Sporting Life

A trio of lots in the recently concluded Love of the Game Fall Premier Auction opened a window into the past and yielded some unexpected surprises (is there any other kind?) related to Topps Sports Club. The Club and its newsletter has been covered here before but LOTG has unearthed "kits" for each of the three major sports seasons (baseball, football and a combined hockey/basketball) that show how much value Topps put into this marketing effort.

The baseball themed TSC entry in 1975 led off what was, I believe, a five issue run.  Check out what came in the envelope (not shown but included with this and the other lots I am examining here:

This is actually the least interesting of the three offered kits for reasons that will soon be apparent.  The certificate is pretty standard fare although it looks like the included flyer has upped the premium ante beyond what was found on your typical Bazooka Joe comic.  The newsletter is fabulous although I've looked at it more comprehensively in the past and dig that (paper) Steve Garvey photo! But the team checklist sheet is a stunner.  It was available through other offers I believe but it does make sense Topps would include it herein as the ad for the Club on their wax wrappers does state "sample cards" would be provided.

The football edition though, ups the sample ante considerably:

Topps Sports Club newsletter? Check!

Awesome Bob Griese photo? Check!  It's the first in the Sports Club "friends" style as well, the Garvey was not stylized at all.

Awesome team checklist sheet? Check!

Premium offers galore? Check!

Sample 1975 Football cards printed on thinner stock?  Check!  Wait, what......Yes, the auction description describes these as being on "slightly thin" stock!  I have to confess, that is something I have not seen described before. That should open a big can of worms!

Hockey and basketball had to settle for a combo mailing:

Those basketball checklist cards are tough-harder than the baseball and football ones from what I have seen although all but baseball are difficult. No hockey checklists though, and I wonder why as it looks like Topps was getting some help defraying costs from The Hockey News. It's also a bit odd to see the baseball samples (again on thin stock) here so late in the year, maybe they were with the baseball kit and got mixed in here?  I like the cover letter and while I didn't bid on this lot, would like to see what it says someday. Bobby Clarke looks like he's contemplating a penalty, no?

Three issues comprised Volume 1, Volume 2 would see baseball and football editions with photos of Joe Morgan and Lynn Swann respectively.  The whole thing then went belly up near as I can tell.  Were there thin stock samples provided in '76?  I do not know but would love to find out.

 

Party City

Friend o'the Archive Lonnie Cummins has been on fire recently, unearthing all sorts of old and interesting pictures of things as he continues his quest of sorting out and documenting the 126 "T" codes Topps used instead of the more familiar commodity codes most of us are used to seeing.  The T codes basically ran from 1973-80 but there is no discernible reason why Topps changed formats for their test issues.  Anyhoo, the other day Lonnie found a doozy of a scan, entirely unrelated to the 70's test issues.

Topps used small round canisters to sell their penny tab products from the get go and the practice lasted until 1949.  I've documented many of these over the years and the only two products that can be associated with these displays are the primordial Topps Gum and Tatoo. So by the end of the 1940's these things were already obsolete.

Lonnie found a variant I've never seen before, namely a "Party Pak" of Topps Gum.

I can't get good resolution on the name of the photography studio that took this show but it's typical of the look Topps went for in the 40's.  I'm not positive but at a guess I'd say it was designed to hold 40 tabs of gum and sell for 39 cents at most.  Lonnie figured out there must be a clear top, so this was meant to be sold in a grocery or variety store and was not a counter top display ripe for the picking. As to what kind of party it was meant for, your guess is as good as mine as the product was always aimed at adults.

This oddity looks to be the origin of the "k" ending used by Topps instead of "ck" and more well known in the 60's when they started selling "Rak Paks".  As for the year, it's probably 1948, possibly early 1949 as this next shot shows it being sold alongside canisters of Tatoo, which held the 1948 version of that particular novelty (the first one ever offered by Topps):

That, my friends, is a vintage Sears candy counter-I was lucky enough to have one of these nearby growing up and can smell the hot cashews now.

These seem semi-related to the 10 piece Tatoo "Tourist Pouches" Topps went with in 1948, as this shot from Chris Benjamin's old Sport-Americana Price Guide to the Non-Sports Cards shows:

Once Bazooka penny tabs started taking off after being introduced in 1949, Topps Gum was doomed but it was still gung-ho until then!

