Photo Finish

A large trove of Topps corporate items have just arrived here at the Main Topps Archives Research Complex, among them old sell sheets and some other goodies that will be the subject of a few upcoming posts.  There are also about a dozen publicity photos and I thought I would share some of the better ones today as much of the material is going to require a camera and will take me a while to get up on the blog.

Here is Sy Berger accepting an ash tray from Frank "Shag" Shaughnessy at the December 1963 Minor League Meetings:
  
Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick is shown here accepting a large donation from Topps President Joseph Shorin. This is undated but likely taken in the mid to late 50's.  I think Frick looks more like Shag's T206 than Shag does:

  

See the resemblance? 

Sy Berger with a display of some 1971 Topps Baseball Cards:

Joel Shorin, Mayor White and some kids along with Clarence Jones, October 3 1968 at the inaugural of a kids bike race in Boston. That is a 1968 uncut sheet they are holding and the kids are also holding five cent wax packs . Jones was a close friend and speech writer for MLK:



Those kids are holding 1968 wax packs by the way. Topps and the Shorin family were always major civic and civil rights supporters, stretching as far back as I have been able to find.

Here is an Abbott & Costello promo picture issued in conjunction with Bazooka advertising; I believe they either ran copies of this off for their sales and promotional staff or hung it in their offices as the captions are glued right to the photograph:

This also came with the transcription disc aircheck of the broadcast (or at least the ad) from what I believe was a February 5, 1949 radio broadcast of their Saturday morning children's show (the disc is dated February 7, 1949).  It's a shellac 78 from the looks of it and the darn thing won't spin on my CD player. This is just before the dawn of widespread television viewing.

More to come!