This advertisement from the back cover of the February 1977 issue of The Trader Speaks highlights the most gorgeous cards ever produced: 1976 SSPC!
Why would someone call a collector’s issue one of the most gorgeous sets ever produced? Well, because of the set that influenced its design…
1976 SSPC is a 630-card “collector’s issue” released by TCMA. Dubbed the “Pure Card” set, the design was based loosely on the 1953 Bowman set. The set was available exclusively via mail order and was advertised in the nascent Hobby Media, such as it was in the mid-70s.
Despite the cards bearing a 1975 copyright, the set is considered a 1976 set as it was not released until then.
SSPC was not licensed by either MLB Properties or the MLBPA, and shortly after its release, was sued by Topps. As part of the settlement, SSPC agreed to never reprint their 1976 set, and to never attempt to produce a similar product ever again.
Keith Olbermann, then still in high school, edited the copy on each card.
Dean’s Cards added that it was the only full baseball card set ever issued during the Topps monopoly, so the hobby saw it as a refreshing change of pace from the predictable Topps issues.
And lastly, if anyone has any other advertisements offering these cards, please get in touch with me.
Again, the original full-color paintings of Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Bob Feller, Jackie Robinson, and Roy Campanella’s 1953 Topps baseball cards were first made available to the hobby in Guernsey’s Topps Auction in 1989.
Here’s the section’s description in the catalog and the details for the 3 1/2″ x 5″ VG conditioned 1953 Willie Mays original color artwork. It sold for $80k (+10% Buyers Premium).
I’m curious if the owner of the original artwork has managed to pick up a copy of the original news photograph that inspired the piece. REA sold this circa 1951 PSA/DNA Type 1 example for $16,800 in the Spring of 2020.
And finally, here’s a fantastic example of the 1953 Topps #244 Willie Mays card.
There isn’t much known about the 1972 Puerto Rican Winter League sticker set, but the albums and sets, which are ‘hobby library historically significant,’ still command a pretty penny when they pop up for sale. REA & eBay offered this one in their July 2000 catalog.
The complete set consists of 231 cards/stickers with a few composite subsets, including card #’s 198-206, which form a photo of Roberto Clemente. Just FYI, some collectors have questioned the set’s 1972 dating and suspect that it may have come out in early 1973; if you own a copy, let me know if there’s any copyright dating inside.
The league included a lot of Major Leaguers looking to brush up on their playing skills during the winter months, often Puerto Rican players and folks at the very beginning or end of their careers. Stars included in this set include Rich Gossage, Orlando Cepeda, Tony Perez, and Frank Robinson (as manager of Santurce), along with Felix Millan, Willie Montanez, Sixto Lezcano, Steve Rogers, Sandy Alomar, Manny Sanguillen, Richie Zisk, Jose Pagan, Elrod Hendricks, Juan Pizzaro, and Ron Cey. But the most significant card in this set is Mike Schimdt’s pre-rookie. REA sold this PSA 8.5 in their Spring 2019 auction for $1,320.
The set also includes a few famous game veterans, like Satchel Paige; they have their own section in the album.
The “Veteranos Famosos Del Baseball” scan above is from a complete album that Leland’s Auctions sold for $1,558.50 in November 2023. They explained that the album has 44 pages, including the covers, and measures 6.4” x 8.75”. All the stickers were “carefully” attached. Here are the front and back covers of Leland’s album.
I ran across this hilarious want ad in the April 1977 issue of The Trader Speaks from a collector looking for a 1947 Tip-Top Bread MIke Tresh card.
Bill Haber wrote that he had 162 different Tip-Tops. If you weren’t tracking, there are 163 cards in the regionally distributed set, so he was missing just one, hence his desire to “pay through the nose” for it.
After a quick online search, I only found a single example. This one was part of a lot of eight 1947 Tip-Top Bread A.L. and N.L. Chicago players. Heritage sold the lot for $74 in June 2009.
PSA has only graded three examples, including this one, which resides in the top-rated set on the registry.
Oh, to be able to time-travel back to July 1998 to bid on this one would make a fantastic addition to the Hobby Library.
The Converse Rubber Shoe Company published its first basketball yearbook in 1922, and it has become a classic. It contains the rules of the game (for that time) and pictures of all the best pro and college teams of the day, including the original Celtics team with Nat Holman.
This particular volume was described as being in excellent condition, with a few tears and minor creases on the back cover.
Converse published the yearbooks annually from 1922 to 1983. The early ones are pricey; a signed 1925 edition is available on eBay for $350, and a 1927 release is available for $130 (June 2024). And while I tracked down a few more 1922 examples online (below), who knows if one will ever come up for sale again?
VintageBasketball.com shared a few words about them here, along with the following picture of the 1922 edition.
I also tracked down these photos on WorthPoint, which I think were part of an old eBay auction that described the book as 64 pages long.
Today, I’m wrapping up my five-part series of articles focused on 1978 Topps baseball and its associated sets and promotions. Here are the previous four articles, in case you missed them:
In this one, I’ll discuss the six-card 1978 Topps uncut panels that came inside issue 47 of Scholastic Inc’s Dynamite Magazine. As a hobby library guy, I find this collectible super appealing.
Dynamite Magazine 101
Scholastic Inc.’s Dynamite Magazine launched in March 1974 and continued to be released through March 1992 (165 total issues). It was Scholastic’s most successful publication and inspired four other magazines you might be familiar with if you were a kid aged ~8-14 at the time; Bananas, Wow, Hot Dog!, and Peanut Butter. It was a bit of a pop culture update and included articles, comics, puzzles, and other interactive content like puzzles, games, masks, etc. They’d often contain inserts like stickers, glow-in-the-dark items, 3-D posters with glasses, and of course, baseball cards.
