Topps – Post War Cards

A Quick Look at NFL and AFL Trading Card Rights in the Early 1960s

April 10, 2025 by John

In the middle of 2022, on X, I shared a handful of 1961 Topps and 1961 Fleer football unopened products, and someone asked how it was that both Topps and Fleer had a license to print AFL and NFL cards in the same year. We also noted that it was weird that it was midway through seemingly exclusive 4-year deals for each brand. Honestly, after more research, I still don’t know why or how this happened, but I thought I would share some information about NFL and AFL trading card rights in the early 1960s.

This all started with the founding of the American Football League in 1959 and its inaugural season in 1960. They were challenging the established National Football League, who, as PSA wrote, “…had a fan base. They had connections with college athletes, and they had Topps bubble gum cards. The popular trading card company had issued its first professional football set featuring NFL players in 1956, which began an uninterrupted streak of Topps football sets featuring contemporary players that ran through the 2015 season.”

So, just as the leagues were competing against each other, Fleer and Topps would also. Fleer printed football cards from 1960 to 1963, having the rights to the AFL players in 1960, 1962, and 1963, and Topps had the rights to the NFL players during that time. Somehow, in 1961, both companies had players from the AFL and NFL.

Here is the year-by-year breakdown of each set.

1960 Fleer: The set has 132 cards, 125 with players and seven showing head coaches. It was Fleer’s first football set and was made up entirely of AFL players. And since it was the first year of the AFL, most players were coming into the pro ranks out of college, so Fleer showed them in college uniforms.

1960 Topps: The 132-card set only has NFL players and showcased the expansion Dallas Cowboys.

1961 Fleer: Fleer released the 220-card set in two series, the first with 132 NFL players and the second with 88 AFL players.

1961 Topps: The 198-card set featured NFL players in the first series (#’s 1-132) and AFL players in the second series (#s 133-197), with card 198 being a checklist.

1962 Fleer: The set has cards of 88 AFL players, and many collectors believe it had the lowest print run of any of the Fleer football sets.

1962 Topps: The 176-card set features NFL players

1963 Fleer: The set features 88 cards of AFL players and a great unnumbered checklist. The set is known to have three of the most sought-after vintage football cards of the ’60s (the Checklist, Charles Long, and Bob Dougherty).

1963 Topps: The 170-card set of NFL players was grouped alphabetically by city name.

Things got interesting after that. In 1964, the Philadelphia Gum Company obtained NFL rights through 1967, and Topps printed AFL-only sets between 1964 and 1967, leaving Fleer with no product in football (or baseball). Then, in 1968, after the NFL and AFL agreed to merge, Topps got the rights to both leagues.

I can make a lot of guesses about exclusivity and printing rights in the early 1960s that led to the 1961 sets from Fleer and Topps having both AFL and NFL cards, but I really don’t have any facts. If anyone knows what happened, please let me know in the comments and happy collecting!

10 Original Mickey Mantle Photos Used For His Early Bowman, Topps, and Wheaties Baseball Cards

March 20, 2025 by John

Vintage baseball cards are incredibly popular, but people sometimes forget that baseball card manufacturers had to find original photographs to design the cards around. Here are some original photos of Mickey Mantle that Bowman, Topps, and Wheaties used on some of his earlier baseball cards.

1951 Bowman #253 and 1953 Topps #82 Mickey Mantle Cards

1951 Bowman and 1953 Topps Mickey Mantle Original Photograph

1951 Wheaties Mickey Mantle

1952 Bowman #101 Mickey Mantle

1952 Bowman Mickey Mantle Original Photograph

1952 Topps #311 Mickey Mantle

1952 Topps Mickey Mantle Original Photograph

1954 Bowman #65 Mickey Mantle

1954 Bowman Mickey Mantle Original Photograph

1956 Topps #135 Mickey Mantle

1956 Topps Mickey Mantle Original Photograph – Headshot

1956 Topps Mickey Mantle Original Photograph – Action Shot

1958 Topps #487 Mickey Mantle All-Star

1958 Topps Mickey Mantle All-Star Original Photograph

1958 Topps World Series Batting Foes Mickey Mantle and Hank Aaron

1958 Topps World Series Batting Foes Original Photograph

1958 Topps #418 Mickey Mantle / Hank Aaron World Series Batting Foes

1960 Topps Rival All-Stars Mantle & Boyer

The photo of Mantle and Boyer was taken in 1957, three years before Topps released the popular 1960 Topps Rival All-Stars card.

