I found this 1938 dealer advertising sheet for the Canadian counterpart of the U.S. Gum, Incorporated 1938 Horrors of War set in Mastro’s 2004 auction catalog.
The ad sheet was part of a “Fascinating and Diverse 1930’s-1960’s Non-Sports Collection” and was described as a “Dealer Advertising Sheet; blue-on-white, no illustrations, measures 16-1/2” x 22” w/ mailing folds; text promotes upcoming HOW issue to retailers (EX/MT).”
I don’t want to dwell on the cards much, perhaps in a future post, but the basics are that while advertised as a series of 240 cards, the Canadian set fell short of O-Pee-Chee’s lofty goals. There ended up being only 72 OPC Horror of War cards, and now, because the print run was so small, the cards are really desirable and pricey.
I want to highlight the lower-left corner of the advertising sheet; you can see a call out to the May 9th, 1938 issue of Life Magazine that highlighted the set. I managed to grab a copy of the magazine off eBay for just $13.45 (including shipping)!
Page two of the magazine included the photo sources of what was to come. You can see that pages four and five have pictures credited to Gum, Inc.
Pages four and five highlighted the 1938 Horrors of War set (and true bubble-gum artists).
Here’s the full spread:
The magazine’s table of contents followed the card spread on page seven and called the features “Speaking of Pictures: Bubble Gum’s War in China.”
The 1977 Topps Star Wars #207 C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) Error card is probably the second most infamous card in the hobby (next to the 1989 Fleer Bill Ripken FF Error). But Topps felt the card was a bit too inappropriate and airbrushed the “appendage” out in a later printing of the green-bordered 4th series set.
1977 Topps Star Wars #207 C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) Error – Front
1977 Topps Star Wars #207 C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) Corrected/Airbrushed Version
For years, the official story had been that a piece of Anthony Daniels’ costume fell off as the picture was taken, but the rumor was always that a Topps artist snuck one in.
In 2007, the official site of Star Wars wrote, “It appears that the extra appendage is not the work of an artist, but rather a trick of timing and light. The untouched archive photo shows the image just as it appears on the card. The current theory is that at the exact instant the photo was snapped, a piece fell off the Threepio costume, and just happened to line up in such a way as to suggest a bawdy image. The original contact sheets from the photo-shoot attests to this. They are not retouched in any way, yet still contain the same image. Whatever the real explanation is, the ‘mischievous airbrush artist’ scenario simply doesn’t fit.”
Gary Gerani, in his book Star Wars: The Original Topps Trading Card Series: Volume One (2015), wrote that, apparently, someone on set strapped a long metallic appendage to the droid’s lower half. However, he said the team was releasing a new (unplanned) series of Star Wars cards as fast as possible (since the movie kept doing so well), no one noticed the gaff and the cards went out to the public in packs.
Gerani’s Explanation of the C-3PO Card – Page 346
Gerani’s Explanation of the C-3PO Card – Page 347
Despite Gerani’s explanation, in the fall of 2019, Anthony Daniels wrote about what happened in a little more detail. He said it was the oil bath’s fault. Daniels explained that the costume’s pants, at the time, were made of two pieces of thin plastic, front and back, that were attached with gold-colored tape. The oil dissolved the tape, and the pants came apart, leading to a bulging crease when he was lifted out of the bath. Daniels said Lucasfilm verified to him that an employee took the photo with the crease and accentuated it.
Now, no matter how the card made it to market, Topps is believed to have printed the airbrushed version in fewer numbers.
PSA’s population report isn’t the best guide in determining the print runs, though. An error card is worth grading in almost any condition, but that’s not necessarily true for airbrushed copies. Here’s a comparison of the card’s pop counts over the past two years.
1977 Topps Star Wars C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) PSA Population – September 2022
1977 Topps Star Wars C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) PSA Population – October 2024
Regardless, you can see that over 1,800 error cards exist in the pop report, while the corrected version has a total population of under 800. However, the error is much tougher to find with good centering or PSA 9/10 worthy condition. Only 5 PSA 10s of the error exist, while the correct version has 12 10s despite the smaller overall population. And despite doubling the total population, the 10s haven’t changed in two years.
Despite Gerani’s belief that the airbrushed version is the more valuable print because of its scarcity, the error generates a significant premium over the corrected version because demand for the error card is through the roof.
The last PSA 10 error sold for almost $5k in May 2020 (4 Sharp Corners may have sold a pair of errors on eBay for $3,338 and $2,247 in September and October 2023, but they’re in PSA’s APR under the regular version), while the previous corrected PSA 10 sold for $234 in July 2018. The last PSA 9 error sold for $2,645 in September 2024, and another sold for $1,580 in October 2022 (but around $600 in November 2020 before the hobby spike). The last corrected PSA 9 sold for $332 in June 2024 (but was as high as $400 in December 2021). PSA 8 errors have sold as recently as October 2024 for $600 compared to closer to $125 for the last corrected PSA 8 in September 2024.
