Forward Pass

I spied some Topps prototype cards over on eBay a little while back and given we're probably all in a post-Thanksgiving torpor, partially pigskin induced, it seems appropriate they were created to develop the 1968 Football set.

Fake/wrong names were pretty common on these, but everything about this one is correct (UPDATE 11/29/25 12:05 PM-except the image, as pointed out in the comments. It's Kyle Rote, of course, from his 1961 Topps card.)  Charlie Gogolak was the older brother of Pete Gololak and was taken as the seventh pick in the 1966 NFL draft by the 'Skins. He was the first placekicker ever selected in Round One:

That, and all the prototype images today, are from the BMW Sportscards eBay store BTW, you can also find them on the web: https://bmwcards.com/

How do we know this is a 1968 prototype?  Why Woody Gelman tells us so:

I think the Gogolak looks a little stodgy in execution but the boys at Topps were on it. Joe Pipick, on the other hand, is an entirely fictional creation:

I'm not even sure that a Patriots uniform, I think they had some shoulder piping and this #31 is solid red.  Maybe it's a college uniform; any thoughts out there? (UPDATE 11/29/25 10:18 AM-we already have an answer thanks to the first comment here; it's Don Bosselor, RB for the Redskins).

The back is blank on this one.

The 1968 Football cards as issued evolved to look like this:

That's a killer uni, isn't it?  The backs were definitely not blank:

So from stodgy to final, I'd say the boys at Topps really did a nice job on the graphics, front and back. It's an attractive set.

Here's first series uncut sheet, just for fun:

More football viewing this weekend!

Happy Birthday To Me

Yup, literally. Today's the day, so I thought it would be fun to run through my favorite teams and post some cards and things from my collection (and ex-collection) today; these are ones I've always liked to look at.

I was obsessed as a kid/tween with the Brooklyn Dodgers. This mostly came about as the result of reading Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer when it was still on the bestseller lists but also because they were my dad's team growing up (he was born in Brooklyn) and he knew a lot about them. After he married my mom, they went to a couple of games at Ebbets Field even. My own team was the Mets, and I became aware of them and baseball in general, around the time I started second grade in, wait for it, 1969. I only bought two packs of cards in that year but I was all in when the 1970's hit the shelves.

So when I entered the hobby in 1981, after only a half-decade away from buying my last cards in 1976 - a neat little bookend to my starting pair as it was only a pack or two - I nabbed two things immediately, (well three but I'm too embarrassed to talk about that error box of '81 Fleer). One was a 25 card lot of 1970 Topps Baseball cards, and while it didn't include this card, I would pick one up in fairly short order:

Jones was my favorite position player on the team and of course, my favorite pitcher was Tom Seaver, but his image from the '70 set has been seen so many times. I'll go with this one, another favorite, from 1972, even though he looks completely wasted in the color inset photo:

The other thing I bought was a 1951 Red Back of Duke Snider:

I actually sold off my complete runs of Topps and Bowman Brooklyn Dodgers cards some time back (regrets, I have a few, including those Jackie cards), but kept a team set of their 1956 Baseball Buttons.  Here they are now; love 'em:

I followed football too as a kid, not as fervently as baseball, but the New York Giants trained for a couple of years at a college near me and during the Summer of 1971 my dad would occasionally run me and a friend or two up there to watch practice, and then turn us loose to grab autographs in the player's parking lot. That part of the experience was eye-opening in several way, not the least of which was hearing several Giants bragging to each other in their cars about their latest amorous exploit. One time we saw a couple of other players chugging down codeine-laced cough syrup to dull their post-practice aches and pains. Interesting stuff for a nine-year old's ears and eyes!

One day, as he waited for us in the lot, my father got to talking with Spider Lockhart somehow and found out they had a mutual interest in toy trains.  My dad had quite the basement layout and he ended up inviting Spider over to see it.  Amazingly, Lockhart did come over to the house a few days later to check it all out. I have searched all through my late father's things and alas, have not been able to unearth any snapshots he took that day, even though I can still picture one of them.

It's earlier than that, by about four years or so but I love this 1968 Team Card, which is a tough short print from an obscure set. I also don't have any football cards from 1971 at present.

