1960's Topps Baseball card production ?
Mickey Mays
Posts: 289 ✭✭✭
Anyone have any knowledge or an educated guess how many Topps baseball cards were made for each year of the 1960's. If this has been discussed, please leave a link .
Thanks!
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It has been a long time since I saw some of those figures. In the 1960s Fleer filed several FTC complaints against Topps and the discovery and related evidence on sales by both companies are discussed in those reported cases.
I came to the conclusion the Fleer 1963 set was halted for poor sales rather than a Topps lawsuit. The monopoly Fleer was trying to break was not the sale of baseball cards, but rather the exclusive right through player contracts to sell them with gum ( or candy/confections). Selling baseball cards with stale cookies apparently did not create a market frenzy
Those cases did discuss sales figures for Topps ad Fleer in the 60s. You might locate them by googling " FTC Topps FLeer"
Bowman Baseball -1948-1955
Fleer Baseball-1923, 1959-2007
Al
Interesting topic. You can find Fleer's 1980 lawsuit against Topps with a quick Google search. In 1974, the Players Association wrote a cease and desist letter to Michael Aronstein because he was attempting to use their pictures for a collector set, while Topps was the "exclusive assignee of the players". Looks like Topps had a monopoly in the 60s and 70s.
buying O-Pee-Chee (OPC) baseball
I'm going on memory about the lawsuits - this kind of stuff is interesting but deep for me and very few are really interested in this kind of minutia IMO?
In 1953 Haelan Laboratories (maker of Bowman gum) Inc., sued Topps over exclusive contracts - bottom line - it was a precedent about "intellectual property rights" that still exists today.
Topps in the end - as we know - bought up Bowman and shut them down.
In 1980 Topps lost their "exclusivity" in court - essence? That Topps and the player's union had conspired to create a monopoly in violation of antitrust laws. Irony? Marvin Miller wound up making "more" money for his players by having them being paid by Fleer and Donruss.
Of interest? In 1981 Topps won an appeal of the '80 ruling such that - altho Fleer and Donruss got to produce cards - "not" with chewing gum in them. I think both companies instead did inserts - like puzzle pieces.
This is from memory - I can't find my writeup file on it.
Hiya Al
Makes sense to me. Ya know? I was never able to find a lawsuit with Topps and Fleer around 1963.
I ran a Lexis search and found about 15 entries for suits between Fleer/Topps from 1976 - 1988. Nothing earlier than 1976, but I didn't spend more than a few minutes on it
What's a Lexis search?
[https://ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/commission_decision_volumes/volume-67/ftcd-vol67january-june1965pages744-855.pdf]
page 805 has a sales chart. If someone had a sell sheet for those years, including vending, they might be able to do a somewhat precise approximation. My back of the envelope guess would be about 1 million of each card in 1961.
Lexis Nexis is a legal database. I ran a quick search, but haven't had a chance to read any of the cases.
https://google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=6&ved=0ahUKEwjX6f7Y_oDZAhXk7IMKHTZ-DHgQFggWMAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ftc.gov%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fdocuments%2Fcommission_decision_volumes%2Fvolume-67%2Fftcd-vol67january-june1965pages744-855.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2pEQDtJAF3HDpIraLT9goD
Bowman Baseball -1948-1955
Fleer Baseball-1923, 1959-2007
Al
I have determined that I am, in fact, invisible.
[No disrespect. I took your advice from your first two posts, researched the FTC case and posted the link. It was an interesting read. Again, page 805 has a chart of Topps sales figures from 1957-61. In the verbiage there are sales figures for 1952 to 1956. The next page has sales figures for Goudey and Bowman. The Fleer 63 set had sales of about $200k.]
That's a really good reference Paul - I've never seen it.
Thanx buddy!
You are not invisible George. I am just inattentive
Bowman Baseball -1948-1955
Fleer Baseball-1923, 1959-2007
Al
You are welcome. It was Bishop's idea. I would have never known where to look without his initial post.
Shouldn't you have new photos of your hobby room by now?
You're a good guy Al!
Not yet Paul - with the holidays and stuff - I haven't been to the back room.
Am working on it right now - I have a mess of board games to finish cataloging before I go to packed stuff that will go on the shelves.
I'm the Prince of Procrastination.
I know that 81 Donruss had gum, but not after that, they did the puzzle pieces. Not sure about 81 Fleer??
Hiya Kirk
I didn't give an effective date of the decision since I couldn't remember.
I found an article by T.S. O'Connell of SCD who states the "appeal" in 1981 forced both Donruss and Fleer to stop producing gum in packs in 1982.
At which point Donruss inserted a more popular puzzle (Dick Perez portraits) while Fleer did a ML sticker.
Between 1963 and 1980 Fleer produced numerous interesting but not very popular at the time Baseball relates sets. Most are well catalogued in the Fleer Sticker Blog. Some were issued of several years and involve subtle differences from year to year. Putting all those sets together with their many variances is tough and time consuming. SCD checklists only a small number of them
Bowman Baseball -1948-1955
Fleer Baseball-1923, 1959-2007
Al