Huge Hoops

Yet another Topps mockup and presentation "set" has popped up in the past few weeks.  For its annual release of hoopsters in 1976, Topps went to a chunky 3 1/8 x 5 1/4" super-size card that was not brought back the next year.  However, prior to this set being thought up and marketed, it appears an internal presentation was made to the Topps brass (a situation we have seen here before) using 1973 basketball cards as the basis for the pitch.  Thanks to noted basketball collector and Friend o'the Archive Don Huse for pointing out these intriguing cards:

The back has clear indications of being taped to something else and my guess is that object was a presentation board:

The description on these (they are on eBay) makes it seem like they were created by an artist and are not true photographs.  This Marvin Barnes card's damage would bear this out:

In addition to White and Barnes, two other examples are known.  One is of Jim Chones:

And the other depicts Slick Watts:

There do not seem to be any other examples, which are being sold by BMW Sportscards.  All four have tape residue on their reverses. A little detective work. some by another Friend o'the Archive, Adam Warshaw, reveals that Barnes began his career in the 1974-75 season and that Chones too entered the league that year. Based on all that, it seems the likely date of creation was around 1975.

Of note also is that the 1973 card of Jo Jo White looked totally different than the mock up using the '73 design:

There was no 1973 Slick Watts card while the other two players, as noted above, entered their respective leagues after 1973. Here is a 1976 Topps card of Jo Jo White, to complete his trifecta and I think we can all agree the action shots on the mockups are far superior to this:

I am quite curious if more ersatz 73's are out there.

NFL Games: Philly vs NY

In 1960, as if Topps didn't have enough to contend with when Leaf introduced a 144 card set of baseball cards, an ornery new player in the trading card field introduced a set of football cards.  Fleer took on Topps, who issued a set of 132 NFL players, with 132 AFL subjects, picking up the new league in its first season.  After issuing the first modern inserts with their 1960 Baseball Greats set, both companies had them in their 1960 football packs.  Topps issued a series of Metallic Stickers while Fleer countered with College Football Decals.

Putting all that aside, I just want to look at the five cent wrappers today from each set. The Topps design was a classic, as this scan from the Football Card Gallery shows:

:

Actually, I'll show the penny pack, also from the same site (run by Friend o'the Archive Mike Thomas):

That Special feature is a bit of a cheat.  While the nickel pack indeed held an insert, the Magic Football Funnies were just a scratch off feature on the back of then card.

Here is what Fleer came up with:

As for the cards from each company, I think Topps had the winner.  Here is the Topps offering, a great shot of Ollie Matson:

And here is a typical Fleer card:

The graphics resemble what Topps had done about four years ago. We'll look at the inserts next time out but it's the same story there.

Splendidly Selling Splinter

I'm not positive but 1959 may have been Topps' all time best year for sales of baseball cards, when adjusted for cards sold per million population.  There are no real sales figures available but there were massive amounts of cardboard and gum being sold by them at this point. Their competitors in the confectionery field were also experiencing rapid growth as the US population swelled in the midst of the baby boom. Our continuing look at these competitors brings us to Fleer Gum.

After vanquishing Bowman, Topps had the national baseball card market all to themselves from 1956-58 but in 1959, Fleer, another Philadelphia confectioner that had been in business since 1885, entered the trading card fray for real (they had previously issued a set in 1923!) with an 80 card set depicting the life of Ted Williams.  Card #68 from the set, as most of us know, was pulled at some point as it also showed Bucky Harris (and Joe Cronin, as I originally typed-thanks Anonymous!), who apparently had not signed a  contract with Fleer:

The cards were sold in this fabulous looking wrapper:

What intrigues me about this set, which was massively over-produced (including the "rare" #68), is an alternate pack that was sold with two extra cards and no gum:

I don't know if the gumless version was a test but whereas the wrapper with gum is quite common, the 8 card version is exceedingly rare.  I want to keep digging into this and will report back any findings.

Hey Bub!

Huggins & Scott has come up with a few Bowman products that are germane to their competition with Topps and one of these is a box of Bub bubble gum.   Bub was a brother brand to Blony from what little I have researched of it and I will try to get more backstory when I can but it may have been Bowman's five cent chew and Blony the one-cent chew. I believe the brand predates not only Bazooka but also World War 2.

