I shared Dr. Jim Beckett’s first price survey results a few weeks ago. Well, the following year, he kicked off an update with the following bit of hobby history that I scanned from the January 1978 issue of The Trader Speaks: Dr. Jim Beckett’s Price Survey Update!
David Kathman on the net54 boards pointed out that SCD published the 1978 survey update results in their July 15, 1978, issue, with an abbreviated version in the 1978 edition of the Sport Americana Baseball Card Checklist book. I believe The Trader Speaks published the updated results in their April 1978 issue; I just don’t happen to have that one in the Hobby Library to be able to include a scan.
Then, in 1979, Beckett’s first price guide book, The 1979 Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide, was published with the help of Dennis Eckes.
Marc Sarchet highlighted the incredible 1982 Union Oil Dodger Player Portraits in the March 1983 issue of The Trader Speaks with some information that seems to have been lost to the modern (digital) hobby. So, I’ve decided to highlight the set on my site.
Beckett includes the following information about the 26-card set on its website:
Artist Nicholas Volpe drew members of the Dodgers for a Union Oil giveaway. These color portraits are painted in pastel; one portrait a week was given away at the stations. The cards measure 8 1/2″ x 11″ and the backs contain statistics and other biographical information. An album which contained 20 plastic sheets to hold these cards was sold by the Dodgers for $6.
So, Beckett didn’t include information about the set’s extension beyond 20, the timeline of its release, the confusion from station owners, the lag between the 20th and 21st prints, the cost of sets or 100 print boxes, or that the Dodgers sold an album to house the set; here are a few photos of it.
Neither Beckett nor Sarchet mentioned that Volpe also painted fantastic Dodgers sets in 1962 and 1969. Also, elsewhere, I’ve read that the portraits were free if you bought at least 8 gallons of fuel at 76 Gas Stations.
One of the most colorful and unique hobby-adjacent collectibles you can add to your collection is a circa 1941 Joe DiMaggio’s Restaurant Linen postcard. I picked up this variation and its souvenir envelope for just $27.
Ron Menchine wrote a few books on baseball postcards and said, “The most famous and probably the best of the brothers who have played baseball were the DiMaggios. They grew up near the San Francisco waterfront, so it’s not surprising that they parlayed their fame and money into a popular restaurant on Fishermen’s Wharf.”
The variation with the three brothers along the top has the following specs, according to Menchine in his 1999 Baseball Postcard Collection book:
Publisher: Joe DiMaggio’s Restaurant, San Francisco, CA
Manufacturer: Curt Teich Co., Chicago, IL
Type: Linen
Postmark: Not Used
Value: $100-$150
The other variation of the restaurant’s postcard has two interior, an exterior, and a Joe DiMaggio picture on the front.
If you’re into graded items, PSA has graded four with interior views and seven with all the brothers, and SGC has added two of each of those copies. SGC also has two labeled as ‘Joe DiMaggio’ in their Pop Report, but I think those are old-flip three-brother combos, like the following example. I’ve also seen a Beckett slabbed postcard before.
Folks might not know that Mickey Mantle owned a Holiday Inn hotel in Joplin, Missouri, with his friend Harold Youngman; Lodging Magazine wrote an excellent overview. The hotel opened on January 1, 1957, with a gift shop; today, souvenir items are really popular amongst Mantle collectors, including the matchbooks.
I only have the example pictured above, but essentially, there are five variations: the Diamond Match Division (PSA-graded pop of 121), The Diamond Match Division-Gold on White (PSA-graded pop of 10), Universal Match Corp (PSA-graded pop of 66), Universal Match Corp-Gold on Dark Brown (PSA-graded pop of 2), and Universal Match Corp-Yellow Background (PSA-graded pop of 16).
There are certain pictures you’ll run across quite often in the hobby, like the 1952 Topps Baseball Woolworth’s display or the 1974 Topps production line photo. Well, there’s another set of images you’ll see a lot from the Topps production line in Duryea, Pennsylvania, during the development, printing, and packaging of the 1991 Topps Baseball set. In this piece, I wanted to save everyone the trouble of tracking them down and share all the photos, plus some information about the magazine they’re from, along with a scan of the complete article; I’ll add a few more details.
Topps had its own magazine for a few years during the peak of the junk-wax era. The 1991 Topps production images came from an article published in the Winter 1991 edition called Volume 2, Number 1 in the table of contents and Collectors’ Edition #5 on the cover.
Topps Magazine – Winter 1991
The specific article was part of a special section of the magazine highlighting 40 years of Topps Baseball cards. The other pieces in this section are fantastic, covering the beginning of Topps baseball cards, a factory tour in Duryea, photos of a card from each Topps set, a look at the key players from each decade, plus a pair of articles dedicated to the classic 1952 Topps set.
