Bak to Raks

1969 was the last year of the 3 x 12 rak pak arrays.  Starting in 1959, when three 12 card cello packs were overwrapped for point of sale purchase displays, Topps had stuck with this winning formula for over a decade.  But 1969 was the last year of many Topps pricing schemes; 1970 would bring a shift to larger and more expensive packaging across all lines.

The 1969 raks are essentially the same as the 68's:

That NEW tag stayed with the 69's; can't go wrong with a good thing! You can really see how loose the cards would get inside each pocket.  Football was again a match for baseball:

The only real changes in the header card from 1968 to '69 would have been to the Topps production code (a very helpful dating tool) and at some point in the year a switch from Brooklyn to Duryea as the place of manufacture: I need to find clearer scans to determine when they did this on the raks; it was about the the time the fifth series baseball cards were issued but if they had old stock showing Brooklyn, they may well have let it run out unless there was a compelling business reason not to. The baseball and football raks above came from Huggins & Scott's site.

Once again the hockey cards also came in raks (just Topps I think, not OPC):

As with almost all my tough hockey scans, that is from Bobby Burrell's fabulous Vintage Hockey Collector's Price Guide.  Hockey raks would have been produced in tiny numbers relative to baseball and even football.  Remember, if you are buying these off eBay, watch for fakes-there are far more of those and repackaged "Christmas" raks than legitimate ones out there.

Redundancy Stamp

Well kids, me and Mrs. Archives have addressed the last of the Christmas cards and boy, I could really have used some help tonight.  Oh address labels are one thing but what a feller really needs is a personalized name stamp to help address things properly.

Don't have one?  Well, hop into the WABAC machine and dial it up for 1949:

and let Bazooka, the Atom Bubble Boy lead the way:

Wotta deal, eh?  That's from a series of comic book ads taken out by Topps in DC comics that year in a major marketing push to sell more Bazooka.  I'll post more of these; they are reminiscent to me of a time when the staid print advertising world was about to be rocked by the brash new medium of television.

Rak Attack

Looking up details on Topps Rak Paks for my previous post led me to some more images and I feel like this is about to turn into a multi-post look at Topps biggest retail packs.  I certainly bought the majority of my cards this way from 1970-74, many of them from a fabulous store called Coronet.

The modern Rak Pak, as we saw last time, debuted in 1968.  Ditching the old, three-cello overwrapped style pack, Topps lost the individual cello's and created individual pockets for three cells of cards:

The "new" label is clearly to show the pack itself has been redesigned but why do they still say 3/10 cent packs? I guess Topps wanted you to know you were saving a penny!  You got 12 cards per pak, so 36 per rak.

The football raks were similar in '68:

Believe it or not, Topps sold hockey cards in raks as well:

The ability to sell any type of product using one template was very appealing to Topps as it helped to reduce costs.  Rak paks were designed for variety and toy stores and were prevalent from what I recall of them. I have tried to identify a Non-Sports rak from 1968 but there do not seem to be any sets that would really work, except possibly Hot Rods.  A lot of Topps sets that year were odd-sized or short in length.  I would think sports had a longer shelf life generally and the raks would be a better fit for sports cards due to the length of the seasons.  I will keep looking though.

Nice Rak

Thanks to a (sadly) current eBay auction, I think I have stumbled onto the end of the Trading Card Guild era at Topps.  Long story short a bogus 1967 baseball rak pak is currently up on the 'bay but it's clearly a homemade job and I shall not link to it.  I did some research on legitimate Rak Paks though as a result and think I resolved the end date for the Guild.  First, let's look at some raks!

Basically, any rak pak prior to 1968 would contain 3 individual cello packs encased in an overwrap plus a header card stapled to the end of the overwrap, which extended a bit to accomodate the staples for the header.  The first of these appeared in 1959 if I am not mistaken and Topps used them for any variety of issues, not just baseball.

Here is what a proper '66 rak pak looks like:

You can see the three cells (plus a really great insert) and how they are overwrapped, plus the header card is stapled to the whole package, it's flaps sandwiching the rak proper.  This is how any rak through 1967 should look. In fact, here is a legit '67:

You can see the three cello packs still, plus the old style header card attachment.  I can't get it to reproduce properly here but the text at the bottom right of the header says Topps Chewing Gum.  The next year, the cellos had vanished as Topps moved to the more familiar version, sans individual cellos and utilizing three "cells" or pockets of loose cards, with a fourth cell that enclosed the header card.