Also, Daniels won’t sign the error card; if you see one, it’s probably fake. PSA shows he has signed 26 regular cards and one error (a few years ago, it showed 9, so that’s weird) in its PSA/DNA population report. A few have been listed on eBay for ~$650.
1977 Topps Star Wars #207 C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) – PSA/DNA
Beyond conventional singles, there are a few more interesting collectibles related to the C-3PO error for the master collector.
First, in its Fall 2018 auction, Robert Edwards Auctions sold an unissued blank-backed proof for $540.
1977 Topps Star Wars #207 C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) Proof Error – Front
Next, you can find uncut sheets with the error card. The following example has been listed on eBay for a little under $10k, but I’ve seen more recent examples for closer to $3k.
1977 Topps Star Wars 4th Series Uncut Sheet – Front
1977 Topps Star Wars 4th Series Uncut Sheet – Reverse
1977 Topps Star Wars 4th Series Uncut Sheet – C-3PO Card
And finally, if you want to pull a C-3PO card from a pack, here are the unopened items you will need to get your hands on.
1977 (1978) Topps Star Wards Series 4 Wax Box
1978 Topps Star Wars 4th Series Wax Pack
Two 4th Series BBCE Authenticated wax boxes sold on eBay a few years ago, one for $1426 in June 2022 and the other for $1795 in July 2022. REA sold eight boxes between the fall of 2021 and the spring of 2023, mostly for around $1,680.
PSA-graded wax packs are pretty common, as they have graded 400 of them (as of October 2024). The last PSA 7 pack sold for $63 in May 2024, while the last PSA 8 graded pack sold for $92.
Since the 330-card 1977 Topps Star Wars set has become much more popular in recent years as the hobby has boomed and as Disney has released new Star Wars movies and shows, the C-3PO error has grown (so to speak) even more popular and expensive, too. While we may not ever know, with 100% certainty, how the C-3PO error card came to be, it’s a card that might bring you a little chuckle. And if you’re a big Star Wars fan, boxes, packs, and uncut sheets make solid additions to a master collection. Happy collecting!
I’ve studied the unopened hobby niche for a while, and this is the first 1952 Topps Look ‘n See One-Cent Display Box I’ve seen. It was offered for sale in an April 2004 auction catalog along with a five-cent wrapper.
The cards from the 1952 Topps Look ‘n See set aren’t particularly scarce, but the unopened material rarely surfaces.
The 6-1/2” x 6-1/2” x 2” EX/MT conditioned display box originally held 120 1-cent wax packs.
Vintage unopened sports card material has been a popular segment of the hobby for a while now. One of the more prominent companies and industry leaders in the segment is the Baseball Card Exchange (BBCE), owned and operated by Steve Hart. Steve even authenticates unopened packs for PSA. In June 2020, they posted on their Facebook page about the “X-Out.”
Since not every collector has a Facebook account, I wanted to summarize their post and add more information so that everyone can learn a little more about unopened cards.
In the past, retailers pre-ordered boxes of cards, and if they didn’t sell all of them, Topps allowed them to return unsold boxes for credit.
For instance, let’s say that Topps originally distributed a Baseball Wax Box to a dealer for $20. Then, at the end of the season, Topps would allow the dealers to return that box for a $17 credit. Topps would in turn “re-sell” (blowout) those boxes to dealers for $10. (These numbers are fictitious and just used as examples). Well, they had to have a way to keep the “unsavory” dealers (there might be one or two lurking within the industry!) from buying those boxes for $10 and “re-returning” them for $17. Hence, the “X-Out” was born. When a box was returned, it was given the “X-Out”. From 1981 to 1988 Topps used various markings to identify “X-Outs” on wax, rack and cello boxes in all major sports and non-sports issues.
BBCE
1983 Topps Football X-Out Unopened Box
It seems as though they used everything from a crayon or marker to a 4” paintbrush to put an ‘X’ or a line across the top of the box. This ‘X-Out’ signified that the box had already been returned once, and it could not be returned again.
BBCE
1986 Topps Football Cello X-Out Unopened Box
Often, they just drew a line across the box as well.
1987 Topps Football X-Out Unopened Box
The ‘X-Out’ marking on some years were worse than others. I think that 1984 was the worst as they seemed to very, very generously deface the lids of their boxes that year. Another problem with the ‘X-Out’ is that they usually put the boxes back into the cases without letting the marking dry completely. So, when the boxes are removed from the cases today it results in many of the lids being torn off.
BBCE
The following picture of a 1984 Topps Football Box shows a piece of another box stuck to the top.