All The Proof You Need

A treat today folks, a guest column from Keith Olbermann on the three infamous 1960 Baseball "variation proofs":

WOODY GELMAN AND THE 1960 TOPPS BASEBALL SCARCITIES

By Keith Olbermann

          The posting here earlier this year of Woody Gelman’s “The Card Collector” from June 20, 1960, provided an original source document for one of the organized hobby’s greatest and oldest confusions: What the hell are the three incredibly scarce 1960 Topps variation cards of Gino Cimoli, Kent Hadley, and Faye Throneberry? Proofs? Unbelievably rare issued cards? Something else?

          Gelman wrote “Twenty-one cards of the 1960 Topps Baseball set will perhaps be the greatest rarities of modern day baseball gum cards. Three players’ cards (seven of each were issued before the error was caught) bear a different team insignia than the one appearing on the normal card.” Gelman then gives brief details on the Cimoli, Hadley, and Throneberry cards. And apparently with one dubious verb – “issued” – he set the wheels in motion for what will shortly become six full decades of confusion and debate.

          A couple of baseball facts are required. 1^st Baseman Kent Hadley was dealt by the A’s to the Yankees on December 11^th, 1959 (the trade also included some guy named Maris). The regular version of card 102 shows him in an A’s cap, but the team designation reads “New York Yankees” and a Yankee logo appears. The variation to which Gelman refers is otherwise identical – except that it instead has a vestigial A’s logo. Outfielder Gino Cimoli was traded by the Cardinals to the Pirates on December 21^st, 1959. The regular version of card 58 shows him in a Cards’ uniform, but the team designation reads “Pittsburgh Pirates” and a Pirate logo appears. The variation to which Gelman refers is otherwise identical – except that it has both a vestigial Cards’ logo and team designation.

          To my knowledge an image of the third card, #9 Throneberry, was never publicly illustrated until the late Bob Lemke put it in his blog in 2010. Lemke’s image came from venerable collector John Rumierz who in turn explained he had gotten his copies of all three of these 1960 cards years before from the famed collector and former Topps Sports Editor Bill Haber. Lemke noted that the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards listed a 1960 Topps variation not of #9 Faye Throneberry but of his brother, #436 Marv Throneberry. That only made sense: Faye never played for the Yankees nor was he ever in their farm system or even in their organization during an off-season. Marv, like Hadley, had been part of the Maris trade. A Marv Throneberry Yankees/A’s variation made some sense. A Faye Throneberry Yankees variation made none. Yet there it was on Lemke’s blog: Faye Throneberry, Washington Senators, Outfield – with a Yankee logo.

          These twin mountains of perplexity – are they issued variations or unissued proofs, and what could possibly explain the Faye Throneberry card – have been Everests of sorts for so long that I published my first guess about them in The Trader Speaks when I was 16 years old. I helped perpetuate the Faye/Marv confusion in The Sports Collectors Bible. Without knowing of Gelman’s “issued” claim I declared they were certainly not issued cards in an opus on the history of Topps Proofs I did for Sports Collectors Digest in 2008. There are still publications that list a Marv but not a Faye. There are still some that conclude these are the rarest issued Topps cards of all time. There are others that insist they’re proofs.

          To cut to the chase, in part because of Gelman’s 1960 article, the answer is clear: Cimoli/Cardinals, Hadley/Athletics, and Faye Throneberry/Yankees are proof cards. I don’t have another document like Gelman’s nor anything from the wildly scattered files in the Topps offices on Whitehall Street to be able to state this with 100 percent certainty – but I am 100 percent certain and I’ll explain why shortly. It invokes the Sherlock Holmes plot twist about how the character had solved the mystery based on “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” His astonished foil pleads “The dog did nothing in the nighttime.” Holmes replies “That was the curious incident.”

