Tatoo Me

Well, it was inevitable. After Sunday's post on the two baseball tattoo (or tatoo) sets produced by Topps, I have been sucked in and am working on a much larger post concerning all of the Topps penny tattoo issues from 1948-67. That will take some time however and today, courtesy of Friend o'the Archive Doug Goodman, I will instead show a few illustrative scans from the baseball issues.

From 1960 here are a couple of the generic "plays":





Horizontally, the player autograph subset is also quite attractive:



While the team logos bring us back to the vertical:



In 1964 we also have some variety. Here are the three colors of wrapper, almost an All-American look:







The team logos seem a little less likable compared to four years prior:



But the real meat is in the player variations, all of which involve Hall of Famers. Harmon Killebrew resembles an old stoplight (no yellow):



While Sandy Koufax has the yellow but is geometrically differentiated:



We know The Mick wasn't yellow but he is here:



The Say Hey Kid also may not be a blockhead (autograph seekers may disagree) but Topps thought he was:



More to come on the Tattoo front, stay tuned!