Fun with Astros vs Phillies Programs

 As we get ready for the World Series, here are a few fun Astros programs where the Astros played the Phillies from the 1960's:

I miss the days when some teams would publish programs that poked a little fun at their opponents, like in this case where they have some fun with Phillies manager Gene Mauch:

Not quite sure what is going on here, other than I assume the space capsules refer to their current positions in the standings:

I think this sums up the fact that neither team was having a good year and that they were looking forward to the offseason:

Even before they became the Astros, the Colt .45s had some fun with their programs:

By the way, love the Colt .45s merch:
 

 

 

As some other bloggers have pointed out, this feels like an odd World Series matchup for those of us of a certain age.

I'll never completely get used to the fact that the Astros are an AL team, even if they have represented the AL in 4 of the last 6 years.

In my mind, this is how the NL is supposed to look since this is what I grew up with:

Heck, even the first official regular season game played in the Astrodome was against the Phillies:

 

 

Looking back at some of these old programs shows how much more interesting they were when the home teams handled their programs.  These programs have much more personality than what we have for this year's World Series program:

Yawn!

 

Once MLB took over the World Series programs in 1974 with this program, the covers have been very generic

 

 

I miss the days when each team put out its own program for the Series, as they were a lot more interesting:

 

 

 

 

 

1972 Fleer Baseball Cloth Patches Uncut Sheet - Another Piece of the Puzzle

Here is a picture of what I believe to be a 1972 Fleer Baseball Cloth Patches uncut sheet:

 

The reason I believe it is from 1972 is that there are no Senators or Rangers patches, so this would most likely be from the season when the Washington Senators moved to Texas to become the Rangers:

 

 

This sheet comes from the same person who provided a picture of a framed uncut Fleer Baseball Cloth Patches sheet from 1974 which I profiled previously:

 

I dated that sheet as being from 1974 due to the lack of Padres patches as this would have most likely been from the year that they were planning to move to DC.

In comparing the 2 sheets, we can see that the Orioles replaced the Rangers on the 1972 sheet for both the logo patch as well as the cap patch. Presumably the Senators would have been in those positions on the earlier sheets.  The 1972 sheet also allows us to see the Padres, which were replaced on the 1974 sheet by a Yankees logo and a Cardinals cap patches, making those effectively double prints.

Other than these changes, the positions of the other teams all remain the same between the 2 sheets.  We can also see some of the logos that changed, such as the Indians logo and cap, the Braves cap (from a capital "A" to a lower case "a") and the Angels (from the lower case "a" in 1972 to the capital "A" in 1974.

I would like to thank the person who reached out to me and provided these pictures as they greatly enhance our understanding of these cloth patches and some of the changes that occurred over the years.

Amazing Topps 1967 Video Shows Boy On Top of Millions of Dollars Worth of 1967 Baseball Cases

If you haven't seen the 1967 Topps promotional video entitled "The Hidden Treasure", you are in for a treat.  Topps posted this on YouTube a few weeks back, and it is an amazing time capsule:

This is a fantastic look back at kids collecting baseball cards during 1967 as well as look at the new Topps factory in Durya, PA.

 

We get to see kids opening packs of 1967 Topps Baseball:

 

 

Looks like these are 1967 High Numbers based on the Don Clendenon (# 535)!

 

 

We see more high numbers in the packs his sister opened!

 

 

We see kids flipping their cards.  STOP!  Those are '67 High Numbers!!!!

 

What are the odds that one of those cards on the ground is a Seaver or a Carew rookie!

I also like the Topps poster in the widow behind the kid with the blond hair.  I have never seen that before.

The "story" of the "Hidden Treasure" is that the kid who is flipping cards loses all his cards to the "new" kid who for some reason has a diabolical laugh.  After losing his cards, and not being able to get any cards from his sister to use to win back some of the cards he lost, he goes fishing to "brood all alone", at which point he discovers a Treasure map:

 

The map directs him to the new Topps factory in Durya, PA which had started operations a few years before:

 

He plans to sneak in to the factory, and then when everyone goes home for the night, dig for the hidden treasure.

Once inside, he starts exploring, and comes across rolls of wrappers:

 

 

He starts playing with the equipment, including the machines that pack the baseball cards:

 

Here we see the gum getting added to be packaged with the cards as we now see a stick of gum on top:

 

The cards then get put into wrappers.  This is where things get confusing.  The video shows a roll of 1966 wrappers, so presumably this was footage that had been shot a year earlier:

 

We also see what appear to be 1966 packs coming off the assembly line:

 

Our treasure hunter then falls asleep and dreams of being caught by the factory workers and being turned into a baseball card.

 

Once again, we see a 1966 wrapper as the factory workers cover him up with a mock up of the 1966 design.

 

He doesn't realize it, but he has found the treasure and he is laying on top of it!  Those appear to be 1967 Topps Baseball cases.

 

Here is a picture of a 1967 Topps Baseball shipping case (right under the Football case).  Note the baseball player in the bottom left corner - these appear to be similar boxes:

 

 

They also share a similar design to the 1967 wax box:

 

 

There appear to be 4 rows of 9 cases, or 36 cases.  We see from the picture of the case that there are 24 was boxes in a case, so that would mean he is laying on top of 864 wax boxes!