Those last two raks are from Mark Murphy's excellent Unopened Pack Guide.  It's a little outdated as it was last updated in 2002 but is chock full of useful information.

But that's not why I am posting all this today. The real reason?  Take a look at that 1966 header card again, along the bottom, under the EXTRA SPECIAL FEATURE line, it says "Trading Card Guild Mfr."  That is the latest date I have seen associated with the Trading Card Guild and likely marks the end of their run.  It is increasingly apparent to me that Topps would haul out the Guild for any product sold without gum, i.e.non-confectionery items be they in vending, cellos or raks.  I suspect this was due to their contracts and no-competes on various, if not all issues, a problem worked out by 1967 it appears.

The Guild livery was more obvious on some raks than others.  Check out this classic 1962 Civil War News rak, a scan I pinched from an Abraham Lincoln site:

Amusingly, there is no Trading Card Guild ID on the rak but it certainly pushed the educational aspect.  That rak theoretically held about 40% of an entire set, although I am sure some duplicates lurk within!

Paper Trail

We saw last time how Topps used a paper envelope wrapper to market two test sets from the 1968-69 era. This was not the first time they had done this and it was way back around 1956 when they tried for the first time to use a paper wrapper.

Round-Up (more properly Western Round-Up but no matter) was one of the last, if not the last Topps set to be issued in Giant Size.  A paper wrapper exists, although for what purpose is hard to say as it does not seem like it would have been an ideal way to keep the gum sanitary.  The set's penny wrapper is far more common and it was also sold in what Chris Benjamin has described as five cent "layered" cello packs so there may have been some experimentation going on with the nickel packaging. It appears a piece of tape (see left border) may have held the pack together.

The other 1956 paper wrapper is from Flags of the World, which also got the envelope treatment a dozen years later.  I can only locate a scan from the same Bob and Jeff Marks article from The Wrapper #92 that featured the envelope version as well:

(Update 1/4/18-The above is a Canadian wrapper, I missed it on the indicia originally. More to come on these sets semi-shortly.)

Other wrappers from other sets could also exist as these are very rare.  If anyone has further background, I would love to hear it.

The Envelope Please

I've been mulling some pieces of paper of late, namely some very rare Topps wrappers.  Last time out I showed a 1968 test basketball wrapper, which was really a paper envelope. This type of "wrapper" made the little light bulb go off above my head as I knew there was also a paper wrapper associated with the 1970 Topps Flags of the World issue. Actually, it turns out there were two.

We have seen in previous posts that Flags of the World were a recurring theme at Topps; indeed at many other confectionery and tobacco companies as well, since they were tried and true sellers back in the vintage days. 1949, 1950 and 1956 saw Flags issues from Topps, then a break occurred until 1970 when another issue came out, possibly in the wake of a general, societal push to make U.S. school kids more aware of the United Nations in the late 1960's.  I'll get into the numerous permutations and inserts of the 1970 issue someday but want to focus on its paper wrapper.

Jeff and Bob Marks, writing in The Wrapper #92, cite a five cent wrapper comprised of a test sticker affixed to tan envelope. I only have scan from the article to demonstrate:

The 61-75 handwritten notation at the top is in line with other Topps test pieces I have seen. The 61 is the project number; the 75 is a bit more mysterious.  Most Topps production codes from 1966 onward use the last digit to signify the year of production but only for retail products, where the full code resembles something like a Social Security number.  Test codes often seem to end in 5, just like what is shown above and are usually in the shorter format we see here.  

Compare this to the 1968 test Basketball wrapper:

I actually found a back scan of the basketball wrapper since last episode:

You can see the flaps of the envelope quite clearly.  I would ignore the handwritten date at the top, I suspect it was added by a collector, not Topps.

So why envelopes?  Well, Topps was already using them for certain mid 60's issues, mostly of the "novelty" variety as opposed to cards.  Wise Ties is one example but there are quite a few others from this time frame so they were on the mind of Topps brass at the time.  Usually though, they were for products that came without gum.

