Vintage Sports Cards – Baseball – Basketball – Football – Hockey
Every ’90s hobby magazine wrote a feature on Topps World Series cards; in October 1995, it was Trading Cards Magazine’s turn!
Here are the links to the pieces about Topps World Series cards that were published in Topps Magazine (Fall 1990) and Sports Cards Magazine (April 1995).
Happy reading and happy collecting!
I don’t often dive into pre-war sets—they’re not my specialty. But when I spot an elusive premium issue in an old catalog with a ‘hobby-library adjacent’ aspect, it’s hard for me to ignore. Here’s a 1934 Gold Medal Foods set and its original envelope from Mastro’s December 2007 catalog.
Per The Standard Catalog of Vintage Baseball Cards, the set was issued by Gold Medal Foods (the parent company of Wheaties) to commemorate the 1934 World Series. It includes six members of the Detroit Tigers and six members of the St. Louis Cardinals. The cards are blank-backed and 3-1/4” x 5-3/8” in size. The key card belongs to Dizzy Dean.
Here’s an SGC-graded Dizzy Dean card that REA sold for $300 in February 2022.
The set sold by Mastro included nine cards slabbed by SGC, and three more (Dizzy Dean, Goose Goslin, and Joe Medwick) were ungraded and labeled “factory miscut” by SGC.
The set’s history is a bit complicated, so I recommend checking out these two threads on the net54 forums for more information.
Happy collecting!
Today, I wanted to look back at and share information from the early days of Topps as a card company, particularly the Federal Trade Commission decision regarding a complaint made against Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., alleging unfair competition methods in gaining control of the baseball card picture industry.
As you can see in the image above, the court dismissed the case on April 30, 1965, because there was insufficient evidence.
While the complaint uses a lot of legal jargon to allege a “monopoly in the manufacture and distribution of baseball picture cards in commerce,” as a collector, I find equally fascinating the reporting of sports card sales numbers from Topps, Bowman, Goudey, and Fleer.
First Goudey Sales:
Next Bowman Sales:
Topps sales in those years were as follows:
Topps sales once there were no Bowman cards were (“Baseball card gum” being packs with gum in them, and “Baseball cards” being products like vending boxes, cello, and rack packs that didn’t have gum):
And finally, Fleer sales figures:
I’ll pour through this 112-page document in the future to see what other insights we can glean about the post-war baseball card market and the impact Topps’ actions as a company had on its competitors. That will come in the future as a Part 2 of this article. But these numbers are our best insight into figuring out how many cards Topps and other companies actually produced in the early post-war era.
Happy collecting!
Here’s the original artwork Dick Perez painted for the 1989 Donruss Frank Viola #23 Diamond Kings card.
Ron Oser Enterprises offered it in a lot with a few other signed Perez originals in April 2001. I think the piece is 11” x 17”. I previously shared the Mike Schmidt and Bobby Bonilla cards from this lot on the blog.
Here’s the final card, followed by a side-by-side comparison.
Donruss obviously did some cropping for the final card. Happy collecting, and don’t forget to check out The Original Artwork Archive for more!
Variety is the spice of life, and Topps definitely mixed things up with the introduction of tall boy sized cards with their 1964 Hockey set. The cards must have been pretty popular because the following year, in 1965, they released tall boy football cards to stand out against their competition. Then, when they decided to re-enter the basketball card market, their 1969 release was, once again, of the tall boy variety. In this article, I’ll run down these three incredibly popular sets.
The first year that Topps didn’t have to compete with Parkhurst in the hockey card market, they released their set in a tall boy format (2-1/2″ x 4-11/16″) for the first time in any sport. From a historical perspective, some collectors think going with larger cards (Topps printed “GIANT SIZE” on the wrappers) was a “triumphalist call,” but no one knows for sure.
The set has 110 cards of players from all 6 NHL teams and was the first set in 10 years that included all the teams. The set is nearly double the size of previous Topps hockey sets and was released over two series. Hockey collectors consider 1964 Topps to be one of the greatest hockey sets of all time, and it’s the toughest of these three tall boy sets to complete in high grade.
The football market in 1965 was a little different than the hockey market. Philadelphia Gum had the rights to the NFL’s licensing for cards, so Topps, to expand its AFL release (less interesting content) and compete for sales, released their set in the tall boy format to stand out. Remember, the larger size format worked with 1952 Topps baseball in competition with Bowman too.
The 176 card set would end up being the only football card tall boy set Topps made. Maybe tall boys were too expensive to print/machine? It does, however, feature one of the most recognizable football cards in the hobby, Joe Namath’s card #122.
Topps knew they didn’t have the best content because the packs didn’t advertise the AFL specifically, just “Pro Football.”
Topps returned to the basketball card market in 1969 with their 99-card set. Again, Topps must have been trying to make a splash and have the cards stand out on shelves with their larger size as “10 GIANT CARDS” was printed on the wax boxes.