          The crux: are these proof cards (exotic, expensive, different, amazing – but absolutely irrelevant to the question “do you have a complete set of 1960 Topps Baseball?”) or are they as Gelman forecast, “the greatest rarities of modern day baseball gum cards…seven of each were issued” (meaning if you don’t have them, your set is ultimately incomplete)? Clearly Gelman started this – maybe deliberately in hopes of getting readers to write in to ask if he had any of these 21 cards and then selling them, off the books. The confusion was then amplified by a production change which we now take for granted: since at least 1962 (and maybe as early as the later series of the 1960 cards, and with some exceptions in the late ‘80s) all of the proof cards and sheets that have fallen off the back of the proverbial Topps truck and into the hands of dealers and collectors, have had blank backs.

          The 1960 Cimoli, Hadley and Throneberry cards have fully printed backs.

          I have seen two Cimolis and two Hadleys as individual cards. They appear professionally cut and match the issued cards of the 1960 First Series in gloss and thickness and every other material measure. Topps Proofs began to become a very specialized collecting genre probably between the time Wholesale Cards started selling a stack of 100 1967 Roger Maris cards showing him with the Yankees instead of the Cardinals, and a decade later when the more secretive places of the hobby were flooded by all the 1977 unicorns like the Jerry Grote card and the Reggie Jackson/Orioles masterpiece. In 1985 an unbelievable hoard of 1962 Topps sheets –all sports, all blank-backed – literally fell out of a ceiling being remodeled in Connecticut (I was called in; I was between jobs and was given one baseball sheet for $200 as a thank you). And always the dividing line was clear: not all blank-backed cards were proofs, but all proofs were blank backed.

          But then evidence began to mount that sometime before 1962 everything Topps did to proof or check its cards before distribution was done in some complete fashion. Nearly all of the cards in the final series of 1957 Baseball turned up printed on bright white paper stock – fronts and backs. A 1959 high-numbered sheet appeared complete with the logo of the printer, Lord Baltimore Press. All the backs were printed. Some were without the late trade notations found on the issued cards; some had the notations but in different fonts; the backs were also didn’t have the white backs of the issued cards but the gray stock used on the earlier series.

           Finally about a decade ago I was offered what proved to be the final evidence in the 1960 Topps Cimoli/Hadley/Throneberry conundrum: a proof sheet of half of the 1^st Series, featuring 55 cards printed front and back. There’s no doubt that it’s a proof sheet: it has printer’s stars and bullseyes and the other hieroglyphics of the printers’ trade. And there, on the far right, in rows two and three, are the Throneberry and Hadley cards. The Throneberry confusion immediately vanished. Kent Hadley was traded from the Athletics to the Yankees. Somebody went to change, from Athletics to Yankees, the team name (success) and logo (fail; very big fail). The Yankee logo intended to supplant the A’s job on Hadley, Column Five, Row Three, instead was placed on Throneberry, Column Five, Row Two. This stumble created not one but two cards that will each set you back five figures.

           

        But it’s the rest of the sheet – not the epic Hadley/Throneberry error – that confirms these are proof cards. Four other fronts have minor variations (#2 Mejias, #9 Daley, #64 Fornieles all have the players’ names printed inside light blue boxes whereas they are only known on issued cards with names inside dark blue ones). And 18 of the 55 backs have further variations on the back. 1960 was the year Topps scrapped many player biographies on the backs of many of the cards, and instead went with bullet pointed game details and a big bold “Season Highlights” above them. On the back of the proof sheet, whether what’s below are the game notes or the traditional biography, all of the cards have the “Season Highlights” header. The sharp-eyed or design-oriented collectors were always troubled why the corresponding issued cards that have bios and not highlights had a big empty space on the back. The sheet explains why: the “Season Highlights” headers were simply removed.

          And that’s the proof that they’re all proofs.

          For Gelman’s claim to be true – that seven copies each of Cimoli, Hadley, and Throneberry made it into card packs and were issued – we have to assume that one of two explanations is also true:

          A) the other variations on the sheet, on 22 different cards, for a total of 154 copies (plus whatever variations might have existed on the separate sheet containing the Cimoli), either never made it into the packs or, while a couple of Cimolis and Hadleys have changed hands in the last 20 years, none of these 154 cards has ever appeared in an auction or an article or on eBay or even in a rumor somewhere or nobody ever noticed them and they’ve been sitting in piles of commons for 58 years. Either that’s true, or:

          B) those other 22 far more subtle errors and only those 22 errors were found on the proof sheet and corrected before the issued cards were printed. But somebody at Topps decided to let Cimoli, Hadley, and Throneberry proceed with big glaring errors intact to the publication stage and only then after exactly seven sheets rolled off the presses and through the cutting machine and into the packs did somebody yell ‘stop the presses’ and fix them. More over if the cards were “issued” why would John Rumierz have had to have gotten them from Bill Haber when Haber worked at Topps in the ‘70s or ‘80s? Why would there still have been any more copies at Topps?

