Topps Comics particularly specialized in licensed titles with tie-ins to movies or television series, though it also published a few original series. Its longest-running and best-selling title was The X-Files, based on the Fox TV show. Earlier, particularly in the early and mid-60s, Topps thrived with several successful series of parody and satire cards for a variety of occasions, usually featuring artists who also worked at Mad magazine. From 1957 on, virtually all cards were posed photographs, either as a head shot or together with a typical piece of equipment like a bat or glove.
Entry into the baseball card market
The 1972 set finally included color photographs, which were used for special «In Action» cards of selected star players. Thereafter, Topps began simply mixing game photography with posed shots in its sets. Summer Tours have been a growing fixture in football club’s calendars for a number of years now, becoming an integral part of the pre-season schedule. As clubs travel to sunnier climes to prep for the new season, you can expect debuts from the latest transfers, academy players getting game-time, and different opposition to those faced in the regular season. A great example of this was Arsenal’s ’23 tour of the US which culminated in a thrilling match vs MLS Allstars, including a debut and first goal for Kai Havertz.
The resulting glut of different baseball sets caused the MLBPA to take drastic measures as the market for them deteriorated. The union announced that for 2006, licenses would only be granted to tickmill review Topps and Upper Deck, the number of different products would be limited, and players would not appear on cards before reaching the major leagues. Stymied, Fleer turned its efforts to supporting an administrative complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that Topps was engaging in unfair competition through its aggregation of exclusive contracts. A hearing examiner ruled against Topps in 1965, but the Commission reversed this decision on appeal. The Commission concluded that because the contracts only covered the sale of cards with gum, competition was still possible by selling cards with other small, low-cost products.
Topps Europe Ltd. products
A tie-in with the Mars Attacks film led to a 1994 card series, a new 100-card Archives set reprinting the 55 original cards, plus 45 new cards from several different artists, including Norm Saunders’ daughter, Zina Saunders. As a result, helmet logos for these teams were airbrushed out on a routine basis. The cards originally had one line for statistics from the most recent year (i.e. the 1951 season for cards in the 1952 set) and another with the player’s lifetime totals. Bowman promptly imitated this by putting statistics on its own cards where it had previously only had biographical information. For the first time in 1957, Topps put full year-by-year statistics for the player’s entire career on the back of the card.
In 1958, the O-Pee-Chee Company of London, Ontario, Canada, entered into an agreement with Topps to produce NHL cards (the 1957–58 series) and Canadian football cards (the 1958 series). O-Pee-Chee then started printing its own hockey and football cards in 1961. Similarly, the Topps Company struck agreements with Amalgamated and British Confectionery in the United Kingdom and Scanlen’s in Australia. In one case, Topps even got too far in front of events, as in 1974 it showed a number of players as being with the «Washington Nat’l Lea.» franchise, due to expectations that the San Diego Padres would relocate to the vacant Washington, D.C., market.
Topps Baseball UK Edition Autograph Checklist
For a period beginning in 1973, the Wacky Packages stickers managed to outsell Topps baseball cards, becoming the first product to do so since the company’s early days as purely a gum and candy maker. Pokémon cards would accomplish the same feat for a few years starting in 1999. In the absence of new fads to capitalize on, Topps has come under alpari review pressure from stock analysts, since its sports card business is more stable and has less growth potential.
Some of these were the company’s own innovations, such as the 1971 Football Set, while some were ideas borrowed from others that Topps helped popularize. This means there is a sales window with a countdown timer where Topps collate the orders, we’ll then print the set and ship direct to you within 28 business days. If we are including a numbered card guarantee with parallels up to say, 99 for each subject, we cannot print beyond that number so there is an upper limit on how many boxes we can make. UEFA Club Competitions returns following a break for the UEFA Euro competition. These beautifully illustrated, retro-style cards are part of an ever-increasing collection which stretches back to 2019.
One of the features that contributed significantly to Topps’s success beginning with the 1952 set was providing player statistics. At the time, complete and reliable baseball statistics for all players were not widely available, so Topps actually compiled the information itself from published box scores. While baseball cards themselves had been around for years, including statistics was a relative novelty that fascinated many collectors. Those who played with baseball cards could study the numbers and use them as the basis for comparing players, trading cards with friends, or playing imaginary baseball games. It also had some pedagogical benefit by encouraging youngsters to take an interest in the underlying mathematics. The first variation of cards were aptly titled Slam Attax, a play on words of the previously popular football trading card game Match Attax (also made by Topps).