Basketball was both the Knick and Nets.  The Knicks were ascendant in 1969 and I saw them at the Garden a few times during their first Championship season. The Nets, who played even closer to our house at the gloriously disheveled Island Garden, were even more to my liking and I got to see some really down and dirty ABA games there, watching about twenty feet from the court, usually sitting in the equivalent of high school gym bleachers. This was obviously before they moved into the Nassau Coliseum. 

I knew Island Garden was subpar for a pro team  - couldn't have cared less - and the place hosted traveling, smaller, circuses and the like, so it always had a bit of a bouquet to it. I did see a real circus there once, replete with a side show that had a sword swallower, a fat lady and several other things that had been tamed out of the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey show by then. The Ringling Brothers show was a fun event at see Madison Square Garden (where visits always included a pre-event hot dog and orangeade at Nedicks in Penn Station) but it was nowhere near as cool as seeing a bearded lady and several freaks on display.

I never saw the 1969 Basketball cards but was a big consumer in 1970.  Here's my favorite all-time Knick:

Julius Erving wasn't a Net yet when I saw him at the Island Garden (his rookie year only, they moved to Nassau Coliseum late in the season), but he was sure there a handful of times, windmilling down the court as a Virginia Squire. It was quite the sight from twenty feet away and I still consider him the greatest player I've ever seen.  But I was a Nets fan, and here's a nice trio sticker that includes their point guard Bill Melchionni from the 1971-72 sticker set Topps included in the packs. ABA players came and went for the most part but Melchionni spent seven years in Nets red and blue:

These stickers have long been a favorite of mine (and are possibly my favorite set of all time). Here's the ABA in one glance:

I wasn't really a hockey fan until the Islanders came along in 1972.  I had half-heartedly followed the Rangers but was not that into the game then (actually, I'm still not that into it, nor basketball anymore). Here we see a Bruin turned Islander via the magic of the expansion draft; one of the bigger names to land on the team:

While I didn't know it as a kid, nine additional Islanders cards were issued by O-Pee-Chee in Canada, which were part of their much larger set. In fact, I had not even heard of O-Pee-Chee, no surprise given my Long Island residency. 1972-73 was the only year I bought Hockey cards and had stopped with Basketball after that as well.  I carried on with Football into 1974 and that was that.

I debated expanding this trip down memory lane to include non-sports cards but after some careful recollection, realized that until Wacky Packages came out in 1973, I only bought sets like the Donruss Fantastic Odd Rods and the wonderful Bob Laughlin-illustrated World Series cards from Fleer (which I guess technically were baseball cards). No Topps non-sports back then for me, my how things have changed.

My mom never threw out my cards (she would never have done so, in fact) but I sold off my childhood collection sometime around the end of the Seventies along with a ton of comic books. It helped fund my first car so I don't regret doing so, especially since I've reacquired most of the cards I collected as a kid since then.

Happy birthday to me!

What's The Big Idea?

I've not touched upon Woody Gelman's Topps archive (hey!) of Idea Sheets much during the long time this blog has been active but a few of these ephemeral bits o'paper came to light recently that made me take a closer look at them.  These pop up occasionally, usually on eBay and offer fascinating glimpses into the archaic ways of old filing systems at Topps, in this case maintained by the New Product Development Department. Don't get me wrong though, a lot of stuff was never really organized at all in the barely controlled chaos there.

Speaking of ancient ways to store things, Topps also had albums holding full reference sets of cards that were taped in front and back, that they kept in-house at Brooklyn HQ, just like we see below. Some set binders -not nearly close to all there would have been though -  were auctioned in 1989 by Guernsey's:

Nowadays you would, if physical storage was required, simply use binders with a variety of clear sheets and holders to keep the cards intact and free of adhesive. But until such things were developed and had widespread availability (late Seventies basically), paper and tape was the most secure and efficient method, despite the damage it would cause to the cards. Damage though, was not something Topps cared about, the cards were essentially without real value to the firm once the retail and overstock releases were over with.

They also stored uncut half-sheets for reference at Topps, often folded into quarters (yikes!) to allow for easier retrieval. Of course, a ton of material was tossed, with some rescued from the refuse bins out back over they years. If not discarded some long time after production had ceased, the myriad albums and folders and drawers that held what would have been a fairly complete record of production at the company ended up pillaged, auctioned and, in some cases just unknowingly scattered. And even then, stuff was thrown out all the time, often at the behest of Topps Art Director Ben Solomon but sometimes just at random. 