Topps Magazine – Winter 1991 – Table of Contents
A Day In Duryea Overview
The article dedicated to the tour of the Topps baseball factory is just a two-page spread on pages 32 and 33; I’ve included complete scans at the end of this article. They start by explaining that Duryea is a small town south of Scranton with a population of just 5415 but that, since 1965, it’s where Topps has produced its baseball cards. The factory was described as 450k sq. ft., operating three shifts, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Then they explained that development of the set began in January 1990 at Topps HQ in Brooklyn, where the Sports Department assigned photographers to shoot players at spring training to capture action shots. All the while, card design options were developed/submitted, and, presumably, an executive selected one of them in the summer. Then, Mike Drewniak (GM in Duryea) set the production schedule. By November, the Sports Department had sifted through photos, and stats/bios were written. The art staff prepared twelve giant boards, each with 66 card fronts and backs, and the cards got okayed.
That’s when the article’s tour begins, and Drewniak and Quality Control Manager Ron Werner explain the production process step-by-step.
Metal Printing Plates
Each of the four pieces of color film (black, blue, red, yellow) is inspected before being developed onto metal printing plates.
A Day In Duryea – 1991 Topps Printing Process – Image 1
Printing
Five four-color presses print sheets of cards around the clock.
A Day In Duryea – 1991 Topps Printing Process – Image 2
Samples Are Pulled
As uncut sheets come off the end of the press, samples are pulled.
A Day In Duryea – 1991 Topps Printing Process – Image 3
Checks
Those samples are checked to ensure the inks and varnish spread evenly.
A Day In Duryea – 1991 Topps Printing Process – Image 4
Cutters
Stacks of uncut sheets are shipped to the cutting and collating department. The sheets are fed into slitting machines, which cut and collate individual cards.
A Day In Duryea – 1991 Topps Printing Process – Image 5
Cards Are Stacked
Individual cards are stacked into coded boxes and sent to the packaging department.
A Day In Duryea – 1991 Topps Printing Process – Image 6
Plastic Wrap
On this particular day, the plant was testing a new plastic wrap called polypropylene, which later that year was used for its 50-cent packs instead of a wax wrap that historically stained cards.
A Day In Duryea – 1991 Topps Printing Process – Image 7
Heat Sealing
The packs were heat-sealed and stacked into retail boxes.
A Day In Duryea – 1991 Topps Printing Process – Image 8
Shipping Cartons
The boxes were then placed in corrugated shipping cartons (cases).
A Day In Duryea – 1991 Topps Printing Process – Image 9
Shipping Department
The cases were then sent to the shipping department, where trucks would carry them to distribution centers nationwide.
A Day In Duryea – 1991 Topps Printing Process – Image 10
This photo of hundreds of cases in the factory is one of the images you’ll see most often and shows how many cards were printed in 1991. It’s said Topps printed 4-5 million of each card!
In the photo, you can see a bunch of wax cases and what I think are cases that held the “rarer” $1.49 40-card packs.
Here’s an incredible piece I ran across in a 2008 auction catalog that I’m desperate to find more information on (and add to the hobby library): a 1957/58 Kanh’s Wieners Salesman’s Sample New Customer Campaign Brochure!
First, Kahn’s series of basketball cards were released between 1957 and 1965 and are one of the few basketball food issues of the era, so they’re pretty rare, particularly in excellent condition (since they were packaged with hot dogs).
Kahn’s was a Cincinnati-based meat processing and distribution company (now owned by Tyson Foods), so for their first release in 1957, all 11 cards in the set were Cincinnati Royals players.
Based on the brochure’s cover, it looks like Kahn’s provided this album to help out the company’s salespeople; Mastro highlighted that fact in the lot’s description:
Long the fare at Cincinnati sporting events, Kahn’s Wieners are as much a Queen City institution as Pete Rose, Johnny Bench and Boomer Esiason. Offered here is a decidedly scarce and unique item: a Kahn’s Wieners 1958 salesman’s sample brochure containing four sample cards Maurice Stokes, Jack Twyman, Dave Piontek, and George King. This 8-1/2″ x 11″ twen-ty-page booklet is secured at the spine by three staples and reads as a “how-to” guide for the company’s salespersons. Entitled “New Customer Campaign,” the guide stresses the importance of new customers and offers detailed advice on how to handle various types of potential buyers including the “stone faced type,” ” the agreeable type” and the “prejudiced type.” The guide also details “promotional help” in the form of Cincinnati Royals basketball photo cards (to be placed in each one-pound package of “The Wiener the World Awaited”) with tips for budding players on the reverse. The booklet displays EX/MT condition. The approximately 3-1/4″ x 4″ cards are about EX/MT in frontal appearance (sharp corners but with adhesive show-through) and are firmly secured to the pages.
This photo of the cards was included in the catalog.
Please get in touch with me if you have any more pictures or info about this brochure.