Topps’s creative directors of Product Development, Woody Gelman and Len Brown, gave freelance assignments to leading comic book illustrators, such as Jack Davis, Wally Wood and Bob Powell. Spiegelman, Gelman and Brown also hired freelance artists from the underground comix movement, including Bill Griffith and Kim Deitch and Robert Crumb. Even though baseball cards became the company’s primary focus during this period, Topps still developed a variety of candy items. For quite a few years, the company stuck within familiar confines, and virtually all of these products involved gum in some way.
Since a «rookie card» is typically the most valuable for any given player, the companies now competed to be the first to produce a card of players who might be future stars. Increasingly, they also included highly touted minor league players who had yet to play in the major leagues. Olympic baseball team and thus produced the first card of Mark McGwire prior to his promotion to the major league level, and one that would become quite valuable to collectors for a time. This card from the 1984 squad appeared in Topps’s regular 1985 set, but by the next Olympic cycle the team’s cards had been migrated to the «Traded» set. As a further step in this race, Topps resurrected its former competitor Bowman as a subsidiary brand in 1989, with Bowman sets similarly chosen to include a lot of young players with bright prospects. Fleer and Donruss began making large, widely distributed sets to compete directly with Topps, packaged with gum.
- With a packed checklist, 2 parallels per box, +25 signees and an autograph now guaranteed in every box, this set promises to knock cricket collectors for six!
- As a result, helmet logos for these teams were airbrushed out on a routine basis.
- Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
- Through our partnerships with clubs, Topps also get access to exclusive behind-the-scenes photography, so look out for exclusive training shots and off-field fun.
- The cards were released in several series over the course of the baseball season, a practice Topps would continue with its baseball cards until 1974.
However, Fleer chose not to pursue such options and instead sold its remaining player contracts to Topps for $395,000 in 1966. This promptly brought Topps into furious competition with Bowman Gum, another company producing baseball cards. Bowman had become the primary maker of baseball cards and driven out several competitors by signing its players to exclusive contracts. The language of these contracts focused particularly on the rights to sell cards with chewing gum, which had already been established in the 1930s as a popular product to pair with baseball cards. The cards themselves had been in color from the beginning, though for the first few years this was done by using artist’s portraits of players rather than actual photographs and until 1971, Topps used mostly portrait or posed shots.
The cards now had a color portrait on one side, with statistical and biographical information on the other. This set became a landmark in the baseball card industry, and today the company considers this its first true baseball card set. Many of the oil paintings for the sets were rendered by artist Gerry Dvorak, who also worked as an animator for Famous Studios. As a byproduct of this history, Topps continues to use individual player contracts as the basis for its baseball card sets today.
The 1971 set is also known for its jet black borders, which because they chip so easily, makes it much more difficult to find top grade cards for 1971. The black borders would return for Topps’s 1985 football set and 2007 baseball set. Although baseball cards have been Topps’s most consistently profitable item, certain fads have occasionally produced spikes in popularity for non-sports items.
This contrasts with other manufacturers, who all obtain group licenses from the MLBPA. The difference has occasionally affected whether specific players are included in particular sets. Players who decline to sign individual contracts will not have Topps cards even when the group licensing system allows other manufacturers to produce cards of the player, as happened with Alex Rodriguez early in his career. On the other hand, if a player opts out of group licensing, as Barry Bonds did in 2004, then manufacturers who depend on the MLBPA system will have no way of including him. Topps, however, can negotiate individually and was belatedly able to create a 2004 card of Bonds. In addition, Topps is the only manufacturer able to produce cards of players who worked as replacement players during the 1994 baseball strike, since they are barred from union membership and participation in the group licensing program.
MLBPA executive director Marvin Miller then approached Joel Shorin, the president of Topps, about renegotiating these contracts. At this time, Topps had every major league player under contract, generally for five years plus renewal options, so Shorin declined. After continued discussions went nowhere, the union before the 1968 season asked its members to stop signing renewals on these contracts, and offered Fleer the exclusive rights to market cards of most players (with gum) starting in 1973. The cards were released in several series over the course of the baseball season, a practice Topps would continue with its baseball cards until 1974. However, the last series of each year did not sell as well, as the baseball season wore on and popular attention began to turn towards American football.