  

I have no idea what an unopened box of 1967 Topps might go for (especially if these were the High Numbers that he was opening earlier), but just throwing some numbers together if you could get $12k per box, you are looking at over $10 million, and that is likely a low estimate!

He didn't need that shovel to dig for treasure!  All he needed was to take one of those forklifts and take the pallet of those 36 cases home!

 

The story ends with our treasure hunter getting punished by his parents for breaking into the factory (double the chores and no baseball cards) while his sister mocks him with more cards:

 

Its not really clear who the audience would have been for this film.  Presumably Topps was hoping it could be shown in schools, perhaps from the angle of showing how candy gets made and factories operate.

 

Here is the video so you can travel back to 1967 and see what it was like in the Topps factory:

 

 

 

 

 

False Advertising - 1979 Topps Football Sell Sheet

I saw this 1979 Topps Football sell sheet on ebay, and was quite surprised to see the Steelers logo on Terry Bradshaw's helmet. This flyer certainly gives the impression that the 1979 set would include team logos on the helmets based on the picture:

Alas, what we actually got was the same old airbrushed helmets that we had to endure for the entire decade as this is what we ended up with:

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I'm guessing that Topps didn't bother to airbrush the sell sheet as that isn't a trading card, and they probably figured the NFL would not bother going after them over a sell sheet.

Here is a look at the other sports sell sheets from 1979:

Oh to have bought a few cases of each of these and just put them away for about 40 years!

Play Ball! - Bob Laughlin Style

As we get ready for the most unique season in MLB history, I thought this would be a good time to show a Sporting News cover from 1967 that I recently came across featuring the artwork of Bob Laughlin with his representations for each team at the start of the season:

 Here is the full cover from the Feb 25, 1967 issue:

 

Card collectors will recognize Bob's work from his World Series sets that he initially produced himself in B&W

as well as the color World Series and other sets he did for Fleer and other self produced sets in the early to mid-70s:

In fact, in his initial ad for the World Series sets, he mentions doing the above cover for the Sporting News:

If you are interested in checking out The Sporting News archives, they are currently available through a subscription to newspaperarchive.com.  I bought a one month subscription and had a great time reading through articles from the 50's through the 80's.  The database is searchable, so if you want to search for articles on a particular player or team, you can quickly find the pages you are looking for.

The Joys of Marking Off a Checklist in the Digital Age

As I've mentioned a few times on the blog, Wacky Packages were the first things I collected, and the checklists were what got me hooked on wanting to complee sets, which continues to be my collecting focus 40+ years later.

By putting checklists on the back of each puzzle piece, Topps was able to tempt me into buying more packs because I wanted to see what the other titles looked like and add them to my collection. Filling out the checklist, and getting those last few stickers to complete the set became an obsession. Each pack that yielded a sticker or two to fill in one of those checklist boxes was a thrill to open.

As it turns out, there was one Wacky series from the original run in the mid-70's that I never saw - the elusive 16th Series, which is the series listed on the above checklist.  The Series has a 1976 copyright, but apparently wasn't released until 1977, by which time the Wacky fad had run its course and died down.

 

New York Magazine on Wacky Packs Fad (October 1973)

Many collectors originally thought that Wackys ended with the 15th Series as the 16th Series was not widely distributed, which makes the 16th Series quite a challenge to collect today.

It wasn't until many of the titles from the 16th Series appeared in the 4 series of reissue sets from 1979 - 1980 that reprinted a number of the original Wackys that many collectors found out that the 15th Series had not been the last one once they started seeing a number of what appeared to be new stickers, but actually turned out to be reprints from a series most weren't familiar with..

After finally filling in the gaps I was missing in my collection of the 1st through 15th Series, I decided to start tackling the 16th Series, which is the Wacky equivalent to something like the 1967 Topps Baseball High Numbers.  This has been a quest that has been going on for a number of years.  Its not that the stickers are impossible to find, its just hard trying to find them at a price I am willing to pay.

Since part of my childhood memories are the fun of marking off the Wacky checklist when acquiring new stickers (not simply deleting something off a wantlist like I do now), I decided it would be fun to mark off the checklist to keep visual track of my progress, just like back in the day.

The issue is that these checklists aren't cheap. To give an idea of what checklists go for, this set of 9 checklists for a complete puzzle is currently listed on ebay for $499, or a little over $50 per card:

 

Since there was no way I was going to ruin one of my checklists, I came up with a solution using Microsoft Paint.

I took a scan of one of my unmarked checklists, and when I am able to add a new sticker to the collection, I simply pull up the scan, and fill in the box.  Its also very handy to have the picture of the checklist to keep track of the titles I am still looking for.

As I just picked up one of the stickers I've been looking for, its time to mark off another sticker!

Now that I've got Sign-X, I can mark another box off on the digital checklist while still keeping my actual checklist unmarked.

Its not quite the same as it would have been in 1977 marking off the physical checklist, but doing so digitally gets pretty close.  Its fun seeing the empty boxes slowly disappear.  Only 7 more to go!