          In theory, “B” could have happened. But I’d say the odds against are far higher than another wild explanation: that when Woody Gelman wrote “seven of each were issued” he meant “seven of each were issued by me.”

Album Of The Year

Well kids, the fall BST Auctions, run by Friends o'the Archive John Spano and Andy Becker has concluded,and what a memorable one it was, but before I kick things into gear, make sure to check out the end of this post for some information on an exciting new website (not mine) that a lot of you will enjoy.  Now then...football's the main but non-exclusive name of the game and one of the items in the mix this time around really caught my eye, namely the internal file book of the 1964 Topps Football set.

These books have been seen before. Compiled by Woody Gelman and his staff, they were the official corporate record of the various card sets and packaging issued each year and it pains me to see when they get broken up for auction.  Happily though, this fate has not yet befallen this book!

Imaging what the file room must have looked like at Bush Terminal, with sagging shelves full of albums similar to this one:

While these generally did not memorialize every variation they did contain a full set of cards, although a couple ended up disappearing from this one which is fairly common.  They all pretty much look like this:

This binder contained a sell sheet example as a nice bonus:

Now that is a nice piece but the real prizes here are the box and wrapper of the one cent wax variety. The catalog description states the one cent box has not been seen but at least two packs have been graded by PSA so it may just be it's super rare.  REA had this offering last year:

Another went in Mile High a couple of weeks ago to boot. I think the one cent packs are indeed quite rare but they do seem to have been issued.  Either way, it's a tough pack and among the last of the Topps "pennies".

Here's what Topps had in the binder:

Looks like the art was ready to go just as summer arrived! I believe that is Woody Gelman's red crayon or grease pencil in action on those pages.

This little exercise also got me thinking about the last "normal" Topps set to be issued in penny packs.  I know 1965 Baseball was sold in one cent packs and when I checked John Neuner's Non-Sports wrapper guide against my own master list, I couldn't find any penny packs on the non-sports side in '65.  So unless someone out there can turn up evidence to the contrary, the 1965 Baseball penny packs are the last of this breed.

**********

On a semi-unrelated note, but speaking of things that enclosed other Topps things, collector Mike White has launched what I believe to be a hobby first, namely a website devoted to Topps shipping cases.  Mike has posted about these on a couple of hobby forums in the past and count me among the folks who are amazed many of  these behemoths have survived over the years.  Give a click here to see. I wish Mike well in his efforts.

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!

Head Count

Today's episode is a confluence of a some older and newer threads on the 1968 Topps Giant Stand Ups set, a legendarily rare issue that is seldom discussed and even more sporadically seen.  I've presented scans of about half the set previously and thought it would be nice to top that off with a  fully annotated checklist as Friends o'the Archive Keith Olbermann, Al Richter and Bob Fisk have been kind enough to send the completing scans.

This is the checklist and it's worth noting the set appears in issued, die-cut form and also in proof form, which are thinner and have no die cuts.  Either is hugely difficult as these are among the rarest Topps cards ever issued:

1. Pete Rose - Outfield - Cincinnati Reds
2. Gary Peters - Pitcher - Chicago White Sox
3. Frank Robinson - Outfield - Baltimore Orioles
4. Jim Lonborg - Pitcher - Boston Red Sox
5. Ron Swoboda - Outfield - New York Mets
6. Harmon Killebrew - 1st Base - Minnesota Twins
7. Roberto Clemente - Outfield -  Pittsburgh Pirates
8. Mickey Mantle - 1st Base - New York Yankees
9. Jim Fregosi - Shortstop - California Angels
10. Al Kaline - Outfield - Detroit Tigers
11. Don Drysdale - Pitcher - Los Angeles Dodgers
12. Dean Chance - Pitcher - Minnesota Twins
13. Orlando Cepeda - 1st Base - St. Louis Cardinals
14. Tim McCarver - Catcher - St. Louis Cardinals
15, Frank Howard - Outfield - Washington Senators
16. Max Alvis - 3rd Base - Cleveland Indians
17. Rusty Staub - Outfield - Houston
18. Richie Allen - 3rd Base - Philadelphia Phillies
19. Willie Mays - Outfield - San Francisco Giants
20. Hank Aaron - Outfield - Atlanta Braves
21. Carl Yastrzemski - Outfield - Boston Red Sox
22. Ron Santo - 3rd Base - Chicago Cubs
23. Jim Hunter - Pitcher - Oakland A's
24. Jim Wynn - Outfield - Houston