1960 Topps #160 RIval All-Stars Mantle & Boyer

Happy collecting!

PS: I put this blog post together ~ three years ago and am republishing it. None of these photos are of items in my collection, and I don’t have good records of the auctions/collections I pulled them from.

Vintage Baseball Card Sales Numbers And The Topps Monopoly

March 6, 2025 by John

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!

A Few Ways Topps Distributed Uncut Sheets Directly To Customers

February 20, 2025 by John

I love uncut sheets of sports cards. They make awesome display pieces, they’re often scarce, they provide set education, finish “master” collections, and provide hobby integrity. So, despite the storage problem, they continue to be really popular. But how did these sheets make their way to the market if cards were meant to be cut up and put in boxes for sale? The conventional wisdom is that they came from Topps employees or out the backdoor of printing facilities. But the reality is a bit more complicated than that, particularly in more modern times, as Topps provided uncut sheets via direct sales, instant winner programs, marketing add-ons, and a few other planned/legitimate means.

You can see the code #945-84 sell sheet for Topps 1984 Uncut Baseball Card Sheets when it comes to direct sales. Topps offered six different sheets of 132 cards (132 * 6 = a complete 792 card set). Topps realized there was a market for uncut sheets and responded as any business would.

1984 Topps Baseball Uncut Card Sheets Sell Sheet

One collector on a forum had written that they had bought some sheets in the mid-1980s from local stores (not card stores), and the sheets came wrapped in plastic. So Topps sold some of these, though perhaps not through hobby stores. Another collector responded that as early as 1982, they bought sheets like this from ToysRUs. They were in a large box with the top cut off, left in the aisle for display, and sold for around $6. Others surmise this sales method may have happened as early as 1981

There are also examples of complete boxed sets of 6 uncut sheets of 1987 Topps that are still widely available. Whether they were sold by Topps or a 3rd party is less clear.

1987 Topps Uncut Sheets Complete Box Set

1987 Topps Uncut Sheets Complete Boxed Set Zoomed In

3 Boxes of 1987 Topps Uncut Sheets Baseball Card Collections

Topps also used to provide sheets to collectors through add-ons. In 1989, as the code #325 sell sheet indicates (courtesy of 4192Cards), if any store purchased a case of Bazooka Gum, they got two uncut sheets of Topps baseball cards. It’s believed this happened between 1986 and 1990.

In 1984, OPC inserted instant winner cards into packs, and one of the prizes was the three sheets that made up a complete set.

Earlier in the 1980s, for $4 ($5 in 1982), collectors could receive a full-sized uncut sheet of 1981 or 1982 Topps baseball and 1981 Topps football cards through a promotion with Coca-Cola (through the header card packed with team sets). Many of the sheets the distributor sent to collectors had errors. So, this tactic may have been a way for Topps to make some money rather than throwing away printer errors or allowing staff to walk off with them.

The distributor in Connecticut included an additional offer to get every sheet from 1981 for $4 a sheet or $24 for an entire print run.

There’s another example of acquiring uncut sheets as far back as 1972 for Topps basketball in partnership with Wheaties. The Topps Archives wrote about getting 132 player sheets for $2 plus two Wheaties proof of purchase panels. I’ve included the photos from the Topps Archives blog post below, just in case that site ever goes down and we lose access to its incredible history of articles.

Wheaties Box with 1972 Topps Basketball Uncut Sheet Offer

I’m sure there are dozens of more legitimate examples of how Topps distributed uncut sheets of cards in addition to the methods discussed in this post. If you know of any others, share the details in the comments below.

Happy collecting, and don’t forget to check out the Uncut Sheet Archive, too!