In Competition For the First Time

Continuing our look at the Topps Annual reports received from Friend o'the Archive David Eskenazi we come to the pivotal year of 1981.  The specter of competition is imminent (their fiscal year ended just around the time the first wave of  Fleer and Donruss cards started flooding stores) and there are some severe economic headwinds affecting the company but, as we shall see, the results were a little better than the dire financials from fiscal year 1979-80.

The cover was even sparser than the one from 1980 but they slightly upgraded to a semi-glossy stock for it, although the interior pages were still uncoated.  This is all it showed:

It took some ten weeks after the end of the fiscal year for the report to be compiled, printed and distributed; these days the lag is closer to three or four weeks and it's all digital. This letter led things off and offered some semi-good news but dig those last two paragraphs:

The plant in Ireland was vexing Topps and we will revisit that in a minute. The news regarding the "baseball card litigation" continued on the next page and we all know how that turned out:

The history of litigation between Fleer and Topps was a lengthy one but Topps had bought out some 4,000 Fleer ballplayer contracts in 1966 after the sole count of a Federal Trade Commission complaint that went against them was overturned. In 1967, Marvin Miller, unimpressed with the grip of Topps on his constituency, tried to steer the player's union to Fleer but they were not (yet) interested and it's worth pointing out the terms were quite risky for them.  By 1975 their outlook had changed significantly and as seen above, they made it to market with a set in 1981, as did Donruss. The market, and hobby, would never be the same.

Here's some numbers to crunch on:

Sales and profit were actually down form the year before but Topps was quite effectively controlling costs, as earnings per share turned positive again, although the planned sale of their Irish plant did not occur.

Here's some more on the Fleer litigation; it would seesaw back and forth for years; Topps was never shy about getting lawyers involved in their business disputes:

Donruss really just piggybacked on Fleer but that's how the bubble gum crumbles!  We'll take a look at how the competition affected the Topps bottom line next time out.

Posterity For Austerity

Friend o'the Archive David Eskenazi, who has been sending me various care packages of Topps corporate goodies from time to time, recently sent another batch my way.  This time, the fully stuffed mailer was loaded up with Topps Annual and Board Reports, covering the fiscal years 1980 to 1983, a very tumultuous time for the company and the hobby at large. I've looked at the 1973-1976 Annual Reports previously, and since I have none from 1977 to 1979, let's look at 1980 today.  

For the fiscal year ending March 1, 1980 Topps laid a very giant egg!  You can tell things were off just by looking at the cover:

Yeah, that's not good.....let's let Arthur and Joel Shorin explain:

That's an excellent soft-soap job, I must say.  Lead with the bad news, then pile up some good news and sprinkle in some rosy projections!

As mentioned, I don't have annual reports (yet) covering fiscal years 1977-1979 but the 1980 Summary of Sales and Earnings recaps those years as part of its look back.  It's clear the prior years were all profitable, especially the one just prior:

Things were not looking good for the stock price as 1980 dragged on-dig that downward trend!  It looks like inflation took a big bite out of earnings:

I might have to rethink my previous snarky comments about Bubble Fudge! Reading on we see the  relationship between sales and operating expenses really affected things, which is no surprise. The Irish subsidiary mentioned below will loom larger as the Eighties progress but for now, all was hunky-dory across the pond:

I'll spare you most of the tables, but this one caught my eye as it mentions inventories presently on premises at the end of the fiscal year. Let's look at these figures:

Topps had a lot of raw materials on hand, given the amount of wax wrappers, cardboard and various confectionery ingredients required for manufacturing and production.  I assume these figures relate to the wholesale prices of Finished Products and Work-in-Process, which was usually a tad under 60% of retail. There was, of course gum in the wax and cello packs, and also on its own, plus football and hockey cards, non-sports cards and other things like Ring Pops, foreign sales, and on and on. With no breakdowns by product line available, pricing all over the place and a far-flung enterprise, it's a WAG on what that inventory number truly represents in terms of actual products but it looks like there was about $5.5 Million in retail sitting in various Topps warehouses on March 1, 1980 using my admittedly amateurish calculations.

If half of that was trading cards, then it's $2.75 Million in retail, or roughly $1.65 Million wholesale, or a whole lot of cases!

Signing off on this mess, we see some old familiar names and some new ones, changing, as BOD's do, as the years pass:

I'll get into the 1981 report next time out-things really start to get interesting in that one.

Letters To Sy Over

I've recently been resuscitating a CD-R that was sent to me some time ago with thousands of scans covering Topps Vault items sold by them from 2007 to mid-2013 on eBay. Some of the files are corrupted at this point but I've managed to save about 70 percent of them. However, I cannot trace who sent me this wonderful time capsule so please ping me if it was you!

