Yellow, It's Me

An update post today kids, as some bits o'info have flowed in on 1974 Baseball team card markings covered here a month ago.

Here's a copy of the Red Sox "dot" team card from '74, as forwarded by Keith Olbermann. The offending blip is left of the team name:

Two points: that missing patch of sky looks like a spot of the card was lost; this is not indicative of how the dot variations look.  Also, something else is amiss, namely the left edge of that photo, which looks that way on many of the examples of the card I've seen, dot or no dot:

The problem seems to be a leftward shift in the yellow ink pass, this closeup reveals a yellow halo around the heads of the players and you can see the yellow bar has been pushed outside the outer black neatline:

1974 is not a year known for sharp, well-defined images but that's pretty bad.  Some Red Sox team cards came through ok though, although that gnarly strip of fuzz hard left in the image remains, so that seems to be a prep or proofing problem:

I do find it interesting that the three cards that have markings on their front all have yellow frame lines or team names (Pittsburgh has both, Oakland just one-the frame line). If I did this right, these team cards also all have yellow present:

Yellow Team Name: New York Yankees, Cleveland Indians, Houston Astros

Yellow Frame Line: Kansas City Royals, Chicago White Sox, Philadelphia Phillies, San Diego Padres

I don't know if any of this is significant or not but it may help narrow down the potential pool of marked team cards in 1974.

Escondido A Plena Vista

I was thumbing through the 1989 Guernsey's Topps Auction catalog recently, looking for something or other and realized, after having owned this publication for over thirty-five years, that it contained some images that were used for the 1960 Venezuelan Baseball Tattoos.  Yes, mixed in among the 1960 US Baseball Tattoo images and some from the 1965 Baseball Hot Iron Transfers were illustrations only seen in the South American set, last discussed here and stalled at nineteen confirmed subjects (plus another that is inferred with a high degree of confidence).

Well, it's no longer stalled at nineteen/twenty subjects, or at least I don't think so.  Take a gander at this page from the catalog:

Three distinct looks, three distinct sets! This really makes me think the universe of potential Venezuelan subjects is larger than my previously posited 24.

Some notes:

A) A total of 16 Venezuelan subjects, some already known, run across the top row and part of the second.

B) The captions for those 16 were added for the catalog and do not form part of the original art.

C) The missing caption on the left side of cell A21 is Ruben Amaro:

D) The (very) partial piece of a Zoilo Versalles Venezualan example that is thought to exist is not on display here. 

E) The "Cepida" image is not the same one used for Orlando Cepeda in the US set. If you compare the stateside tattoo...

...to the possible Venezuelan tattoo it's quite obvious:

I think the "possible" Venezuelan Cepeda drawing is taken from his 1961 Topps card, which further cements the issue as coming out after the 1960 US MLB season:

F) Ten additional "Venezuelan subjects" appear likely based upon the imagery in the catalog:

1. Matty Alou
2. Luis Aparicio (previously surmised as a possible subject)
3. Chico Fernandez
4. Tony Taylor
5. Felipe Alou
6. "Clio" (Elio) Chacon
7. Felix Mantilla
8. O. "Cepida"
9. Jose Pagan
10. Chico Cardenas

In terms of nationality, the Alou's were both from the Dominican Republic, while Chico Fernandez, Tony Taylor and Chico Cardenas were Cuban,  We know already that Cepeda was Puerto Rican, as were Felix Mantilla and Jose Pagan. Finally (at last!), Aparicio and Chacon were Venezuelans, with the latter also surmised as the other best bet as representing that country in the set. 

G) Excluding the possible Venezuelan issue-only subjects, a review of the 1960 US Baseball Tattoo and 1964 Hot Iron Transfers checklists show that if a player's image was in this lot, a corresponding issued tattoo exists.

H) It's certainly a coincidence but there's 55 player images from the two different tattoo sets on the page, which matches up with the 1960 US issue in terms of individual player count. There is known overlap between both sets and we see that here in a way.

