1968 Topps Test Football Cloth Patches and Team Cards

In 1968 Topps issued a fantastic test set which featured a colorful team cloth patch


and an oversize (2 1/2" x 4 11/16") B & W team photo card


which featured a listing of all the players pictured on the card.


Thanks to The Topps Vault, I have a picture of one of the test wrappers

as well as a picture of the wax box proof:


As the wrapper and box show, the Real Cloth Football Patches are the featured item with the team photos being considered almost like an insert. According to Beckett, there was one cloth patch and one team card per pack.

Since Topps had regained the rights to produce NFL cards in 1968 (after a 4 year run in which they produced only AFL cards), the set features both NFL and AFL teams.

There are 44 different cloth patches, with 26 team logo patches and 18 patches with either numbers or letters (presumably so kids could make their own "uniform" as the side of the wrapper indicates or put their name or initials on their books).

Here is a look at the NFL cloth patches:












Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a picture of the Giants patch yet.






and here are the AFL team patches:












Here is an example of one of the number patches


and an example of the letter patches


Even though there were 26 teams in the league in 1968, there are only 25 team cards as the expansion Cincinnati Bengals do not have a team photo card (since they didn't play the previous season and therefore did not have a team photo).

Here are the NFL team cards:

and the AFL team cards:












This is one of my favorite Topps test sets, but its a shame that it was done on such a limited basis as I would really like to try to complete both the cloth patch and the team card sets. Unfortunately, as not many of these were made, the patches and team cards are very expensive.

There are usually a couple of team cards and occasionally a cloth patch available on ebay (which is how I've been able to track down these pictures over the years), but they certainly aren't cheap.

1968 was quite a year in terms of Topps oddball and test sets as The Topps Archive is showing with a review of a number of different issues, and I think Topps did a great job with this set.

The patches are very colorful and attractive, and the larger team photos with the players listed on the back is a great improvement over something like this:


One thing I can't help but think might have given Topps some inspiration to come up with this test issue is this:


In 1967 and 1968, Fleer issued cloth patch Baseball Emblems with patches for hats, shirts, books and uniforms (sound familiar?)


with a cloth patch with a circular team logo surrounded by a colorful border



and packaged with an oversize card (2 1/2" x 4 1/2")



Was Topps using this test to see if it was worthwhile to try to compete against Fleer for the sale of cloth patches? It seems like there is a little too much similarity between the two sets to say that it is entirely a coincidence that Topps was test marketing cloth patches without any thought of trying to compete against Fleer.

It appears this test issue was not a big success as Topps did not follow it up with any future cloth patch releases. I guessing Topps looked at the results of this test and figured there wasn't a strong enough demand for a product where the team logos were the main selling point, and decided they would concede that market niche to Fleer.

UPDATE 11/2013:

Thanks to a recent ebay auction, here are some pictures of the wax box:

1965 Topps Football Magic Rub-Offs

Topps' insert for their 1965 Football card packs was a set of 36 AFL and college team emblem decals which were called Magic Rub-Offs as seen on this 1965 Topps Football wrapper:

The emblems could be transferred by rubbing the back of the rub-off with a coin. The image on the decal is reversed so that it would be correct once it was applied to a surface.


Here is a look at the AFL logos with the images reversed so that you can see how the logo would look once it was applied:








Unfortunately I haven't yet been able to find a picture of the Bills decal.

The remainder of the set consisted of college teams such as these examples:






In addition to being featured prominently on the wrapper (which had more space than ususal because the 1965 cards were the oversized "tall-boys" as this 1965 Namath rookie demonstrates)


the magic rub-offs are also promoted on the box:



In taking a look at the top of the wax box, I have to call out Topps for false advertising. The player displayed on the box is clearly a New York Giant based on the color of the jersey and the number on the helmet


which looks exactly like this:


Topps only had the license to produce AFL cards in 1965 as Philadelphia Gum had the NFL license that year, but the artwork on the Topps box clearly depicted an NFL team. Whoops!

1964 Topps Football Pennant Stickers

In 1964, Topps included a sticker insert in their packs of 1964 Football cards featuring team pennants:


Since Topps only had a license to produce AFL cards (Philadelphia Gum had the rights to the NFL from 1964 - 1967), the only professional teams in the set are AFL teams. In addition to the 8 AFL teams in existence at the time, the insert set also included 16 college team pennants for a total of 24 team pennant stickers.

Here is a look at the AFL teams:







There is a Raiders sticker as well, but I haven't yet been able to find a picture.

The AFL "logos" on these pennants are somewhat generic rather than being exact reproductions of their respective official logos.

The college pennants also relect this generic look




The stickers measure 2 1/8" x 4 1/2", which is why all of the stickers show a crease since they had to be folded in order to fit in the pack.

It is interesting to note that after Topps had promoted the team sticker inserts in previous years on the wrappers (1960 and 1961), there was no mention of these inserts on the wrapper


or the wax box in 1964