Saturday, June 22, 2024

I'm With Stupid

So we have seen the last of several spectacular auctions of material from the Andy Yanchus collection that were held over the past couple of years.  Yanchus was a former designer for Aurora Plastics during the heyday of their iconic Universal Monster model kits and then worked as a colorist for Marvel Comics.  Along the way he amassed a stunning collection of comics, toys and cards.  In April of this year (2024 if you are reading this in the future) his trading cards and related ephemera were offered by Bruneau & Co. Auctioneers, of Cranston, Rhode Island. Within those varied lots were some real gems and very, very big surprises as Yanchus was a massive collector of rare Topps test issues, among many other things.

There will be more on this collection's holdings here but today I want to look at an obscure Topps issue from 1971 called Stupid Scratch-Offs.  Prior to this auction, the set was pretty much a total mystery and it wasn't even clear, at least to me, that is had even been tested.  Well, it certainly did see a test:



The set name perfectly describes these suckers and the format is Q&A:


These match to the questions above:


There is some very nice Wally Wood and Wood Studio artwork in the set.  Here's some more:


I know the cards say there are 44 but Yanchus had 16 different (I think) and in Topps Test Land, partial, skip-numbered releases are legion and it's possible only twenty-two were made up at first.

More stupid answers:


Might as well show the rest!


As below, "Turkey & Greece" appears to be missing a color pass compared to the above example:


Aren't these great?!  I can add one more subject, from an old scan where I'm not sure of the source:


Oof:


I'd like to get the attributed date of 1971 locked in if possible, as it seems to me it could be slightly earlier.

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