The Express Way

Spinning through some more Topps Vault scans today kids, which brings us to Alvin, Texas, via Brooklyn and Queens. No suspense then, as you have probably all recognized Nolan Ryan as the subject of our post du jour. Specifically, we'll be looking at his gift and merchandise preferences sometimes taken as compensation from Topps.

Here's Ryan's 1969 response to Topps concerning his compensation for the year:

Love how he addresses Sy Berger informally!  Ryan indeed took the check:

This busy reverse shows how they did things back in the long, long ago, in the far, far away:

Those 1969 examples were poorly scanned I'm afraid, but his 1970 check came though crystal clear:

Looks like Sy, or maybe his secretary, was personally signing the player checks, at least those going to Ryan. You can see on the reverse here that signing the check became an acceptance of the "extention" contract with Topps. It was, and remains, a common practice in the business world to have an endorsed check memorialize an acceptance of contractual terms. It's worth mentioning too there no was spell check back then kids! 

This ledger card spans Ryan's rookie card season through his final Topps card and offers a complete look at his choices. He took a furniture set in exchange for his initial cash compensation in 1968 and I'm guessing it's because he had to furnish his home, either in New York or back home in Alvin. Baumritter Furniture eventually became known as Ethan Allan and they are renowned for their Mid Century Modern look these days. 

After the furniture arrived and then following two years of checks, the flamethrowing righty eventually decided to go after some specific merchandise instead of taking the money offered by Topps. He took an option for a Nikkormat camera in 1971, which was a consumer version of what were then professional level Nikon's.  Three years later he got another one, this time with a case.  He had to pay Topps $75 for that setup, a practice that was followed by the company for a long time when a player overtopped his allotment. As befits his later career as a banker, he took the cash in all other years.

UPDATE 10/19/25: Reader Bo noted the 1970 check was deposited by Shea Stadium concessionaire Harry M. Stevens. Ryan didn't endorse it "For Deposit Only" like he did in 1969 so he must have had it cashed at the ballpark.  I wonder if that perk was something commonplace with ballplayers? Also, Keith Olbermann advised the handwriting on Ryan's two camera choices on the player record belongs to Topps Sports Dept. jack of all trades Bill Haber, a key figure there, in the hobby and to baseball history in general.

A Red Letter Year

An accumulation of promotional materials here at the Topps Archives Research Complex concerning the 1964 Topps Baseball offerings has finally hit criticality and, after a comprehensive review, I can confirm it's a definite feast for the eyes.

1964 was the year Shea Stadium opened in Queens along with the World's Fair next door, and MLB held the All-Star Game in the borough on July 7th. The Mid-Summer Classic was hosted by the Mets in their brand spanking new ballpark amid all this wonderful tumult, as the National League squad won the star-studded exhibition. Topps clearly decided to take advantage and issued five colorful sets in '64, some of which specifically celebrated the event taking place practically (16 miles away) in their backyard.

The regular Baseball set is well known of course, and sported a design intended to show off the player photos unencumbered by graphics:

That popping out of Stallard's cap from the photo into the frame of the card was a feature of the set and most player cards exhibit this flourish. Now this is all well trod territory but I'm betting most collectors have not seen the 1964 gift box Topps came up with. I'm guessing this was offered after the season had concluded to burn off extra stock:

That image was provided by Friend o'the Archive Tom Daley and it's also appeared over at Sports Collectors Daily, which has some additional details, including a look at the sell sheet, which you should click over to see. However, there is another interesting box from 1964, one that displays Stan Musial, who had retired after the 1963 season, as a possible coin (and inferred card) subject on the front panel:

Musial publicly announced he was retiring in August of 1963, so his use here by Topps seems to have been a deliberate ploy to get the kids buying up packs to find him. It was an early series box (which we will see evidence of below) and the design was eventually changed:

(Courtesy Rockhurst Auctions)

The Baseball Coins were the sole insert for the year and we'll get to them in a New York minute. First though, I just want to highlight the special cello packs Topps issued in '64:

(Courtesy Robert Edward Auctions)

That's a pretty good deal for a dime I'd say; love the red and see-through readability! Here's a peek at two of the coins (not the ones in this pack):

The Baseball Coins look to me like they were issued in three waves. There were 120 early subjects, likely split into smaller coin batches that may have been "overlaid" with each other at various points. Here's an old auction ad from Leland's showing a full sheet, with description:

Some sources indicate the coins were found only in third, fourth and fifth series packs but this Salesman's Sample makes me believe it was really from the get-go:

Mantle, of course, was a first series card and the back of this sample really makes it clear the coins were there along with the cards; now! in fact:

Note the Musial coin image on that front panel!