As noted previously here, Rusty Staub and Jim Wynn are just shown as being with Houston; using the name Astros was a no-no for Topps until 1969 due to a trademark dispute between Monsanto and the team. Houston is an odd choice for two players representing the team as well. I get the extra player from Boston and St. Louis, teams that met in the 1967 World Series and even the Twins, who had been in the Fall Classic in '66 and were a game back in '67 but Houston was a 9th place team!

Also odd is the position distribution.  There are no 2nd Baseman at all, the NL is lacking a Shortstop and while they had four Pitchers represented, the AL had no one to catch!

Looking at it a little more closely, every player in the set was a 1967 All Star selection and every team has at least one subject, so that makes sense, but there were 53 All Stars selected that year and if you wanted to overweigh the NL team, the Giants had finished in second in 1967, and while a good ways back in the standings, they were a strong team at the time.  The Cubs were also good in '67 and with only a single NL pitcher include and Fergie Jenkins would have been a pretty obvious choice.  As an aside, did you know that Jenkins never was on a team that made the postseason?!

So what happened with this set's player selection?  My own guess is that Topps loosely planned a second series, although it's debatable whether another 24 players from the All Star rosters would have been all that interesting:

967 MLB All-Star Rosters
AMERICAN LEAGUE	NATIONAL LEAGUE
Rod Carew, MIN	Tim McCarver, STL
Carl Yastrzemski, BOS	Tony Perez, CIN
Tommie Agee, CHI	Rusty Staub, HOU
Max Alvis, CLE	Pete Rose, CIN
Ken Berry, CHI	Tom Seaver, NY
Paul Casanova	Fergie Jenkins, CHI
Dean Chance, MIN	Hank Aaron, ATL
Tony Conigliaro, BOS	Dick Allen, PHI
Al Downing, NY	Gene Alley, PIT
Andy Etchebarren, BAL	Joe Torre, ATL
Bill Freehan, DET	Ernie Banks, CHI
Jim Fregosi, CAL	Lou Brock, STL
Steve Hargan, CLE	Orlando Cepeda, STL
Joe Horlen, CHI	Roberto Clemente, PIT
Catfish Hunter	Mike Cuellar, HOU
Al Kaline, DET	Don Drysdale, LA
Harmon Killebrew, MIN	Bob Gibson, STL
Jim Lonborg, BOS	Tom Haller, SF
Mickey Mantle, NY	Tommy Helms, CIN
Dick McAuliffe, DET	Denny Lemaster, ATL
Jim McGlothlin, CAL	Juan Marichal, SF
Don Mincher, CAL	Willie Mays, SF
Tony Oliva, MIN	Bill Mazeroski, PIT
Gary Peters, CHI	Claude Osteen, LA
Rico Petrocelli, BOS	Chris Short, PHI
Brooks Robinson, BAL	Jim Wynn, HOU
Frank Robinson, BAL

I guess we will never know.  So on to the rest of the visual checklist (click the Label for this set to the right to see images previously shown).

These are courtesy of Keith Olbermann-Catfish Hunter has an airbrushed logo due to the original photo showing him in a KC hat and of course the two Astros had their lids wiped :

Here is a Clemente (proof), from Bob Fisk, another guy with a drool-worthy collection:

Here are the remaining three, courtesy of Al Richter.  A couple are proofs and that Cepeda might actually be a repro, although Al warned me it was a low-res scan.  Actually every Cepeda I've seen looks like the original picture is pixellated:

PSA has graded a total of 22 of these suckers.  Are they the rarest, issued Topps pure baseball set?  Could be, could be.