It wasn't a great time to be a basketball card collector. After a mammoth 330-card set in 1977-76 and a unique postcard-sized set the next year, Topps all but waved the white flag on hoops for the next three years. The checklists shrunk to 132 cards. By 1979-80, the design of the cards and pack were decidedly uninspiring. Dealers were taking just about … [Read more...]
Vintage Pack Facts: 1971-72 Topps Basketball
Fans of the 11 teams in the American Basketball Association had to be stoked when they picked up a pack of 1971-72 Topps basketball cards. For the first time, the league's players were welcomed into the basketball bubble gum fraternity. Kids across America were intrigued by the red, white and blue ball, the unique team names, the unfamiliar uniforms and the players … [Read more...]
Vintage Pack Facts: 1980-81 O-Pee-Chee Hockey
Coming off a wild season where Gordie Howe retired, Wayne Gretzky rose to prominence, and the New York Islanders won their first of what proved to be four straight Stanley Cup championships, Canadian kids were ready to bust open packs of 1980-81 O-Pee-Chee. No one could possibly expect then that this set would prove to be arguably the decade's best in terms of rookie and … [Read more...]
Vintage Pack Facts: 1964 Philadelphia Football
After eight years with Topps at the forefront of NFL trading cards, the 1964 season brought a big change. Philadelphia Gum, founded by a former Bowman Gum executive 16 years earlier, snared the exclusive rights to make football cards for the next four seasons. Their first effort came in the fall of 1964 and it's the focus of this week's Vintage Pack Facts. … [Read more...]
Vintage Pack Facts 1965 Topps Football
You can imagine the challenges faced by the Topps Company as it plotted some drastic changes in its 1965 football card product. Having settled for the AFL as it watched Swell’s Philadelphia Gum take over the much more desirable NFL trading card contract, Topps must have felt like it needed to make its product stand out. Instead of the 2 1/1” x 3 ½” dimension that had … [Read more...]
Vintage Pack Facts: 1975-76 Topps and OPC Hockey
It was a good news/bad news proposition for hockey card collectors as the 1975-76 season approached. Topps boxes now contained 12 more packs than the year before. If you wanted to collect the entire set, though, it would require more dimes and nickels as Topps increased the size of its set from 264 cards in 1974-75 to 330 for '75-76. While the 1975-76 Topps … [Read more...]
Vintage Pack Facts: 1974 Topps Baseball
There was a lot going on in Topps' New York City offices and in their Duryea, PA plant in 1974. The San Diego Padres were thought to be moving to Washington, D.C., creating headaches for the company that prided itself on keeping its cards as current as possible. They were, for the first time, making plans for a "factory set," allowing collectors to buy the year's … [Read more...]
Vintage Pack Facts: 1955 Bowman Baseball
The end would come soon enough but in 1955, Bowman Gum was making one last-ditch effort to try to collect as many nickels and pennies as they could from baseball card collecting kids. They came up with a design that incorporated America's new favorite evening pastime. They created a whopper of a set at 320 cards and they gave kids more cards in their packs. It wasn't … [Read more...]
Vintage Pack Facts: 1961 Topps Football
The checklist got bigger as Topps welcomed American Football League players into its set. It would be six more years before the New York-based card maker had the rights to make cards of players from both leagues. While the business end of football cards got a little complicated in the 1960s, the experience remained pretty much the same. This week's edition of Vintage … [Read more...]
Vintage Pack Facts: 1960 Topps Football
Topps had some competition in the football card market as the decade of the 1960s dawned. The company reported selling about 70 million football cards in 1959. There was a new league with franchises in new cities. Who knows how many kids opted for Fleer's AFL set in 1960 but Topps dropped the number of cards in its 1960 NFL set from 176 to 132. With no … [Read more...]