What drew me to it though, was the Parent's Magazine Guarantee (PMG). Topps obtained their PMG for Bazooka soon after it was launched in 1947 and that matches the copyright date found here on Bub (there was also a 1950 copyright for Bub and possibly later ones as well):

The reverse is interesting as well:

Topps was touting sanitary, foil wrapped goodness with Bazooka and the King and Queen Bub illustrations share a crown element with the Bazooka unmanned advertising mascot from the early days:

Deliberate attempt by one form to crib another's ad copy and design elements?  Highly probable in my view. Who stole what and when, though, is a thornier question to answer...

Well friends, I am entering a three week period of professional and personal events that are going to keep me away from the keyboard for a lengthy spell or two.  I still like to try posting twice a week no matter what so am going to go with some short and sweet posts until things return to some semblance of normalcy.  Things will back in the swing here before Hallowe'en so hang tight!

Ersatz Escapades

I was paging through the hefty tome known as Topps Baseball Cards The Complete Picture Collection the other day--you know, the one that shows all the regular issue Topps baseball cards that went through a  couple of editions in the late 80's an early 90's:

While I was on the page that starts with #289, Tommy Holmes, I noticed something odd.  Holmes's nameplate and signature block had a decided gray cast to it.  Here, see for your self, first in a side by side look with two other cards from the same page and then in an extreme closeup:

Look how gray the Holmes is compared to Astroth.  You can also see the moire pattern that fills the Holmes nameplate wheres the Astroth is pure white.  Holmes is one of the five players that elected to not be reprinted in 1983 when Topps put out their first reprint set. After the light bulb went off I checked the other four cards of these no shows and sure enough they all have gray nameplates.  Here is #20 and #22, Billy Loes and Dom DiMaggio, surrounded by some other cards:

Saul Rogovin at #159 also is a graybeard:

And to complete the theme, so is #196 Solly Hemus:

It's a little hard to see, depending upon your device but ol' Solly is Gray in the nameplate all right.

It's obvious what occurred once you look at them all; Topps used cards from the 1983 reprint set in producing the book!  Those sneaky so-and-so's didn't use real cards from 1952 for a major book showcasing their best known work product over a span of 40 years!

I guess I shouldn't be surprised....stay tuned for another look at some oddities from this book soon.

RIP Friend

I found out last night that my longtime online friend and fellow blogger Chris Stufflestreet passed away suddenly on September 19th and am saddened almost beyond words.  Just about everyone in the online collecting community knew Chris, who was a gentle, friendly soul. I finally got to meet him at this year's National, where he was working at Irv Lerner's booth and had a couple of nice conversations with him. Here is a picture of him from what I presume is the 2010 or '11 National, with his daughter Melissa, taken (I think) by Brian Terjung:

His life revolved around his daughter and he was the ultimate proud daddy. He is also survived by his mother.

Chris maintained a number of blogs, some on the hobby and some on music.  Here are links to his two sportscards blogs:

http://thevintagesportscards.blogspot.com/
http://1973toppsphotography.blogspot.com/

And his two music blogs:

http://70smusicmayhem.blogspot.com/
http://80smusicmayhem.blogspot.com/

He would write ahead and then have automatic posts,publish every couple of days so some of his writing looks like he is still with us right now.  Perhaps that is as it should be.....  RIP buddy.......

Boxing Match

In 1974, Topps achieved two firsts with their baseball cards.  For the first time, the entire set was available in one long series (although an experiment in 1973 resulted in some areas receiving packs for part of the year that could have all 660 cards).  Topps even inserted a flyer into their wax boxes to alert their retailers although the box flaps should have sufficed, as this old Mile High Card Company scan shows:

Then, in a move that was ahead of its time for them, Topps introduced a snazzy factory set that also included the year's sorta-standalone card 44 Traded Cards subset (hmmm, that's a third first!).  The box graphics are killer as these scans from the collection of Friend o'the Archive Steve Clark demonstrates:

The complete sets were designed to be sold by big department stores and in Christmas catalogs and the like. The fact there was no followup release in 1975 would indicate the idea was not yet ready for prime time.

Here is another MHCC scan that shows the factory goodness of the cards within, in all their zebra-striped, untouched minty glory:

I guess Christmas catalogs and Wish Books became passe around the time the internet too over the world but I used to really look forward to them coming in the mail every year!