1971 Topps Questions
 

Having finally finished upgrading my 1971 Topps set, I thought I'd put a few questions our there to the community and see what comes back:

1) For those of you who remember opening these up in 1971, how often did they come out of the pack with some chipping already visible, and how hard was it to prevent once you had them in your hands, boxes, etc.?

2) Any idea why the 1971 wrappers seem to be rarer and more expensive than those of sets before and after? I've been looking on eBay for a while, and they rarely come up; when they do, like one that ended last night, they sell for more than $100. 1970s and others by contrast seem plentiful and far more affordable.

3) Finally - the Boots Day "variation" with the lights - Even on the version where the lights are said to be airbrushed out, you can clearly still make them out - much fainter, but the outline and a color contrast is still there. Isn't it more likely, since even on versions where they're fully visible they still appear as a grayish blue, this is a color registration variation in the printing process, rather than an attempt by Topps to delete them?

Thanks!

1) I don't recall, but they ended up in the toybox or tossed, so I also didn't try too hard to keep them nice. The toybox did a number on them pretty quickly.

2) No idea. Maybe fewer unopened boxes survived? Or maybe the coins wrecked most of the ones that did?

3) It's really unlikely. To me it looks like they removed it from 3 of the colors, but left it on the yellow since that was enough to mostly make it go away.

I think they were really pushing the cello and rak paks in '71; certain Topps (and OPC) years are like this. I know there' a couple of years in hockey (late 50's/early 60's) where wax wrappers are super tough.

I opened quite a few back then, including some of the high numbers. I don't remember seeing much chipping at all and still have quite a few of those cards. I also remember having all the cards from the 3rd or 4th series at the time and still buying more packs from that series. LOL

To Dave's point, I do not doubt that but at all, but all of mine came from wax packs because that's what was at the local store. I probably 90-95% of the non-high numbers and maybe half of the high numbers by the time I was done buying them.

IIRC most of the wax I got back in 70-72 came from either the local Colonial Maid Ice Cream Truck (a vital source of Wacky's in '73 as well) or the local Luncheonette, which had a candy rack off to the side of the counter. The dime stores (and I think supermarkets) had the cello packs and the bigger toy outlets had Raks. The only true Topps packaging breakdowns I've ever seen were vending vs. non vending in the 50's-would love to see year-to-year how they actually did things. Vending was a very small % of the overall sales but must have had a higher margin. One store I went to back them had Raks inside and a vending machine in the vestibule.

By "local store" I meant local small town (of about 300) all purpose country grocery store where you could bring your own jar and get molasses out of a barrel. I'd walk the block from my house whenever I had some change to buy cards. The only other place I bought '71 cards were at the concession stands at little league games (all wax packs). I don't remember seeing or buying any cello or rack packs at all in 1971, though my exposure to larger stores was a bit limited. So I totally trust what you are saying. Just trying to clarify what I meant by local store.

And the store wasn't much different in 1971 than it was when the picture was taken for this postcard. :D

Just to add ... I bought a ton of 71T's in 1971, in SF. Most from wax at a 5 & 10 on Ocean Ave. (Ben Franklin's?/early Summer) & some high #'s from a toy store somewhere in downtown SF. If I recall correctly ... the cards I bought from the toy store (I'm guessing late Summer/early Fall) were in a cello brick about the size of a big book. I seem to remember that because I'd never seen baseball cards up to that point except in wax packs. So it was kind of extra exciting :-) Is that even possible (I mean a cello brick)?

That's pretty wild Taylor-no worries, I wasn't taking issue, just kind of riffing. I was ground zero suburbia, I probably had 20 options to buy cards within a 2 mile radius from my house and of course the ice cream truck brought them right to me!

I did a little poking around and it looks like 1971 Basketball wax wrappers aren't all that easy either.