[ALR-bishop]

I do not know of a combined source for the numbers you seek. At one point I was researching what happened to the Fleer 1963 set to see why it only involved 67 cards. In the end it appeared to me to be poor sales rather than Topps litigation that truncated that set. Gum beat out stale cookies.


I did find a string of FTC complaints against Topps in which Fleer joined in, and in those reported cases there were sales figures for Topps and Fleer productions in the early to mid 60s. As I recall the Fleer 59 set did well, but sales declined for their 60 to 63 efforts. Topps had a strong year in 1963.

There was litigation against Topps by Bowman in the early 50s. I have not looked at those cases to see if any production numbers show up. That litigation involved player contracts. Bowman had sought to block Topps by making their contacts exclusive as to the sale of player likenesses with gum. Topps packaged some of their 51 products with candy. When Topps bought Bowman out their contracts became exclusive to gum and candy. The Fleer cookie and Leaf marble were competitive responses. Any one could have signed players to contracts to just sell their cards, but at that time, I guess following on tobacco tradition, the thought was you had to package something with the cards to stimulate sales.

SCD's Standard Catalog lists some production estimates for some specialized Topps productions, but not the main sets. I think Bob Lemke has posted some thoughts about production numbers for some years. 1952 might have been one