1976/77 Topps Basketball Unopened Vending Case

Mastro offered this 1976/77 Topps basketball unopened vending case in their April 2006 catalog; what are the odds it’s still sealed today?

As you can see, the case contained sixteen 500-count boxes for a total of 8,000 untouched cards, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone, and Julius Erving. And with a 144 total card set size in 1976, there’d be a ton of each in there!

Here’s an example of what the tall-boy-sized vending boxes look like.

Mastro didn’t describe the case’s provenance, but Fritsch did sell through Mastro a lot then, so it could have been from “The Fritsch Vault.”

Collect Auctions sold this empty 1976 Topps Basketball Vending Case in August 2020 for $110, which differs from the sealed Mastro example pictured above.

Steiner Sports is currently (September 2024) offering this one for $262, which also looks different than the Mastro case.

So there’s a chance there were a couple of these sealed cases out in the hobby over the past twenty years; remember, BBCE only wraps vending boxes from sealed cases or, I believe, those with great provenance from The Fritsch Vault.