Later in the season, Topps issued a "high number" series of 44 "All Stars", which were part of their multi-pronged All Star attack.  These had a special design, with blue backgrounds for the AL, red for the NL:

Yes, Lumpe was indeed an All Star that season...

...but many of the players in the All-Star subset were not.  Instead, Topps was going with players who had once or still were, All Stars. There's 44 players in the All Star subset, but 47 subjects in the master series as Wayne Causey was shown on the reverse of his coin as both an NL and AL player with the Athletics, and Chuck Hinton also managed the same trick, albeit with the Senators.  And of course, Mickey Mantle appears as a switch hitter on two different AS coins. Unlike Causey and Hinton though, the Mick has two distinct poses. I make that a 165 coin base set then, plus two variations but your mileage may vary. 

Hinton was a 1964 All Star but Wayne Causey never played on a major league All Star team. He was quite solid in 1963 and in '64 but I can't find any kind of information indicating he was selected and then could not participate; in fact he played in 157 games in '64 so I doubt he was injured and needed to pull out of the game. Maybe Topps believed he would be the representative for the Athletics, but instead that honor went to Rocky Colavito, who was having a really good season, so it's a definite headscratcher.

At least Topps was able to predict the NL starting pitcher for this sell sheet, which also features the phantom Musial:

We now turn to the Baseball Stand-Up set. This 77 subject green and yellow themed issue was not marketed as an All Star set but was essentially one in spirit.  The wrapper was a colorful beacon, in one and five cent form.  Here's the penny version: 

The sell sheet for this standalone set was pretty instructional, with this one straight from Woody Gelman's files:

Here's an uncut sheet of the set, which some notorious short prints. Coupled with the self-destructive nature of these cards, those SP's, which I covered in 2013 (!) can be tough indeed:

(Courtesy Robert Edward Auctions)

One set that did give an actual nod to the All Star theme was the one we refer to today as Giants or sometimes Giant Size All Star cards. The retail wax box was a thing of beauty:

(Courtesy SABR Baseball Cards blog)

By the way, that was not how Ford's card appeared in the set:

Whitey's does not, but some of the card backs reference events from the 1964 All Star Game itself. Check out the narrative on Johnny Callison's:

Talk about hot off the presses!  However, that attempt to harness post game energy flopped big time, and Topps had a gazillion leftovers. Reports from L.A. fans of the Sixties indicate they were sold at Dodger Stadium in made up packs of 25 for years and a well-known dealer purchased an immense lot of them in the Seventies.  You can find nice cards today with ease but don't be deterred by the numbers, it's one of the best looking things Topps ever put out.

A Baseball Photo Tatoo release also peppered the candy counters of the day and it's a little hard to find examples in nice shape. 

Here is the immortal Don Lock:

There were also twenty team logos mixed in:

I should probably revisit this set as it has a fair number of variations and nuances. For another day then but before we go, there's three more sets to deal with, one of which was 1964-adjacent and one of which was more traditional.  In reverse order, the traditional in the form of Bazooka's annual release:

Coupled with its amazin' box insert, long sheets of Bazooka Baseball Stamps:

These were advertised on the end flaps of the box, with ten different sheets available:

As if that wasn't enough, Topps also supplied fifty images for the 1964 Wheaties Baseball Stamps:

1964 was very much the year of Baseball and Beatles (with the mop tops not yet covered here in any kind of depth) for Topps.  Both were concentrated efforts that really helped fill the ol' coffers!

Sharman Gets Squeezed

The first Topps Basketball set was issued to commemorate the 1957-58 NBA season. Its eighty subjects offered a gaggle of rookie cards and was the first nationally issued set to solely feature pro hoops stars since Bowman's 1948 effort.  The Topps Vault offered some of the player contracts over the years and they contain some intriguing details. Here, take a look at Bob Cousy's:

Frank somebody was the Topps agent but I can't make out the last name (anyone know?). As per paragraph three, Topps clearly contemplated issuing Basketball cards in the following years but they ended up with 10 Million leftovers at the end of the season, or enough to make 125,000 sets! So that killed any thought of that and Fleer would be the next NBA partner in 1961-62 (and also failed to issue any follow-ups for more then two decades). The mention of Blony along with the expected Bazooka in the wording is not something I've seen before, but Topps was working hard to promote the bubble gum brand they had acquired in the Bowman buyout. They even highlighted it on the back of the wax packs:

Question time: which player is featured on the front of the pack?