1969 Topps basketball is loaded with stars enhancing its popularity. But you may not know that Topps couldn’t use team logos on the cards due to licensing issues, so some players posed for photos wearing their jerseys backward. Still, it’s an incredibly eye-appealing set due to the tall boy format and choice of colors.
Topps did follow up the 1969 Topps basketball set with another tall boy set in 1970, but they never did publish a baseball tall boy set (1964 Topps Giant-Size All-Stars being the closest we have). The drawback of the tall boy format is that the cards’ size makes them more condition sensitive since they were tougher to store and more prone to miscuts in the factory.
Regardless of your desire to collect high-end cards or not, a trio of all three original tall boy sets would be a great addition to anyone’s vintage card collection. Let me know down in the comments which is your favorite, and happy collecting!
A few rare cards have managed to trickle into the hobby despite Topps’ intention not to release them. These cards were usually caught and updated or removed from production in the proof phase of the printing process. Topps had to make set modifications because of player rights (like the 1974 Topps Joe Namath card), trades (like the 1977 Topps Reggie Jackson and 1967 Topps Roger Maris cards), or printing errors. However, in the case of the 1980 Topps Yankees Team Card, it was for another reason entirely.
Billy Martin played 11 seasons of Major League Baseball, winning five World Series championships with the Yankees and finishing his career as a .257 hitter with 64 home runs and 333 RBIs.
But, it was Martin’s behavior as a manager who was often fired amid a scandal that led to the 1980 Topps Yankees Team Card proof.
You see, Martin’s first stint as Yankees Manager (after having already been the manager of the Twins, Tigers, and Rangers) was from 1975-1978. He resigned for health reasons in July of 1978, but he was probably going to be fired for cause if he hadn’t. After a lot more drama (which you can read about on Martin’s Wikipedia page), Steinbrenner brought Martin back as manager in June of 1979 to finish out that year after the Yankees’ slow start under manager Bob Lemon. Martin closed out the 1979 season with a 55-40 record. However, he was fired again in October 1979 for punching out a marshmallow salesman, which you can read about in a Lodi News-Sentinel article from October 31, 1979.
Unfortunately for Topps, in October of 1979, they were already in the middle of the 1980 set’s production. However, they were probably only in the proofing phase because all of the known examples of the Yankees Team card with Billy Martin on it have blank backs.
By the time Topps issued the 1980 set, Martin had already been replaced on the card by rookie manager Dick Howser.
Now, there have only been a handful of public sales of Billy Martin’s 1980 Topps Yankees Team card.
In December 2003, Lelands auctioned off an uncut proof sheet with the Billy Martin variation. Bidders didn’t meet the reserve on this auction, but the description said the sheet was stamped “August 1989 Topps Auction NYC” on the back, referring to the famous Guernsey’s auction full of items from the Topps Archives; I’ve included a photo from that catalog showing the 1980 Topps baseball uncut sheets that were up for auction below.
In that same Lelands auction, they sold a lot of 78 1980-1983 Topps Archives uncut sheets for $926, including nine 1980 Topps progressives with the Billy Martin card.
A few years later, Robert Edward Auctions sold what appears to be a different 1980 Topps uncut proof sheet with the unissued Martin card for $406 in the spring of 2005 (you can see a corner is missing on Leland’s sheet but not on this one).
Finally, the last public sale of a 1980 Topps Yankees Team card with Billy Martin listed as the manager was from a 2016 REA auction lot of eight 1980-1984 Topps proof cards. The lot included a black-only and blackless progressive proof and sold for $1080.
You can find a few more examples shared on vintage sports card forums. As far as we know, the card only exists as a blank-backed proof and never made it into packs. So, it’s not a variation I would say is needed for a complete set; it’s just an unpublished proof. But that’s not to say the card doesn’t have a great story and isn’t a great card to own. Happy collecting!
PS: Martin went on to manage the Athletics from 1980-1982 and returned to manage the Yankees in 1983, 1985, and 1988.
It’s always amused me how hobby periodicals advertised on each other’s pages, almost like an endless loop of cross-promotion. So, I wasn’t surprised to find this Baseball Cards Magazine ad in the May 1982 issue of The Trader Speaks.
Baseball Cards Magazine launched in the Spring of 1981, and I’ve long argued that its first few years offered the finest hobby writing ever produced. While it’s cost me more than $2.25 an issue to piece my collection together— it’s a steal for a magazine packed with top-notch articles, checklists, and hobby insight.
Back issues of The Trader Speaks are packed with valuable writing, too, but the advertisements for iconic collectors’ issues, card shows, and vintage pricing information are particularly valuable to me. Adding copies of either publication to your collection is a fantastic way to kickstart a hobby library!
Happy collecting!