1984 Topps Football X-Out Unopened Box
Topps also marked the outside of those cases with “Final Sale” stamp.
You can see “FINAL SALE NOT TO BE RETURNED” stamped on this 1983 Topps Baseball Unopened Rack Pack Case.
1983 Topps Baseball Case FINAL SALE
A few former card shop owners have shared that they received some cases marked “final sale” in which none of the boxes were “X-Outs.” It’s possible that Topps had certain products that could only be returned for a limited amount of time and, therefore, didn’t require marking. Or maybe other products could only be returned by the case. One dealer noted that rack pack boxes that they received were never marked.
Additionally, there are cases from before 1981 that are marked “Final Sale,” indicating that exchange programs started earlier. For example, the 1979 Topps case below shows “Final Sale,” but we haven’t seen any boxes from this era with an “X-Out” on it. I’m assuming Topps noticed some shady behavior and started marking the boxes in 1981.
1979 Topps Baseball Case FINAL SALE
Non-sports cards followed the same pattern, as you can see on the Garbage Pail Kid box which has a black line across it, and the 1978 Topps Jaws 2 Case marked “Final Sale.”
Garbage Pail Kids X-Out Box
1978 Topps Jaws 2 Case FINAL SALE
If you have any other information or comments about “X-Out” boxes or “Final Sale” cases – be sure to share them in the comments section below.
Today, we present a 1949 Pixie Bubble Gum X-Ray Round-Up Advertising Poster from Topps’ early days.
I scanned this image from Mastro’s June 2006 Classic Collector Auction. Since it was an internet-only auction event, none of the items in the catalog included a description. I presume there were descriptions online, but their site has long been deleted.
The Modern Hobby Guide To Topps Chewing Gum: 1938 to 1956 includes a few words about the gum and card set within a discussion about 1949 being the year of many cards:
With the tempered success of Magic Photo giving way to the realization that the lifespan of a top selling set was about six months, Topps came out with a new gum tab called Pixie in the summer of 1949. The cards sold with this gum were called X -Ray Round -Up, as Topps continued to identify the gum and cards separately. Featuring well drawn, vivid color renderings of a series of subjects such as Pirates and Wild West stars on one side, a piece of “X-Ray film” was needed to see the line drawing on the other. Made of red cellophane, the film cancelled out red lines on the back of the card thereby revealing the X-Ray. A piece of X-Ray film was included along with each card. The set was actually marketed featuring the X-Ray pictures as the primary component as Topps slowly learned the business of “inserts”.
Interestingly, some of the illustrations of Indians in the set were closely based on old tobacco cards that had been issued in the 19th Century. The portraits on these cards, which were a quantum leap forward from the simplistic drawings that comprised Tatoo, were probably illustrated by the art agency of Solomon & Gelman.
The guide also offers a multi-page set synopsis; it’s free to download here.
Hake’s Auctions sold one of these poster signs for $275 in 2009, describing it as 20.5 ” x 26″.
I quickly snapped this photo while scurrying about the 2024 National Sports Collectors Convention because it looked familiar. But I couldn’t place it at the time. I’ve now realized it was Bowman’s Collectors Club.
Once I got home from the show, I remembered the logo was also on the back of 1950 Bowman baseball and football cards.
Details are super scarce, so please contact me if you have more info, but in the early 50s, I remember collectors mentioning that Bowman tried having a collectors club akin to Topps’ Trading Card Guild (Picture Card Collectors Club). The Topps Archives mentions it in a piece titled Re-Rack. Given the boxes below, it could have been how Bowman re-packed unsold cards.
I found that Lelands has sold a pair of these boxes. This first one was titled 1953-54 Bowman Television & Radio Stars/Power For Peace Partial Cello Box (27/36).
It sold for just under $2k in February 2019.
This second example is a 1953 Bowman Power For Peace/NBC Radio & Television Stars Cello Box with 14 Packs. It sold for $879 in March 2022.
The BBCE website has an out-of-stock 1953 Bowman TV & Radio Stars Cello Box that they had offered for $8k.
I also had the following early Bowman cello box in my photo archives; REA sold it in 2021 for $3,960. They resold the same box in August 2024 for $6,900.
Again, please let me know if you have more information about Bowman’s 5-Star Series Picture Card Collectors Club.
Time for another Carpet o’ Wax! This time, 24 1956 Topps Elvis Presley Five-Cent Wax Packs!
Mastro offered this non-sport classic in their April 2004 catalog; here’s the photo of the box they included with the packs.
The box has a factory-placed strip of clear tape and bears a “36 count” overprint, indicating that its contents were marketed in Canada.
The reference number for this 66-card set is R710-1. Most cards are marked “Bubbles Inc.,” so you may also see the set referred to as the 1956 Bubbles Elvis Presley card, which Topps also distributed in penny packs and vending boxes.