I) Given all this along with the fact these types of tattoo sets usually have a total subject count divisible by eight that, I was previously hoping that at least three additional players could be found to be part of the Venezuelan issue. I note that five of the Venezuelan subjects are on this sheet in US form: Wynn, Drysdale, Lary, Groat and Woodling. Toting this up, it appears we have rounded the next divide-by-eight corner, so perhaps the final count will hit 32. With 96 subjects in the US set (thanks to various extras added by Topps) that divisor being 8 could also extrapolate out to 32 and the 16 shown here neatly represent half that number, which is a macro kind of thing with Topps in terms of laying out various sets. So, are we missing two subjects still?!

Of high interest then, is Bob Gibson who pitched for three MLB off seasons in the VWL from 1959-61 and then a winter in Puerto Rico. Gibson was also a participant, for two different teams, in the 1961 and 1962 Inter-American Series, the tournament that replaced the Caribbean World Series that year due to the shutdown of pro ball in Cuba by Fidel Castro in 1960 and the subsequent banning of MLB players from the country by Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick. Gibson as a possible additional Venezuelan subject does seem plausible. He is not depicted in the U.S. set.

Possible Subject 32 is another matter. Over 100 different players were involved in the combined 1961 & 1962 tournaments and each team was allowed to "import" a number of players from elsewhere (eight to ten from what I can tell). This led to a large contingent of MLB players on each roster. 

The Inter-American Series was held in February each year, just before Major League spring training kicked off. The inaugural 1961 IAS included a squad each from Panama and the Dominican Republic facing off against two teams from the host country (which was allowed an extra club) and the 1961 tournament was waged in Venezuela. The Series was a major event and the culmination of various Caribbean Winter League seasons, so interest was high.

Unfortunately, it's hard to find rosters for the 1961 series, although some scattered clues are out there.  Assessing all of this, I am very much coming around to the idea that this first Inter-American Series was the inspiration for the set, but that it could have been issued in conjunction with, or even after, with the 1962 event, which was held in Puerto Rico. In addition to the host country's two squads, Panama and Venezuela also competed that year and the rosters of the participating teams are more completely documented than 1961's, although a few gaps exist in what I've determined to date. 

The questions then are:

1) Was the Venezuelan tattoo set intended for 1961 and/or 1962? 

2) How many US players were mixed in?

I think it's plausible the set was issued in each year, just like the Venezuelan Topps card sets that saw a release every other year after 1960 (1962, 1964, 1966) and served double duty. It's also possible a handful of players were changed out, and if so, it's far more likely to my mind that existing subjects from the US set were subbed in as the artwork was already done by Topps. I am guesstimating they would not bother with creating a mere handful of new subjects for a re-release. However, there is a lot of overlap between the active major leaguers in the "possible" pool, not all of them Winter League or AIS participants, plus there are non-US-born natives who played in both MLB and the various Winter Leagues and tournaments (Luis Aparicio for instance). A real possibility too is some Winter League players who did not participate in the Inter-American Series were included in the set beyond those we already know.

One thing I believe may be in favor of a 1962 Venezuelan release is the inclusion of Frank Lary as a subject. He was also in the 1960 US release and his MLB campaign that year was pretty solid, but 1961 saw him go 23-9 and finish third in the Cy Young balloting (across both leagues at the time) and seventh in the AL MVP tally for a strong Tigers squad that finished second to the Yankees.

The Venezuelan tattoos are so hard to find we may never get an answer to what comprises the full set but I would like to narrow down the pool of possibilities with some more research.  First though, I'd like to see if any of you Archivists out there have any thoughts.

A Political Basketball

Continuing last week's look at Topps Presidential sets, in 1965 they took a theme more well known to baseball card collectors, foil embossed portraits, and married it with a larger sized "tall boy" card in creating the Presidents and Famous Americans set. Gold foil borders were used all around too, as Topps honored all 35 U.S. Presidents at the time plus 9 Famous Americans. Covered HERE in more detail, the set used five different colors, with black reserved for Chief Executives who had been assassinated, like the card of John F. Kennedy:

The backs were pure white and as you might imagine, the set is a condition nightmare.

Three years later, as protests rocked the 1968 race, Topps came out with, well, a card of a guy running for Pennsylvania governor:

Yup!  I have more on this HERE and I've always assumed he had something to do with greasing the skids for the big Topps plant move from Brooklyn to Duryea in the state in 1966, at a time when he was the Lieutenant Governor.

