Cut From The Same Cloth

It's some almost 50 year eye candy to look at today kids.  I've covered the 1970 Cloth Baseball Stickers here before and while I can't really offer any new information, I can show a dozen examples that popped up in a Heritage auction earlier this month.

A brief recap is in order first. Topps used somewhere between 33 and 66 subjects to run off what I estimate to be between two and four examples of a second series proof sheet (66 subjects proofed) in a cloth sticker format, usually with backing, likely as a materials test.  Some subjects are only known as "partials" where just a portion of the sticker survived and there is at least one where it doesn't look like a backing could have been applied. They would repeat this process in 1972 (33 hard to find stickers that were never released) and 1976 (2 subjects, 4 different materials, in-house only) baseball subjects before they formally issued a 55 subject cloth sticker set in 1977.  While baseball was the experimental category, the tests may have also assisted with things like Flags Of The World (1970 saw a test issue with cloth stickers) and Wacky Packages Cloth Stickers (1973), not to mention the 1973-74 Baseball Action Emblems and sticker inserts in various sports sets of time that used similar material.

I'm not sure how the 1970 Cloth Baseball Stickers first entered the hobby pipeline but it's probable they exited the Topps premises in Brooklyn via the Bill Haber and Woody Gelman backdoor not long after they were made, as a July 1972 Fred McKie article in The Trader Speaks states "I understand that there are at least 66 in the set."

Stirling Sports Catalog, a price guide and reference that predates the Sport-Americana's by a couple of years, describes 66 subjects being known.  Those are the only references I can find with a count that high and there's been no evidence since to substantiate anything near that number. It is, however, theoretically possible based upon the uncut sheet array.

Twenty two of them were offered in a Card Collectors Company ad in the September 1979 issue of The Trader Speaks.  As we all know, numbers divisible by 11 are pretty normal fare for Topps issues due to this being their default row length on the production sheets but this time it may be an accident as the left and right columns of cards have not yet been seen as full stickers. This ad was the culmination of about a 16 month run where Card Collectors Co. and a couple of other sellers uncapped a string of Topps test and proof issues through TTS (and likely other hobby pubs of the time as well), a gusher of issues likely due to the death of CCC founder and all-around Topps MVP Woody Gelman on February 9, 1978.

What I can tell you is 30 subjects are presently known., 27 full and 3 partial and another (#262 Padres Rookies) is strongly suggested to exist as a full sticker due to the real estate used to carve out the stickers.  The below list details these 30 known subjects and identifies the twenty two offered by Card Collectors Co in '79.  The Heritage examples are all in this grouping as well, although they may not be the same ones as two examples of some are known. "VAR." means the sticker image differs from the regularly issued card image. However, as you can plainly see above the Fred McKie TTS article stated he owned a Higgins and that it matched the issued card.  I'm not sure what to make of that statement and have to presume it's a mistake unless a variant sticker of Higgins shows up that matches the regular issue.

This is the known checklist as of December 2018

	200		AL PLAYOFF #2	ORIOLES
TTS	167		BURBACH	YANKEES
TTS	256		DAVALILLO	CARDINALS
TTS	153		GENTRY	METS
TTS	208		GLADDING	ASTROS
	169		HALL, TOM	TWINS
TTS	216		HARTENSTEIN	PIRATES
TTS	257		HIGGINS (VAR.)	SENATORS
TTS	263		JOSEPHSON	WHITE SOX
TTS	238		LABOY	EXPOS
TTS	178		LEMASTER (VAR.)	ASTROS
TTS	210		MARICHAL	GIANTS
TTS	250		McCOVEY	GIANTS
TTS	158		McNERTNEY	PILOTS
TTS	261		MOTTON	ORIOLES
TTS	146		MURPHY, DANNY	WHITE SOX
TTS	179		MURRELL	PADRES
TTS	160		NIEKRO, PHIL	BRAVES
	195		NL PLAYOFF #1	METS
	197		NL PLAYOFF #3	METS
TTS	177		NORTHRUP	TIGERS
	139		NYE	CARDS
TTS	163		O'BRIEN	RED SOX
TTS	226		PERRANOSKI	TWINS
TTS	259		REYNOLDS, TOMMIE	A'S
TTS	212		SANTORINI	PADRES
TTS	193		WEGENER	EXPOS
	242		ALSTON (PART.)	DODGERS
	144		CULP (PART.)	RED SOX
	252		PALMER, LLOYD (PART.)	PHILLIES

(UPDATE 12/2/18: Nye is now shown with the Cards, he was inferred to be with the Cubs in the original post. Topps managed a team change although he's shown in Cubs duds on the proof and sticker.  More info coming in on this set, an update post will be made).

That's 28 full stickers if you factor the Padres Rookies in, a figure noted previously here as being the possible limit of full stickers.  In addition to the three partials shown above five others may exist, again based upon how the proof sheet was setup:

206		BOYER, CLETE	BRAVES
182		HALL, DICK	ORIOLES
136		HARGAN	INDIANS
211		WILLIAMS, TED	SENATORS
189		YANKEES ROOKIES	YANKEES

That's 36 potentially.  If you look at the way the full stickers were proofed, it's clear the two left-most and right-most columns of the sheet contain all the partials.  If you then take the remaining possible subjects from the four known rows the stickers copied from the proof sheet, you also can see how the following eight subjects could be extant, one way or the other:

201		AL PLAYOFF #3	ORIOLES
133		CARROLL	REDS
176		HART	GIANTS
150		KILLEBREW	TWINS
166		OLIVER, AL	PIRATES
202		ORIOLES CELEBRATE	ORIOLES
141		PIRATES ROOKIES	PIRATES
243		SPARMA	TIGERS

That gets us to 44 actual and potential subjects, in whole or in part, or the four bottom-most rows of the sheet.  My take is that is the figure to use when contemplating what proofs were stickerized.

Whew!  OK then, here's some scans from the auction-these all went for a small fortune: from $3,120 all the way up to $9,000 for the Ryan!  I guess a couple of examples below are "almost" full sized and a few seem to fit together-you can see how the McNertney fit above the Niekro due to miscuts. Enjoy!