Topps came up with all sorts of ways to sell its baseball cards but here’s one you may not have seen before.
I certainly hadn’t.
A member of the Vintage Wax and Packs group on Facebook shared this image of a 1964 baseball wax display box that was produced with gift givers in mind. These weren’t meant to be sold by the pack.
The box contained 20 packs of five cards each and each pack held a ’64 Topps coin. There’s even a printed “gift tag” on the box, which appears longer and flatter than your standard wax box from that year. Those held 24 packs
Interestingly, the photo used to depict Whitey Ford’s card is different than what Whitey’s actual 1964 Topps card looked like. The company appears to have used the image from his 1963 card to produce the graphic on the gift box.
Were these issued during the course of the season and designed as birthday presents? Or a late year release to unload some leftover cards that was designed for people looking for holiday gifts? It’s a mystery, at least for now.
One thing we do know, thanks to another group member, is that there was a sell sheet provided to retail stores (department and drug stores, maybe?) that shows the cost to the store was 60 cents per box ($14.40 for a case of 24 boxes).
It wouldn’t be going out on a limb to say the number of surviving boxes can be counted on a few fingers–if there even are any more than the one shown above–so one would think the promotion didn’t result in a ton of sales for Topps.
If you have a Topps “gift box” from ’64 or any other year in that era, please let us know.
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