Net54baseball.com Forums - Butch Jacobs and His Work on Topps Football Cards

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in a previous article, SCD spoke with retired Topps Director of Photography Butch Jacobs about the process of selecting photos for baseball cards (click here to read). We continue that thread by looking at Topps football card photos with input from Jacobs and others.

Cameras, film, lenses and printing techniques improved dramatically in the 1970s. Topps baseball cards evolved from fuzzy, distant action photos and stiff portraits to close-up game photos and candid portraits. Football cards went through similar changes; however, it turns out that changes in photography had much less of an impact on the look of the cards than did licensing agreements.

Football cards from the 1970s have that “generic look” caused by player uniforms that don’t look quite right. What doesn’t look right is a lot of airbrushing. What got airbrushed or left out of the picture and why makes for an interesting story. Let’s start at the beginning of Topps’ involvement in pro football cards.
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Retired Topps Directory of Photography Butch Jacobs, 2015. - See more at: http://www.sportscollectorsdigest.co....VUoZsrf9.dpuf

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Topps veterans question licensing
Without being able to talk to Sy Berger again, it is hard to confirm exactly what happened (and when) as to football licensing agreements after 1956. Sy Berger’s daughter, Maxine Berger, retired Topps Director of Photography Butch Jacobs and retired Topps writer Len Brown all provided what they knew about the subject. Brown, who worked at Topps from 1959-2000, wrote the backs of the football cards in the early 1960s and recalled, “The logos on football was something that Sy Berger was on top of, and he worked with Ben Solomon and the art department on the legal aspects of it.”

I checked with Ira Friedman, the current vice president of licensing and publishing at Topps, who has been with the company since 1988. Friedman tried to help by putting me in touch with Arthur Shorin. Shorin is the son of Topps co-founder Joseph Shorin. He joined Topps in 1958 and served as the CEO. He was very cordial in responding; apparently his mother threw out his baseball cards as well. Shorin commented, “Sorry that I can’t help but, in fact, much of those issues were handled between Sy, my late cousin Joel, who was CEO, and lawyers who have gone to their great reward.”
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