Spoiler alert-he won! I guess there was a sports-related angle there, as we can see Shafer captained the Allegheny College basketball team, where attended school from 1934-38.

So that was it for 1968!  1972 brought back the U.S. Presidents, with a nice twist. Topps again used the original 1952 Bowman illustrations they had already re-used in '56 for all the Presidents through Eisenhower:

The backs didn't change either:

What did change was the creation of three new portraits for:

No. 34 JFK

No. 35 LBJ

and No. 36 Richard M. Nixon:

That wiped out the three historical events cards but Topps was in the habit of making up card sets divisible by 11 at the time, so they added several subjects in the form of that year's hopeful Candidates.  These were:

37 Shirley Chisolm

38 Hubert Humphrey

39 John Lindsay

40 George McGovern

41 Edmund Muskie

42 Edward Kennedy

43 George Wallace

OK, so that's not 44.  I'm not sure why the dropped a candidate as they could have used Pat Paulsen or some similar "unreal" pretender but they clearly did not.  So there is an obvious slot for a double print and while I have no clue as to who got the honor, I'd like to think it was Grover Cleveland!

Here's the Shirley Chisholm card, which will require a little more explanation in a minute:

The Candidates had backs quite close to those of the Big Boys:

Back to Ms. Chisholm shortly.  But first, for 1972 Topps provided an insert in the form of a Campaign Poster. There were 15 of these and the selection was somewhat random:

1. Abe Lincoln For President

2. Vote Republican William H. Taft Our Next President

3. Kennedy For President

4. I'm Wild About Harry Truman

5. I Like Ike For President

6. Stay Cool With Coolidge For President

7. All The Way With LBJ For President

8. Generally Speaking I'd Vote For Grant

9. Win With Woodrow Wilson

10.Washington Our Nation's Leader

11. Teddy Roosevelt For President

12. Our Next President Thomas Jefferson Father Of The Constitution

13.Vote Democratic Franklin D. Roosevelt Our Next President

14. Vote for Hoover For President

15. God Bless America John Quincy Adams 6th U.S. President

Here's ol' JQA himself:

That's not really a campaign poster and I'm not even sure that's even John Quincy Adams depicted there but maybe that's nitpicking.  You can see how they were folded twice to fit in the packs and when opened they measure 4 7/8" x 6 15/16".

Now, that's the last set of U.S Presidents Topps issued for a long time, sort of.  In 1976, Topps partnered with Holsum Bread and re-released the 1972 set, minus the Candidate cards.  Things got a little interesting though.  They had to wedge in Gerald Ford, which was easy enough:

The back is the same as all the other 1972 cards:

As part of this promotion, they also amended the Nixon card to reveal his resignation.  

The Ford card and the Nixon resigns variant are tougher than any of the other cards spread across these two interconnected sets. Which brings us back to the Chisholm card. 

Chris Benjamin, in his Sport-Americana Price Guide days, mentions her card was pulled for the Ford card.  OK, but the Candidates do not appear in the Holsum re-issue (branded still as Topps -T.C.G.) in case you missed the indicia. So that seems like an intentional misdirect, which he used to sprinkle in to some of his work to catch plagiarists (sigh). Pretty sure I'm correct on this point as Holsum issued an album - imaged here by Friend o'the Archive Ken Bush - for the set that specifically mentioned 37 cards to collect, all of them actual Presidents:

Nice Bicentennial tie-in, despite the cheesy quality of the album!

Presidential Succession Plan

Very early in their "novelty" issuing history, Topps seized upon the U.S. Presidency as fertile ground for sets that were meant for entertainment but also had an educational angle.  Two of their first issued sets were Golden Coin (click HERE for some background) and the intertwined It Happened To A President, a set of twenty comic strip mini-biographies of many Chief Executives. These were packaged and sold together, appearing just after the first post-World War 2 U.S. Presidential Election. Golden Coin is not all that interesting to me as a novelty as it was forged by a third party and it's also pretty basic. It Happened to a President, though, is a bit more fun:

Here's how the original release of IHTAP looked. The set is attributed to 1949 based upon the outer Golden Coin wrapper, even though I'm pretty sure it saw the light of day as the election was ongoing. But 1949 is the common hobby attribution and I'll just leave that here...

