The Mystery of the Missing Kansas City A's 1955 Post Sugar Crisp Cereal Patch

A while back I reviewed the 1955 Post Sugar Crisp Cereal Cloth Patches which included only 15 of the 16 teams that were in existence at the time. For some reason, there was no patch for the Athletics. Thanks to the watchful eye of Dave from the amazing blog The Topps Archives, we now have proof that an Athletics patch was at least initially planned:


This amazing uncut sheet was recently up for auction, and provides proof that originally all 16 teams were intended for release. If you take a close look at the A's logo, you will see that it has an "X" beside it, presumably indicating that this may have been a proof sheet.

The auction also shows the back of the sheet. The instructions on the back of the patches indicates that the set was to be 16 patches:


Here is a closer look:


At some point between the creation of this sheet and the actual release of the promotion however, the decision was made to remove the A's as only 15 patches were ultimately issued.

The auction included a full set of the patches that were issued, and as you can see below, it only included 15 teams and did not feature the A's:


There was also a Post Sugar Crisp Cereal box that was included in the auction, and it shows all the teams except the A's and indicates that a set of 15 patches (not 16) could be ordered through the mail:


The auction also features an ad, again with only 15 teams and excluding the A's:


So why were the A's originally included, and then removed? The only thing I can think of is that it is due to the fact that the Athletics moved from Philadelphia to Kansas City the year this was released, so either Post wasn't sure if they should still use the logo (since perhaps there was some thought that it might get changed), or perhaps they weren't able to negotiate for the rights to use the logo as the team was in the process of relocating.

Since this was well before the days of MLB Properties, it could be that each team would have had to have been negotiated with individually to license their logo, and with the team in transition there was no opportunity to work out a licensing deal, so the A's were taken out of the series.

The auction also features some of the artwork that was used to create the patches, including an alternative White Sox logo that was not used:




Its great coming across finds like this that provide some insight into the creation of a set. Now if only the memo would surface that explains why the Athletics logo had to be taken out of the series!

Thanks to Dave for letting me know about this auction!