There's only three players who used that number in 1957-58: Dick Atha, Ernie Beck and Larry Friend, all of whom are in the set and none of whom are posed like that.  It could just be generic but drop me a line if you have any thoughts.

The vault (I was unaware they slabbed some of their stuff when it was active) also had the check as cashed by Cousy:

Bob Cousy still walks this planet at the age of 97.  Did you now that after he retired from the Celtics following the 1962-63 season, he came back and played a handful of games with the Cincinnati Royals in 1969-70? You could look it up.

Here's a closer look at that back side.  The endorsement:

And the clearance stamps:

Not all contracts were created equally though.  Here's Bill Sharman's:

He only got half of what Cousy did! Clearly Topps never got this message:

Tom Heinsohn got squeezed as well:

Sy Berger snagged those two. Cousy was probably the biggest star in the league but Bob Pettit also got $100.  The other two contracts I've seen, for Dolph Schayes and Rod Hundley both show $50 payments.

Hundley, in fact, was signed in October 1956, while all the others here were from September and October 1957, so Topps was contemplating the set for some time:

Note, however that Sy signed the contract over a year later.  The Topps check was also issued in 1957, a couple of weeks before it was formally executed.

More offical Blony action! I'm sure there's more to this set's story but for now, the boilerplate is all we have.

Ring Thing

The Topps Vault may no longer be in operation but they left behind a rich trove of images that, despite some hiccups with identification here and there, are a fabulous historical resource. I have a large amount of scans from the Vault piled up on my hard drive and while reviewing a gaggle of them today, re-realized there were Topps file copies of some contracts buried among the photographic images. Today we'll look at those by covering some subjects in the 1951 Ringside set.

These contracts were very basic agreements, unlike those being offered to baseball players at the time via the agents used by Topps, surely due to the fact the Shorin's didn't intend to issue annual boxing (and wrestling) sets.  Ringside, which featured a good number of retired boxers, is missing some big-name pugilists (Jack Dempsey for one) but they sure had a nice roster of talent overall. Here's a release agreement signed by the infamous Abe Attell:

Perhaps he took some merchandise instead of additional cash but I suspect this is just one of two parts, where the other was a little bit more involved and actually executed by Topps.  Here's Barney Ross's:

Topps used Arthur Susskind, Jr. as an agent for the set.  The son of a famous, hard-hitting boxer and longtime ring referee nicknamed Young Otto, the younger Susskind was also well known in the world of the sweet science and indeed in many sports; among other things he was the ring announcer at Madison Square Garden and a publicist for various New York based pro teams and leagues.

Despite the absence of the Manassas Mauler, whose famous Broadway restaurant near the old Garden was humming in 1951 (and exterior shots of which could be found in all sorts of places), many famous names did end up in the set.  Here's Jake LaMotta's release:

Some releases didn't have a dollar amount represented on them and I'm not sure why, Here we see Jersey Joe Walcott signed off using his ring sobriquet:

Walcott slugged his way to the Heavyweight championship in 1951, taking the belt from Ezzard Charles. The other signee here was his manager Felix Bocchicchio, who was a violent man with a criminal past. They look pretty chummy here but boy, boxing really attracted all types of unsavory characters:

(Courtesy camdenhistory.com)

These are all of a kind but the names involved were so famous, I want to highlight a couple more.  Joe Louis was about as big a name as there ever was in the boxing game:

Right behind him in "Q-score" would be Rocky Marciano, who would defeat Walcott in early 1953 for the Heavyweight crown. Here's Rocky abusing the speed bag:

 

Seems like Marciano was good at baseball too:

Another release, another sobriquet:

I'm not sure if Susskind was the sole agent for Topps; the set has 96 subjects and not all of them were even boxers. I mentioned wrestlers, here's one:

Ringside, as we can see, was another of the panelized sets Topps was releasing at the time, where gaudy five-cent packaging was designed to deliver, well, a knockout:

The reverse has what I'm betting is the first use of the word "fistiana" on a pack of trading cards:

Ringside is a fairly deep and very important set in terms of documenting famous boxers. I feel it's quite underappreciated today, in a world where UFC dominates the field of people knocking each other senseless for fun, money and entertainment.