Some of the most esoteric items on the disc were letters sent to Sy Berger from 1993-95 thanking him for the $500 payments that secured each player's signed release for the Topps Archives (yessir) Official Reprint sets from 1994 and 1995, reprinting the originals from 40 years prior in each case.  There's nothing earth-shattering here but the letters are all handwritten and highlight some long-lasting friendships that Sy had formed over the many decades he was the Sports Director at Topps.

Here's one from Andy Pafko dated March 28, 1994, referencing the 1994 Official Reprint of the 1954 Baseball set:

Pafko would receive another $500 a year later for the 1955 Official Reprint set:

Don Mueller, who was nicknamed Mandrake the Magician for his uncanny ability to slap balls through the infield, sent this note on some really neat "Almost Original 16" stationery, which he must have saved from his playing days (did all ballplayers of a certain vintage get pads of these?).  The inclusion of the logos for the Orioles (the relocated Browns from 1954) and old Athletics elephant (the style shown here debuted for the 1954 season during their last year in Philadelphia) logos may point to 1954 for the stationery, kind of ties things together nicely!.

Ned Garver had some really sweet professionally designed stationery too:

Garver was handing over his check to a group founded by ex-Brown Chuck Stevens, who was the Secretary of the Association of Professional Ball Players of America (APBPA) from 1960 until 1998. APBPA offered financial and other assistance to down-on-their-luck ex-ballplayers. Stevens lived a long life and was the oldest living ex-major league player until his death on May 28, 2018.

Gene Woodling wrote Sy in 1995 and intimates there were some freebie boxes going to the players:

We'll end this fun look at old stationery with Phil Cavarretta, writing on his wife's:

These half-dozen notes really showed the human side of these five ex-players and how people from one rare profession really form bonds like those from any other profession.

And if you are doing the math, and assuming everybody got the same amount, then Topps had to pay out $124,500 for rights to the original subjects for the 1954 reprint (for 249 subjects as neither Ted Williams card was included thanks to his exclusive deal with Upper Deck at the time, and assuming the O'Brien's received $500 per O'Brien) and $103,000 for the original 1955 subjects rights.  1954 also saw  eight additional (and quite) crummy fantasy "rookie cards" Topps added to the mix for no good reason at all, so you can tack on $4K for those.

The Williams cards from 1954 could eventually be found in reprint form from both Upper Deck and Topps. Upper Deck, through some creative licensing arrangements, in their strangely titled but wonderfully executed three-card 1994 Upper Deck All-Time Heroes - 1994 Topps Archives 1954 set gave the world both reprinted Williams cards plus a fab ersatz Mantle.  I never copped a Mick, so forgive the scans here:

However I do have Williams reprints, but only one is from Upper Deck.  The other is from the 2001 Topps Archives set (nice ring to that!).  Let's go in reverse order, Upper Deck first for #250 and embiggened to show details:

Here's some mixed-up indicia for ya: 

Note the obverse follows the Topps reprint set as it carries a top border.  The 2001 Archives Ted Williams "Through the Years" cards on the other hand, did give us the original full-bleed top borders:

Looks a lot better, right?  However, Topps didn't use glossy white stock for the reverse and the result was decidedly murky:

So my 1954 Topps reprint set is a real Franken-set!  

Get Your Scorecards Here!

I found an interesting item in the wilds of eBay recently, namely a tearsheet of a column Topps Creative Director Woody Gelman penned for a fledgling magazine called Baseball Monthly. As can be plainly seen, it was titled "the Hobbyist" and the idea was to have Woody show off some examples from his extensive collection of ephemera in future issues:

Some easy detective work revealed the magazine debuted in March of 1962 and lasted a whopping four issues.  It was published by Major League Baseball Promotions Corp., which was the licensing arm of the then-20 major league teams. Woody is described as the Publisher of the American Card Catalog, which is technically correct, although it was as a co-publisher and I doubt those in the hobby back then thought of anyone but Jefferson Burdick in that role.

Here's the then-current 1960 ACC's copyright page:

Gelman would have had prior experience with producing publications (and indeed was ACC co-publisher in 1953 and when that edition was reprinted in 1956) and with Jefferson Burdick in New York mounting his collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he was in close proximity. It's certainly possible Woody did a lot of the heavy lifting with the 1960 edition.

Woody did publish a book titled the Baseball Card Checklist and sold it through both his Card Collectors Company and early newsletter The Card Collector. Too bad the column's intro blurb gets the title of this very early guide wrong!

The column is innocuous to a fault, although Woody's certainly pushing the main Topps card line in his commentary.  I find it intriguing he mentions old baseball programs as his Card Collectors Company sold very old ones off in their catalogs for a song. This was the scorecard pricing in the March 1962 CCC catalog, the very same month his column first appeared:

A couple of years later he was blowing old football programs out at three for a dollar, but I digress. Woody was well-attuned to cross promotion using the old soft-sell!

I'd love to find the other three columns he penned for this magazine.  They managed April, May and June issues before biting the dust.