We are left with remnants to decode then, and while it's something I obviously enjoy doing, it can also be frustrating as there's almost never a complete picture that can drawn. So when I recently looked through some Idea Sheets, it occurred to me that Woody Gelman may have been a two timer!

Take a peek at this sheet for Freedom's War, a 1950-51 issue that's a favorite of mine:

It's pretty plain vanilla and uses sub-categorizing ("Freedom's War") for the set name.  As you can see too, some thought was at least given to cross-referencing the Idea Sheets, which happen sporadically.

Next we have a 1959 Fabian sheet, also non-descript and this one clearly delineates "copyright merchandise" above the set name, if only the date was filled in here and elsewhere:

Now, take a look at this sheet for Goofy Postcards:

Clearly this one was meant to be passed around at Topps, with a basic rating system added, along with a method to track progress. Progress of "what" is an open question but these sheets look to have served multiple purposes in the Topps offices as "published" is often seen written atop them. Like all the handwriting seen here, such all-caps scrawls were Gelman's. Hold the thought that Goofy was issued about two years before Fabian was created. Here, a 1963 Monster Midgee sheet follows suit.

Now I'm wondering if Woody kept two two storage systems, a double set of books if you will.  Freedom's War was one of many sets created by Gelman when he was partnered with his bestie Ben Solomon at their mid-century art agency. They spent a little more than a decade running the agency until they came in-house at Topps. It seems possible the early Idea Sheets, without the right side graphics, were from the Solomon & Gelman days, whereas some of the later sheets after their formal hiring seem a lot more Topps-centric.  But the chronology doesn't quite mesh and, even allowing for Topps being Topps and things never perfectly aligning, it seems plausible Woody indeed kept his own set, even while creating the official ones for the company. He may also have used what was at hand at times if one variety wasn't in easy reach, but it sure seems like he had two different archives at his disposal.

I seriously doubt this can be proven one way or the other, but it does fit in with Gelman's massive, personal intake of ephemera that was stored at his home with some, eventually, moved to various commercial spaces on Long Island over close to three decades. 

Football, You Bet!

Continuing from last week, the trove of 3-D protoypes recently auctioned by Heritage contained four subjects beyond the dozen Baseball players already dissected here. Let's start today with Football, U.S. style. Update: The PSA labeling references affiliation with Topps, I'm not sure if that's because they came from a Topps executive or whether Heritage has some details ting them in.

There are four known U.S. Football subjects in the 3-D prototypes, two of Bart Starr and two of Tucker Frederickson, who each appear in two different sizes.  The other Starr is larger than a normal card, more like 5x7 inches as is a Frederickson, although Tucker has the same pose on both sizes seen to date. This Starr is a lot nicer than the other, which has some condition issues:

You can see a little nub on the top border; these seem to have been produced much like the Kellogg's Baseball cards that would begin to appear in 1970, also using the Xograph process (which is a trade name used by Visual Panographics). As with the Baseball examples, the backs are all pristine, or close to it, with no back stamps. In a Freaky Friday kind of move, the larger Starr has no fake autograph!

If you scroll down the above link for the damaged Starr, a less damaged (and slightly tilty) Frederickson appears, showing pull marks at the upper left similar to those found on some issued Baseball examples. That's the same size as the one Heritage has, and it's a little more rectangular then the big Starr. I don't  have permission to show my scan of the larger Frederickson card but believe it measures roughly 7 x 9 inches.

This is all very interesting to me as the process was clearly being worked out with what was fairly new technology.  Topps had interest in overseas Football as well, no surprise as they had been selling internationally almost since their 1938 founding. Update: Again, the Topps affiliation on the label is noted.

We've seen this Cané before, although unlike the current example, with a backstamp.  Here's the unmarred example:

Note how squared off the card is. There is a Sarti offered by Heritage with the same characteristics:

Much like the "big boy" Frederickson, I don't have permission to show the scan in my files of the third European football, Rivera of Milan but it uses the same graphics as the Cané and is also squared off like these two.

Meanwhile, a really weird one from the Topps file copies is this Captain America:

The artwork seems a little off-model to me, although Cap was in the midst of a reboot, likely due to some legal maneuverings, starting in 1968, so who knows? What I do know is this Cap prototype sold for a whopping $52,460!

 I'll see if I can get the OK to post the mysterious 3-D scans mentioned above, stay tuned.

