Quite The Pane

Proofy goodness today campers!  We're talking 1969 Baseball Stamps, the first Topps sports stamp offering to be retailed in its own packs (1962 Famous Americans-a.k.a. Stamp Gum- beat it to market) and the first of any sort to be sold with its own album along for the ride inside the pack.

Friend o'the Archive Shane Hardie has turned up a super nice 30 stamp partial proof sheet from this set:

That is really the worst obscuring of a team logo I have ever seen adorning John Roseboro's cap! I mean, match the color at least. Sharp looking partial, wouldn't you say?

Here is something I have never seen before, proof sheets of some of the stamp albums:

 Dig this "Bob" Clemente closeup:

Do you think he was peeved at Topps calling him Bob?  I'll be he was.

The pack was pretty nice for this set:

That's just an ordinary wrapper, not a proof. I never noticed it before but the production code/commodity number actually ends in 8, usually (but not always!) a sign of the year a set was issued  as it sometimes indicates the year a project was conceived. There seems to be some inconsistency in this practice, which began in 1966 and it's resulted in dating for a few sets being off by a year in the 1966-71 timespan.  After that there were enough hobby publications to document the various issues without needing to resort to the code.