The Phone Call That Brought Basketball Cards Back

It was an experiment that would bring basketball cards into the mainstream for collectors.

The venerable Sy Berger at Topps may have been the mad professor in this experiment, but the card company’s executive needed a willing subject. And Nick Curran, along with NBA commissioner Walter Kennedy, was more than willing to test it out. The result: the iconic 1969-70 Topps “tall boys” basketball set.

Topps Goes to the Hoop

Curran, now 75, had just taken over as public relations director for the NBA in the summer of 1969 when he received a telephone call from Berger.

Topps had tried a basketball set in 1957-58, and Fleer took a shot with NBA cards in 1961-62, but neither product caught on. But with the Celtics’ dominance of the 1960s winding down and the retirement of Boston center Bill Russell, plus the anticipation of UCLA star Lew Alcindor joining the league, Berger believed the time was ripe to cultivate a basketball card market.

 

He had a receptive listener in Curran, who grew up collecting cards and autographs in the Boston suburb of Norwood and was a rabid Red Sox fan. He was familiar with Topps and was eager to hear Berger’s pitch. 

“The conversation with Sy was terrific,” Curran said from his home in Santa Barbara, California. “He wasn’t offering a lot of money, he was offering exposure.

“The commissioner loved cards,” Curran said. “When Bill Russell retired, it was a new era and the nation’s biggest city had a contender with the Knicks. The popularity was very strong.

“It was a combination of a better market, more parity among teams and the thought that New York and Los Angeles would have strong teams that made it work.”

The Packs, The Set and The Insert

The cards Topps released for the 1969-70 season measured 2½ inches by 4 11/16 inches. They came 10 to a pack with the traditional stick of gum and included a pinup ‘ruler’ insert meant to showcase the height of players.

The set consisted of just 99 cards, which included one checklist. Color photos of players are presented in an oval shape on the front, framed by a white background on the rest of the card. The player’s name and position are situated across the top of the card, while the team’s city name is featured at the bottom. The card backs contained statistics, vital statistics and a cartoon with more information about the player.

The rulers measured 2½ inches by 9 7/8 inches and featured cartoon drawings of players, positioned to the right of a ruler.

Those Backward Jerseys and Logo-less Warmups

Getting the cards into production proved a bit problematic. For starters, there was some reluctance on the part of NBA teams to show their team logos, as executives believed they were not being compensated properly. Curran had told all 14 NBA teams to allow Topps photographers into practices or preseason games to shoot pictures of the players. Not all teams complied.

“Two owners refused to let the photographers into the buildings,” Curran said. “Two others didn’t want their players wearing game jerseys with team logos unless the compensation was expanded.”

If you look closely at photographs in the 1969-70 set, you’ll notice that the players’ uniforms depicted show the backs — with the players’ names — rather than the fronts, with the team logos. Other photos showed players in either a warmup jacket or a sweat shirt. The card of Neal Walk (No. 46) makes the Phoenix star look like a player from a pickup basketball league.

“But very few fans noticed,” Curran said. “More people were interested in the faces of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was known as Lew Alcindor at the time, and Wilt Chamberlain, who was card No. 1 in the set. The shape of the card was designed to attract fans too.

“The novelty and newness of it all made it work.”

1969-70 Topps Basketball Set Is a Rookie Card Bonanza

Because no NBA cards had been issued during most of the 1960s, this set includes the rookie cards of Willis Reed, Earl Monroe, John Havlicek, Walt Frazier, Jerry Lucas, Nate Thurmond, Wes Unseld, Dave DeBusschere (who appeared on baseball cards during his big league pitching career in the 60s), Elvin Hayes, Dave Bing, Bill Bradley, Connie

Hawkins and Billy Cunningham. And of course, Abdul-Jabbar. Chamberlain, Jerry West and Oscar Robertson were the veteran superstars who had first appeared in Fleer’s ’61-62 set.

Condition-Sensitive

Because of the cards’ size, the lack of any storage products that offered protection until much later and a penchant for poor centering, it is difficult to find 1969-70 Topps basketball cards in high grade. Of the 925 cards submitted to PSA, the highest grade for a Chamberlain is PSA 9 — and there are only 13 of those. SGC has graded 3 at 96 but no 98s. For Alcindor, there is only one PSA 10 and 33 PSA 9s out of 1,829 submitted.  SGC has rated 8 cards at 96 but nothing at 98.  There are only 37 PSA 10s for the entire set, with multiples for Henry Finkel (3), Lucas (2) and Jim Davis (2).

The checklist, which was likely printed on the lower right corner of the production sheet, is rarely found in high-grade.

Cards Recalled Baseball Card Childhood

Curran and Kennedy were given sets of the 1969-70 set, delivered personally by Berger, who took the subway from Topps’ headquarters in Brooklyn to the NBA offices in Manhattan. It was a heady moment for Curran, who grew up in the Boston suburbs as a card collector.

“I collected baseball cards like a lot of the other kids,” he said. “It was a passion for me. I loved to get autographs, we’d meet the players at the train station.”

Curran particularly admired Hall of Famer Bobby Doerr and even had dinner with the Red Sox great when he was mentoring outfielder Ken Harrelson in 1968. Curran was a sportswriter at the time, but it was still a thrill.