Dynamite Magazine Issue 47, April 1978, Happy Birthday, Mad!
The issue that included 1978 Topps baseball cards was number 47, released in April 1978, titled “Happy Birthday, Mad!” This edition has over a dozen features, with the headline being “a look at the MADmen and their MAD magazine on its 25th birthday.” Other blasts included a feature about the magazine’s one-year-old horse, how to decorate bicycles, and mini-skits that kids could perform. Shorter pieces, “bombshells,” included cartoons, sneak peek calendars, jokes, puzzles, and advice. The magazine also had a bike poster and, of course, “Free Baseball Cards!”
Dynamite Magazine – Issue 47 – Front Cover
Dynamite Magazine – Issue 47 – Back Cover
1978 Topps Dynamite Magazine Panel Details and Examples
The 1978 Topps Dynamite Magazine Panels are the same as regular 1978 Topps cards. They’re a six-card strip from an uncut sheet, then folded to fit in the magazine. No one’s really sure if the whole set made it into the magazines. While my 2010 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards wrote that just three six-card panels of 1978 Topps baseball issues had been found at the time, there are definitely more than that, but likely not the entire set because an 11-card wide sheet doesn’t make an even number of 2×3 card panels.
Of the four examples I’ll share, three are cut from Sheet A and one from Sheet B. The Standard Catalog shares two other examples, one with Steve Kemp, Reggie Smith, Roguish Jackson, Rick Burleson, Duane Kuiper, and Davey Lopes, and another with Toby Harrah, Gary Carter, Jeff Burroughs, Fred Lynn, Bucky Dent, and Jim Rice. Both are Sheet A cards. If you’ve seen some from other sheets, please let me know in the comments.
Here’s the example in my library; it features Wayne Garland, Lerrin LaGrow, Enrique Romo, Rick Waits, Rick Manning, and Jim Kern. I bought it for $15.
1978 Topps Dynamite Magazine Panel Example 1 – Image 1
1978 Topps Dynamite Magazine Panel Example 1 – Image 2
Here, you can see where the six-card panel was on a regular 1978 Topps uncut sheet (Sheet A).
1978 Topps Uncut Sheet A With 1978 Topps Dynamite Panel Example 1 Highlighted
This second example includes Ellis Valentine, Steve Stone, Willie McCovey, Mark Belanger, Willie Montanez (of Topps Zest Fame), and Mitchell Page.
1978 Topps Dynamite Magazine Panel Example 2 – Image 1
1978 Topps Dynamite Magazine Panel Example 2 – Image 2
This panel was cut from the left edge of Sheet A.
1978 Topps Uncut Sheet A With 1978 Topps Dynamite Panel Example 2 Highlighted
This third example is the most famous one and was documented on The Chronicles of Fuji blog in June 2013 after the author sniped it off of eBay for $22.50 + $3.95 shipping. It features Eddie Murray, Amos Otis, Ruppert Jones, Bobby Bonds, John Mayberry, and George Scott.
1978 Topps Dynamite Magazine Panel Example 3 – Image 1
1978 Topps Dynamite Magazine Panel Example 3 – Image 2
The Eddie Murray panel was cut from the lower right corner of Sheet B.
1978 Topps Uncut Sheet A With 1978 Topps Dynamite Panel Example 3 Highlighted
By the way, ToddUncommon on Twitter mentioned that there’s a cottage industry of hand-cutting Murray cards from sheets and passing them off as pack-pulled since the in-card pack Murray’s are often terribly off-center.
The following example is slightly inconsistent with the other three, which is interesting since it features superstars Dave Winfield and George Brett, Roy White, Bobby Murcer, Jim Barr, and Cesar Geronimo. It’s been listed on eBay for $49.99 before.
1978 Topps Dynamite Magazine Panel Example 4 – Image 1
1978 Topps Dynamite Magazine Panel Example 4 – Image 2
You can see that it’s also a Sheet A cut panel, but it seems to have been inserted oppositely. The first three examples all look the same, with a pair of cards over the edge of the poster on top of the magazine’s index.
1978 Topps Dynamite Magazine Panels – First 3 Examples
1978 Topps Uncut Sheet A With 1978 Topps Dynamite Panel Example 4 Highlighted
If you’re looking for individual panels, they’ll all have a bend across them, just like this 1983 Topps Hot Dog Magazine example.
1983 Topps Hot Dog Magazine Panel and Sheet Placement
A handful of examples advertised as Dynamite or Hot Dog panels without bends are probably legitimate cards but not magazine inserts.
Topps partnered with Scholastic for many years, so you can also find examples for other baseball (and football) sets.
1978 Topps Series Wrap Up
That wraps up my 1978 Topps baseball series! From the base set to partnerships with Burger King and Zest Soap, the mail-in checklists, and these six-card panels, Topps certainly maximized their brand’s reach! And I acknowledge that I COULD have included a review of the 1978 O-Pee-Chee baseball set in this series. Do you think I should have?
“How can you say you’ve got the whole set when you haven’t got what it came in?” Here’s Ed Henderson’s look at the collectibility of wrappers from the November 1992 issue of Baseball Cards Magazine.
PS: I’d love to see a resurgence of multi-page hobby writing like this today.