These comics were each affixed to the back of a Golden Coin wrapper, and were quite large at 5 1/8" x 6 3/16":

That scan does not do it justice-these were a dazzling foiled gold color that would have been quite eye-catching.

While IHTAP does not get recognition for a 1952-53 issue, I believe Topps just reused the same comics as they repurposed the Golden Coins possibly in plastic, vs. the original metal. I say this because Harry Truman got a pair of glasses somewhere along the way, plus I can't see Topps missing a presidential election cycle at the time. Here's Harry:

The conventional hobby wisdom has the sets reappearing as an OPC issue in Canada in 1956, which seems odd but is supported by the Golden Coin wrapper indicia.  It Happened To A President got red and black accents for this release (sorry for the miscut):

Topps slightly revised the IHTAP subjects for 1956.  The original 1948-49 set and this re-release shared nineteen subjects, in this ordering:

1. Andrew Jackson

2. George Washington

3.Ulysses S. Grant

4. Theodore Roosevelt

5. Abraham Lincoln

6. George Washington

7. Andrew Jackson

8. Grover Cleveland

9. Zachary Taylor

10. James Monroe

11. James A. Garfield

12. John Adams

13. John Quincy Adams

14. Abraham Lincoln

15. James Madison

16. Franklin Roosevelt

17. Thomas Jefferson

18. Calvin Coolidge

19. Woodrow Wilson

20. (See below)

As you can see, not all Presidents were treated equally.  First of all, the mediocre ones are almost non-existent, except for one.  Here, The Simpsons will tell you who:

All but one of the other ignorees served a single term (or less), save for William McKinley, and Harry Truman, who was in office when the set debuted. 1956 saw the twentieth subject changed from William H. Harrison to Dwight Eisenhower. The only possible thing I can think of as to why the set was an OPC release is his presence.  I can't find his comic proper, so the original artwork will have to do:

Bowman's 1952 U.S. Presidents set got a quick re-release after Topps bought them out in early 1956, which also utilized the slightly different dimensions used by their former competitor. Here's the Bowman Ike, front and back:

Unlike the action-packed front, the back is very plain (and may peg the set to 1953, not '52):

Compare that to the Topps version, which at least added some color (the fronts were not altered):

Ike was the 33rd man to be President and to top off the 36 card set, three subjects, all "prez-adjacent," had to be wedged in.  Bowman (and then Topps four years later) went with:

No. 1 Washington Takes Command

No. 2 Declaration of Independence 

and No. 7 Burning of White House

The horizontal nature of these three makes finding centered examples quite difficult.

Golden Coin and IHTAP were then shelved for good, while U.S. Presidents would not see the light of day again for another sixteen years. Instead Topps issued a series of stamps circa 1962 that included all 34 POTUS through JFK.  Here's four:

Bazooka also got into the political mix with a 33 card package design set that presented three at a clip in particular order:

1964 though, was commemorated in a different way.  Topps issued a slapdash set of cards following the assassination of John F. Kennedy:

The backs were prepared just as quickly as the front, I'd say:

Topps did, however, address the 1964 Presidential Campaign with a set called Johnson Vs. Goldwater:

Not the worst design but as a card set?  I dunno....

Here's the ultra-exciting (not) back:

Topps mixed things up a bit after the 1964 election; we'll get into that next time out.

Riddle Me This

Following their move to Duryea, PA in the winter of 1966 and subsequent period of settling in, Topps started toying with the use of what are usually referred to as commodity or production codes toward the end of that year. These codes, documented, in a way, the vast majority of their output for decades thereafter.  I've shown and tried to explain these here several times - perhaps haphazardly - in the past but today I'm trying to sift through the origins of these little strings of numbers, which as we all know, generally followed this kind of pattern (example taken from 1972 Baseball): 0-401-90-01-2.