“It was a huge joy to be in his presence.”

As a teen, Curran said he got autographs from Doerr, Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra. He also got one from Ted Williams while a finalist in a Boston Red Sox junior broadcaster contest.

“I did one inning of play-by-play and nothing happened,” Curran said. “I didn’t know how to prepare.”

Curran cut a college class on September 28, 1960, and paid 75 cents for a ticket to watch what would turn out to be Williams’ final game (“I saw Ted’s last homer,” he said.). The following season as a sportswriter for the Boston University News, Curran approached Williams during a hitting clinic at Boston University.

“I went with a reel-to-reel tape and asked him ‘can you talk about the science of hitting?’ and I got a 30-minute sound bite,” he said.

Curran also wrote for the Norwood Messenger and the Worcester Telegram in Massachusetts. Moving to Detroit, he was an assistant editor for Football News and then was editor of Basketball Weekly.

He remained the NBA’s publicity director until 1976, when Kennedy retired and was replaced by Larry O’Brien. When O’Brien brought in his own staff, Curran was looking for a job.

“I couldn’t figure out what to do,” he said.

He would join the International Volleyball Association, a coed league that was formed in 1975, as vice president of public relations. He would remain in that post until the league folded in 1980..

At that point, Curran said, “I had to reinvent myself.”

He joined Dean Witter as a financial adviser and stayed for 28 years, remaining with the company when it became Morgan Stanley.

For Curran, “God comes first, then family.” He married his wife Eileen in 1973, and in June 1975 he was ordained a deacon in the Catholic Church. The Currans live in Santa Barbara and recently became grandparents for the first time.

While the basketball card market seemed to struggle a bit by the late 1970s before … well … rebounding, Curran fondly remembers the birth and growth of wintertime cardboard that began in 1969.

“It went over really well,” he said. “And it really took off after Magic Johnson and Larry Bird entered the league.”

That 1969-70 Topps basketball set may not have been conceived in a laboratory, but it became a monster of a set.

“It was definitely an experiment and everybody benefited from it, especially NBA fans,” Curran said.

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Check out 1969-70 Topps basketball single cards, lots and sets on eBay here.

1969-70 Topps Basketball Checklist

1 – Wilt Chamberlain

2 – Gail Goodrich

3 – Cazzie Russell

4 – Darrall Imhoff

5 – Bailey Howell

6 – Lucius Allen

7 – Tom Boerwinkle

8 – Jim Walker

9 – John Block

10 – Nate Thurmond

11 – Gary Gregor

12 – Gus Johnson

13 – Luther Rackley

14 – Jon McGlocklin

15 – Connie Hawkins

16 – Johnny Egan

17 – Jim Washington

18 – Dick Barnett

19 – Tom Meschery

20 – John Havlicek

21 – Eddie Miles

22 – Walt Wesley

23 – Rick Adelman

24 – Al Attles

25 – Lew Alcindor

26 – Jack Marin

27 – Walt Hazzard

28 – Connie Dierking

29 – Keith Erickson

30 – Bob Rule

31 – Dick Van Arsdale

32 – Archie Clark

33 – Terry Dischinger

34 – Henry Finkel

35 – Elgin Baylor

36 – Ron Williams

37 – Loy Peterson

38 – Guy Rodgers

39 – Toby Kimball

40 – Billy Cunningham

41 – Joe Caldwell

42 – Leroy Ellis

43 – Bill Bradley

44 – Len Wilkins

45 – Jerry Lucas

46 – Neal Walk

47 – Emmette Bryant

48 – Bob Kauffman

49 – Mel Counts

50 – Oscar Robertson

51 – Jim Barnett

52 – Don Smith

53 – Jim Davis

54 – Wally Jones

55 – Dave Bing

56 – Wes Unseld

57 – Joe Ellis

58 – John Tresvant

59 – Larry Siegfried

60 – Willis Reed

61 – Paul Silas

62 – Bob Weiss

63 – Willie McCarter

64 – Don Kojis

65 – Lou Hudson

66 – Jim King

67 – Luke Jackson

68 – Len Chappell

69 – Ray Scott

70 – Jeff Mullins

71 – Howie Komives

72 – Tom Sanders

73 – Dick Snyder

74 – Dave Stallworth

75 – Elvin Hayes

76 – Art Harris

77 – Don Ohl

78 – Bob Love

79 – Tom Van Arsdale

80 – Earl Monroe

81 – Greg Smith

82 – Don Nelson

83 – Happy Hairston

84 – Hal Greer

85 – Dave DeBusschere

86 – Bill Bridges

87 – Herm Gilliam

88 – Jim Fox

89 – Bob Boozer

90 – Jerry West

91 – Chet Walker

92 – Flynn Robinson

93 – Clyde Lee

94 – Kevin Loughery

95 – Walt Bellamy

96 – Art Williams

97 – Adrian Smith

98 – Walt Frazier

99 – Checklist

About Bob D'Angelo

Bob has been a sportswriter and copy editor for more than 45 years and a blogger for two decades. He is celebrating his 60th year of card collecting, and still counts his 1965 Topps Mickey Mantle as his favorite. You can reach him at [email protected].