Topps Hocus Focus

[ALR-bishop]

Arthur---for 55 years there were 4 unknown subjects in the baseball subset. This is in my view the hardest actually issued Topps set to put together. Bob Lemke has a piece on his blog about filling in 3 of the 4 on the the checklist with these 3 cards found not long back by a collector.

I was fortunate to get these when the seller let them go




Bob has concluded that the 4th missing player is Hal Smith so the baseball checklist may be complete....maybe

[brob28]

Interesting stuff Al. Do you know anything about the distribution of these? National, regional?

[ALR-bishop]

Bill---Topps released these in 1948, 1955 and 1956. In each case the baseball "cards" were just a subset of a larger set of famous people and entertainers. I do not know if they had national of regional distribution, but think they were readily available at retail. But the nature of the cards-- thin stock, small and mostly poorly developed by the spit and rub method---meant most were not kept or preserved. The 48s seem easiest to find, the 55s the toughest---for me anyway. You can see packaging for 48s and 56s above. I do not have anything from 55 package wise

[brob28]

Al - were the 55 & 56's the modern players and the '48's the old timers? I really like the ones with the turn of the century through 1920ish players.

[ALR-bishop]

Yes, the 55s and 56s were current players and the 48s were oldsters...Ruth, Gehrig, Cobb, Tinkers, Evers, Chance, ect.

It was the same way in 1951--The Topps Current All Stars were current guys and the Topps Connie Mack All Stars were past players

[CharleyBrown]

Love those Jackies.