Here's a closeup of the code:

The first digit represents the medium (wrapper, box, sheet) and the second two the product number (which also covered pure confectionery products, somewhat reset every year and is loosely tied to the chronological order of release within that year as well). Sometimes the code for a product issued series-by-series could slightly change. The third set of digits is for the packaging format code, while the fourth batch represents an iteration number, documenting meaningful changes in some aspect of the release such as revised retail box or pack artwork. The last, single, digit is often said to represent the year of conception but that's not entirely true. This often does tie to the year of conception (and 95% of the time, release) and can never represent a date after the release year but sometimes (there's that 5%) can signify the one before. So a set with a final digit of -2 could have been released in 1973 but not 1971.Worth noting, the annual Baseball sets have this number matching the season of release, presumably tying to some form of contractual wording with the specific league and/or player's union regarding payment of royalties.  

As mentioned, thanks to another superb sussing out by Friend o'the Archive by Lonnie Cummins, this use of the commodity codes is well known in the hobby but does not match the packing date codes stamped on each shipping carton (the solution to which can be found here). So, the commodity code  represents an internal green light for production as it ultimately details a "Bill of Materials" code. This was assigned and authprized by the Topps Bill of Materials manager, who (possibly) oversaw and (definitely) coordinated with such disparate departments such as Manufacturing, Engineering and Shipping but also had to dovetail with others such as Woody Gelman's New Products and Ben Solomon's Art Departments.  In essence, the code was assigned when a project intended for full release was formally started and the costs associated with producing and distributing said product needed to be tracked, all of this happening once the BOM Manager gave it the thumbs up.

Some exceptions did occur. Test issues from some time in 1966 until 1973 or so were not always tracked via any kind of numbering system found on the issued boxes or wrappers.  After that, Topps began using using a much shorter T code for tests. In addition, most products that were imported from abroad, such as some of the metal pin issues, and merely repackaged (and sometimes rebranded) and then sold as a Topps release (i.e. not manufactured by Topps but merely distributed instead) had no codes at all. That simply meant these projects were tracked internally via some other system. Products that contained an insert, which was another 95% situation, did not have a separate code for them, although a handful of times even that was not the case.

Of utmost interest are the annual sports releases, primarily baseball, where, as noted above, the BOM code date matches the intended season of issue. This does not always apply to some of the myriad baseball test issues roughly running from 1967 to 1971; some of those have a BOM code that predates the year of issue. A non-recurring project, such as sets timed to Valentine's Day, would usually have a code also signifying the year prior to issue, as it took several months for most of these to be prepared, tested and then tweaked for general release.

I've tried to track down the start of these codes and it seems like they all may have started with the Batman Color Photo (aka Bat Laffs set):

 Check out this box bottom:

That's 454-06-1 snaking up from the bottom right corner.  The expected prefix indicator digit is missing, and it's unclear what 06 refers to (probably not the year, as we shall soon see). That trailing -1 could be the iteration number, in this case the first iteration. 

As for the wrappers, no code was imprinted on them. However, a revised box was used to sell the Riddler Back cards:

That's pretty much the greatest Topps box art ever! The bottom of some didn't have a code though, although to be fair it was a generic box bottom used that year for several releases:

There is a catch though-some of the Riddler Back box bottoms did show a code: 444-06-1-6

Throwing me a little, however is this wrapper for the Riddler Backs:

That code reads: 444-01-1-6.  This somewhat matches up with the cello box code for the series...

(Courtesy Lonnie Cummins)

... which reads 444-046-1-6. So that's not quite there yet.  By the way, there was a special Rak Pak header created for Bat Laffs:

The Riddler Backs also got one, a sure sign Topps was making bank on Batmania;  it's also a thing of beauty:

The green header has no coding but the yellow one does:  444-029-1-6. It seems like -029 could refer to the pricing but I think it's just a coincidence.

At least two other sets with non-conforming codes were issued in 1966:

Green Hornet Stickers
Display Box:    466-06-1-6
Wrapper:          466-01-1-6

Lost In Space
Shipping Case: 470-10-1-6

Topps seems to have fumbled around a bit in '66 looking for a consistent code but they nailed it pretty quickly. By the time Rat Patrol came around the system was set:

That code?  It reads:

The codes were also assigned to pure confectionery products so they are hard to fully track but Rat Patrol has to be one of the earliest ones to use the familiar cadence.

There's a lot more to unpack with these codes (and all the myriad others) but that's the 101/102 Level looksee.