If you really, really liked bubble gum and could save up a couple of dimes or a quarter, you could go to the grocery store or the dime store and buy a whole box. Twenty delicious, tightly wrapped pieces of
Bazooka bubble gum were inside, complete with a Bazooka Joe comic. If you loved baseball, though, the real prize was on the back. There was no need to buy a pack and hope Mickey Mantle was inside. With this Topps product, you could pick him out.
The 1965 Bazooka baseball cards were virtually identical to the sets that had been issued in the five previous years of the decade. A few names among the 36 cards on the checklist changed from year to year but many of the familiar stars of the day remained. Mantle. Mays. Clemente. Koufax. Killebrew. Robinson.
1965 Bazooka baseball arrived during a year of change. Houston’s relatively new ballclub changed its name from the Colt .45s to the Astros and had set up shop inside the Astrodome. Baseball played indoors? What seemed like a space age concept ten years earlier was reality.
Sad reality arrived in Milwaukee where efforts to save the Braves had failed, setting the team up for one final season before a move to Atlanta. The Los Angeles Angels were becoming the California Angels and moving to Anaheim. The Minnesota Twins made their first World Series and led two games to none before Sandy Koufax lassoed their bats.
Bazooka sets can be confusing if you don’t consult a price guide and/or detailed checklist such as those found in the Standard Catalog. Many of the stars who appeared on a virtually annual basis were numbered the same from year to year. The only way to tell the difference was the photo. In 1964, Mantle’s Bazooka card shows him with the bat on his shoulder. In ’65, he was card #1 again but the photo shows the switch-hitter batting lefty. Sometimes the differences are very subtle. Mays (#12) was looking to his left in ’64. He’s looking down in ’65.
In all, there are 15 Hall of Famers in the 1965 Bazooka set. The best panels are #11 featuring Frank Robinson, Koufax and Colavito and #3 carrying both Aaron and Killebrew. Again, some big names were mysteriously missing. There is no Ernie Banks. No Willie McCovey. No Roger Maris. No Yaz. It’s likely Topps tried to include at least one player from every team but it seems like the boxes would have sold better with more star power.
Most youngsters cut the cards out individually on the handy dandy dotted lines while others clipped off the entire back panel. A few unused boxes survived the factory and carry a large premium. Oddly, most of the complete boxes that have been graded feature Clemente, Veale and Callison while the box showing Robinson, Colavito and Koufax makes up the bulk of the remaining supply. A PSA 10 Veale/Clemente/Callison panel sold for $5,918 earlier this year while an ungraded box with Koufax, Frank Robinson and Colavito went for $1,500.
In all, PSA has graded over 500 single cards, over 300 panels and 78 complete boxes. SGC has graded 60 singles, 109 panels and one box.
Prices vary a lot, depending on condition. Many of the common single cards sell for just a few dollars while complete panels or boxes featuring stars can bring much more in high grade. A good quality complete panel set sold at auction in early 2015 for over $5,600. A panel featuring Mantle, graded PSA 10, sold for $3,871 while one of the 5 Mantle PSA 10 singles graded PSA 9 netted $2,276 in 2019.
The single cards that have proven most elusive in higher grade are Elston Howard and Larry Jackson.
Several dozen cards and panels are on eBay now. Click here to check them out.
1965 Bazooka Baseball Checklist
1 Mickey Mantle
2 Larry Jackson
3 Chuck Hinton
4 Tony Oliva
5 Dean Chance
6 Jim O’Toole
7 Harmon Killebrew
8 Pete Ward
9 Hank Aaron
10 Dick Radatz
11 Boog Powell
12 Willie Mays
13 Bob Veale
14 Roberto Clemente
15 Johnny Callison
16 Joe Torre
17 Billy Williams
18 Bob Chance
19 Bob Aspromonte
20 Joe Christopher
21 Jim Bunning
22 Jim Fregosi
23 Bob Gibson
24 Juan Marichal
25 Dave Wickersham
26 Ron Hunt
27 Gary Peters
28 Ron Santo
29 Elston Howard
30 Brooks Robinson
31 Fred Robinson
32 Sandy Koufax
33 Rocky Colavito
34 Al Kaline
35 Ken Boyer
36 Tommy Davis
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