The origins of Topps directly relate back to the American Leaf Tobacco Company, founded by family patriarch Morris Shorin (Chigorinsky at the time) in 1908 after he branched out from rolling cigars as his livelihood. ALTC operated more or less through 1938 and in between Morris and four of his sons dabbled in real estate and gas stations before Topps launched.  Using the tobacco jobber (wholesale) distribution network ALTC had relied upon gave Topps a big advantage when they started selling their namesake gum as they didn't have to build one from the ground up. I have searched high and lo ..read more

Topps did some interesting cross-marketing over the years, which was often quite innovative, such as when they contracted with the Barker Greeting Card Company of Cincinnati to affix their penny packs of Varsity, Hocus Focus (which today we call Magic Photo) and the like to Christmas and Birthday cards in the late 1940's. You could also look to the Doeskin Tissues tie-in with Wings and Rails & Sails or the Red Ball Jets packs that contained even more of the fabulously over-produced Wings cards. However, on occasion Topps allowed for some cross-marketing the other way, i.e. with a ..read more

Friend o'the Archive Mike Savage recently sent along some significant lists of specials from Woody Gelman's Card Collectors Company, issued but a mere fifty years (!) ago. There is some excellent information contained in these flyers about a brace of test issues which feature some of the toughest items Topps ever put out and show how CCC was used as as one of their conduits for unsalable overstock. Today let's take a look at Specials of the Month list #4, which came riding along with a more traditional CCC catalog in this handily postmarked envelope: I don't have a copy to show from my colle ..read more

Well, here's the last of the Topps Annual Reports that were dispatched to me last year by Friend o'the Archive David Eskenazi, covering 1983 (with a very interesting addendum). 1983 looked a lot like 1982, report-wise.  The cover is minimalist, yet effective: The Nature of Business Statement expanded by a paragraph from 1982: I'm not sure why these had to be so specific as the annual reports usually had enough detail to get the point of the various business ventures across.  To wit, here is page one of the Shareholders letter, bearing a lot of good news: Thanks to BFF o'the A ..read more

Continuing our look at the Topps Annual reports received from Friend o'the Archive David Eskenazi we come to the pivotal year of 1981.  The specter of competition is imminent (their fiscal year ended just around the time the first wave of  Fleer and Donruss cards started flooding stores) and there are some severe economic headwinds affecting the company but, as we shall see, the results were a little better than the dire financials from fiscal year 1979-80. The cover was even sparser than the one from 1980 but they slightly upgraded to a semi-glossy stock for it, although the interio ..read more

Friend o'the Archive David Eskenazi, who has been sending me various care packages of Topps corporate goodies from time to time, recently sent another batch my way.  This time, the fully stuffed mailer was loaded up with Topps Annual and Board Reports, covering the fiscal years 1980 to 1983, a very tumultuous time for the company and the hobby at large. I've looked at the 1973-1976 Annual Reports previously, and since I have none from 1977 to 1979, let's look at 1980 today.   For the fiscal year ending March 1, 1980 Topps laid a very giant egg!  You can tell things were off ..read more

I've recently been resuscitating a CD-R that was sent to me some time ago with thousands of scans covering Topps Vault items sold by them from 2007 to mid-2013 on eBay. Some of the files are corrupted at this point but I've managed to save about 70 percent of them. However, I cannot trace who sent me this wonderful time capsule so please ping me if it was you! Some of the most esoteric items on the disc were letters sent to Sy Berger from 1993-95 thanking him for the $500 payments that secured each player's signed release for the Topps Archives (yessir) Official Reprint sets from 1994 and 1995 ..read more

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