A Whole New Dimension

Heritage Auctions recently concluded an auction that featured the holdings of an ex-Topps executive, which is something that happens once or twice a year now it seems.  These consignments often yield rare, sometimes almost impossible, items and this latest batch contained several jaw-dropping pieces.  The executive is unnamed but Heritage theorizes he may have held a full array of examples from the entire run of prototypes that eventually resulted in the test release of 3-D Baseball in 1968.  That's incorrect as some, but not all, of the issued Baseball 3-D's are here and two of the known Football subjects are missing but the array is certainly impressive and appears to feature a good bit o'fresh to the hobby goodness. 

The consignment also has football (US and soccer-style) prototypes and a surprise non-sports subject.  Today I want to focus on baseball, given the wonderfully exciting World Series that will conclude tonight, capping the first MLB season to begin and end outside of the United States no less. Let's kick off with the semi-unicorn Brooks Robinson prototype-yowsa!

I last examined the 3-D Brooksies in detail way back in 2014 and found four extant copies were known, all of which have distinguishing features.  Among those features were varying degrees of damage and/or dirt on each each. It appears a fifth was hammered by Heritage in 2023 as well.

The front of the Heritage example is almost pristine, as is the back:

There's some extremely light foxing that's just barely there-this sucker is clean! This essentially unblemished look makes this a sixth extant example of this card by my reckoning. I don't normally get involved with prices here except for exceptional things like this and the hammer ended up being an impressive $134,200.

Next up is our old friend M. Clough, who usually goes by the moniker Yaz. At least one of these was known already and you can see it here, along with some other goodies we'll get to next time out. As with the Robinson card, the Clough/Yaz is also very, very clean:

That little white dot on the bill of his cap seems to be on the original source image.  $34,160 brought this one home, no doubt impinged by the lack of Yaz's name appearing.  It was pretty common to use fake names on such creations back then. The reverse looks even brighter than Brooksie's:

However, look at this image and the Robinson, you will note the absence of the Xograph back stamps on these, which identified the firm and also indicated they were samples to be returned to them.  The previously known "Clough" and one of the B. Robby's has a stamp (and another Robinson has remnants of one showing), so these were apparently meant for Topps to retain after that part of the process played out.

There were also ten 3-D Baseball cards in the batch, the three of which make up the known proofs that never made it to the test packs. I'll pass on copying all of them out here, just click over to Heritage to see.

The Robinson and Clough garnered AUT grades, whereas the three prototypes that come close to resembling the final product received two 4's and 5 from PSA.  The remaining seven issued 3-D cards range from PSA 4 to 8, although the backs all look pretty clean as well, save for some light foxing on a couple. So I'm not sure all of these were Xograph samples but it really doesn't matter, given the ongoing popularity of the 3-D Baseball set.

Football from all sorts of places next time out, plus the surprise!

Sundae School

Some of you may recall my semi-recent piece on Sparklers Bubble Gum. The US and Canadian releases differed a bit on these colorful 1960's offerings and the continued evolution of this multi-flavor confection on both sides of the 48th Parallel eventually led to it devolving into a specific flavor  offering.  That flavor was cherry, or flaming cherry to be precise, although it's possible other flavors were also jailbreaked:

It's not at all clear to me why a specifically flavored product had four unrelated fruits plus a schematic of the Coronavirus joining the cherry in orbit here.  I do note the spiky gumball was featured on both earlier products of this chewy confection, so that tracks given both were branded as Sparklers. I'm guessing they added cinnamon to the cherry flavoring to get the desired effect but this doesn't seem to be related to the Hot Bazooka flavor that came around in 1973.

The "new Grape" product flat beneath our flaming cherries is intriguing and there was a "new Cherry" as well; if this was all from an archive if some sort I'm guessing these products could have played a part in the evolution of Sparklers into good ol' flavored Bazooka (which is the Fruit Sundae" flavor as originally concocted):

This flat, which is from the US, possibly dates to 1967 (January if the inked in figure is correct but it may be a red herring), although I suspect the Flaming Cherry Sparklers were a couple of years earlier:

I'm still working on the stamp numbers off to the right as I feel like the second digit it a 5 and not a 3 but if it's the latter, the stamp was applied on June 8, 1967. (Update: 10/27/25: It does appear to be a 3, so it's June of '67.)

Will more Sparklers items show up?

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.