Two scenarios seem likely to my mind: Firstly, Topps may have been testing wrappers; I am assuming it was cheaper to use an envelope vs. a wax wrapper. The envelopes could also have been used in a scenario where the cards were being tested and it was easier than cranking up the ol' wrapping machinery just to use some already available envelopes.  It is also possible both actions were occurring at the same time. 

The way Topps tested products at the time was interesting.  Internal pitches were made by Woody Gelman's creative team, using mockups often times grafted together from some new artwork and pre-existing product. Topps executives would then be asked to approve a project based upon such presentaions. This was a highly competitive process and only about 1 in 10 projects would get the go ahead. At this point full design of a proof version would occur and sample run of very small size would be run off by the printer; often this would only be 22 or 28 cards of the planned total. Sometimes these would be complete cards, other times only fronts were produced. Short runs such as this were likely responsible for all the black & white mid 60's test issues; these short runs could have been for both internal and external use, I can't quite tell and both scenarios are possible.

Once they had some cards to hand out, Topps would form a focus group, where kids would be gathered at a test site, sometimes run by a third party.  Cards would be distributed and observations made as to how the children reacted to cards and how they would play with them.  Other times they would go to a local elementary or junior high school yard in Brooklyn, near Topps HQ in Sunset Park and hand out test packs (hard to imagine that going well today but it was a different time) to gauge the reactions.  Both methods could have been used for a single product, either in tandem or one after the other.  These are the points where I believe the envelopes would have come into play.

Once this stage was finished, the product either got killed off, dramatically reconfigured or advanced to a retail test. Sometimes tweaks were made before the test boxes hit the shelves, sometimes not.  In Brooklyn, this was where the mythical "Cortelyou Avenue Candy Store" would enter the picture.  In Pennsylvania, following the move of the confectionery production line and warehousing to Duryea in 1966, retail tests were made in a similar fashion in Scranton and environs, near the plant.  Packs would generally be made of white waxed paper, with a sticker affixed to the front and sometimes a smaller one, listing ingredients if the pack held gum, slapped across the back and acting to help seal the pack. Tested products would have to pass this trial before full retail production commenced.  Even after the final test, some refinements would often be made to the cards; usually (but not always) these were minor in nature.

The method was not foolproof as some sets would test well but vanish without a trace at the retail level.  Still, Topps apparently did a test for every issue they wanted to retail; although this would seemingly exclude recurring annual sports issues such as baseball and football.  Any baseball or football supplemental sports sets would have gone through this process however.  These envelopes would have been a quick way for Topps to test product; so much so I wonder if they were produced for other sets.  Their rarity would make this a difficult proposition to research. The stickers affixed to the envelopes would have been reused for the wax tests packs I think.

The five cent price points on both the above wrappers would point to 1968 or early 1969 tests as Topps went to ten cents on their retail wax packs in mid 1969. The box that the Flags test packs came in is also known and carries a Brooklyn address with a zip code.  Topps changed to a  Duryea address in mid 1969 so that further locks the date in. I mentioned another paper wrapper for Flags of the World and I'll get into that next time.

Dribble, Dribble

Well I snagged a real sweet test card off eBay just before Turkey Day.  I have a goal of collecting one card from every set Topps released at retail from 1948-80; this conveniently leaves off some of the real tough proof issues such as the 1966 Punch Boards but with some sets it's really hard to tell if they were released to the public. There are still some doozie's in there though.

One set that falls into this category (and others) is the 1968 Test Basketball release.  The cards are extremely rare but they are printed in black and white, which has always made me suspicious of their non-proofiness, for lack of a better term.

It looks like he's practicing in a high school gym-the NBA was not always the glamour league that it is now.  You might also note the card displays Default Topps Block Print, a hallmark of many mid 60's test and proof sets.  There are 22 cards in the set and the backs make up a puzzle of Wilt Chamberlain, looking very vertical:

I think the two bottom right corner cards are just black while the two above them just show a little knee.  The cards came in a paper envelope style of pack:

It looks like a typical Topps test pack sticker but the word is that it's on an envelope. The cards are rare, the insert would be rarer still; I have never seen one.  I have a theory on these cards (both test basketball and other black & white issues of the era) and this type of envelope wrapper and wll get into that next time out.