Vintage Sports Cards – Baseball – Basketball – Football – Hockey
Topps was the only game in town for baseball cards for around a quarter of a century (1956 through 1980). But on July 1, 1980, a Philadelphia judge ended Topps’ monopoly, opening the door for Fleer and Donruss to join the baseball card market in 1981, sparking a battle for baseball card supremacy. And while … Read more
I’ve been consistently adding to my hobby library for the past 18 months, so from time to time, I will search eBay with keywords like ‘Topps,’ ‘book,’ ‘catalog,’ and ‘guide.’ In doing so, I ran across a book called “The Home Run Book” with a Topps logo in the top left corner. Not knowing what … Read more
Topps tried something new for its 198-card 1981 basketball set to create a buzz among collectors across different geographic regions. Instead of releasing 198 cards numbered 1 through 198 inserted randomly into packs, Topps included a 66-card national set and three unique subsets of 44-different cards distributed separately in the East, Midwest, and West. This … Read more
Topps used to distribute sell sheets (printed flyers) to dealers and local retailers to promote their products. I’m a big fan of them; since I’m an amateur hobby historian, they are a means to learn product codes, case and card count, pricing, and other distribution facts. Topps usually gave us everything except the print counts … Read more