUBS 52 102 BOB SKINNER PIRATES 88 56 BOBBY HOFMAN GIANTS 17 96 CHARLIE WHITE BRAVES 103 18 CHUCK DIERING ORIOLES 105 2 DAVE JOLLY BRAVES 35 95 DON MOSSI INDIANS 85 84 HARVEY HADDIX CARDINALS 43 42 HOWIE POLLET CUBS 76 31 JACK SHEPARD PIRATES 73 23 JIM DAVIS CUBS 68 28 JIM PENDELTON BRAVES 15 33 JOE CUNNINGHAM CARDINALS 37 38 KARL SPOONER DODGERS 90 19 RAY BOONE TIGERS 65 113 RAY JABLONSKI REDLEGS 56 51 RUBEN GOMEZ GIANTS 71 89 STAN HACK CUBS 6 24 TED KAZANSKI PHILLIES 46 5

The 24th subject is Hank Aaron, "confirmed" by some prominent hobbyists but not yet in scanned form or on the major checklists. It is thought all of these came from Woody Gelman's personal collection. In addition to the Rails & Sails stamps being 40 in number, another reason I think this set is also comprised of 40 subjects is the way the regular issue cards were laid out. The usual orientation is off because of the horizontal printing but you can see where all subjects were taken from a chunk of the 110 card uncut sheet that runs from columns 2-5 and down rows A-E. (U) means unconfirmed of course and Hammerin' Hank gets an asterisk):

(NOTE 8/18/22, this is not a correct "potential universe" list anymore, see posts of 9/17/22  and 9/22/22 for a bit of an update.  More information still needs to be developed based upon recent findings but the Standard Catalog listing may be holding up pending scans of Grammas and Kazanski being found).

Some observations are in order.  There is another 40 subject section of sheet real estate that has Wally Moon at B5 and Hank Sauer at C5 but since both those slots are occupied by confirmed stamps, I think this is the proper array.  As you can see, each row and column has at least one confirmed stamp as do all "borders" so the 40 stamp universe seems highly likely to me. And that lower right corner, which is an entirely missing quad-save possibly for Aaron-can you imagine what a Ted Williams stamp would be worth?!

Two of the stamps made it into REA, Jack Shepard and Bob Skinner. I was underbidder on the Skinner (a PSA 1) but didn't go after the Shepard (a PSA 3). I'm showing the backs so each can be identified in the future if another comes up (it's not 100% confirmed but there may actually be two of some subjects out there in the wild).

The lot description has that little curl at the bottom of the Skinner reverse as "excess paper." The ink spray and off-registration on the fronts doesn't surprise me as I think these were a materials test as Topps was very much putting a lot of effort into alternate media at the time, something that was killed off forthwith once they purchased Bowman in early 1956.

Ironically, the first mention of these I ever saw was from a Rob Lifson ad in the January 31, 1986 issue of Sports Collectors Digest, where he had four for sale. I am hoping more pop up down the road as I would very much like to have one for my collection. Kudos to whoever won these!