How much vintage is out there!?

[ALR-bishop]

Topps and Fleer were involved in some FTC proceedings in the 1960s involving Topps exclusive contacts to distribute player likenesses with confections or gum. The contracts did not preclude cards sold by others without candy or gum, or with other items ( like the 60 Leaf marbles or 63 Fleer cookies)

In those reported FTC proceedings there are production and sales figures for certain Topps and Fleer sets. (The 63 Fleer set had very poor sales)

I used to have cites to those cases but can’t find them at the moment. A search for Topps Fleer FTC Complaints would probably turn them up

Dave Hornish would be the best source for what other numbers from Topps may be available, but agree with G that apparently not much

[toppcat]

Originally Posted by ALR-bishop

Topps and Fleer were involved in some FTC proceedings in the 1960s involving Topps exclusive contacts to distribute player likenesses with confections or gum. The contracts did not preclude cards sold by others without candy or gum, or with other items ( like the 60 Leaf marbles or 63 Fleer cookies)

In those reported FTC proceedings there are production and sales figures for certain Topps and Fleer sets. (The 63 Fleer set had very poor sales)

I used to have cites to those cases but can’t find them at the moment. A search for Topps Fleer FTC Complaints would probably turn them up

Dave Hornish would be the best source for what other numbers from Topps may be available, but agree with G that apparently not much

From the late 50's through the mid-70's Topps would state in various articles/interviews, etc., that 250,000 of each baseball card was produced. As for the accuracy of that, I think they just repeated the same press release or comment for 15 years. It may also just have referred to packs sold in stores, or, it was a made up figure.

I've tried to suss out production for a few sets but it's an inexact science and compounded (confounded) by Card Collectors Company getting what I estimate to be as much as 3-5% of the annual print run directly from Topps.

So with cards issued series by series, the 250K figure is meaningless unless it's an average. And if it's an average it's still mostly meaningless as we don't know comparative series amounts.

Topps also hit peak baseball card production (for the pre-1981 days) in 1959 IIRC which makes sense as I think the number of children as a % of overall population in the US peaked in 1959. Baby boom indeed!

Personally, I think they were producing more cards than they ever let on. This links to an estimate I did for 1952 Baseball production and also shows the FTC info Al references. I think they were making more than 250,000 of each lower series card in 1952 alone and they sold more than that from 1953-55 and then once 1956 rolled around they vastly increased their output. I doubt the true production figures will never be known until the time that the MLBPA got Marvin Miller involved (1968-69).

https://www.thetoppsarchives.com/202...bers-game.html

[rats60]

Originally Posted by toppcat

From the late 50's through the mid-70's Topps would state in various articles/interviews, etc., that 250,000 of each baseball card was produced. As for the accuracy of that, I think they just repeated the same press release or comment for 15 years. It may also just have referred to packs sold in stores, or, it was a made up figure.

I've tried to suss out production for a few sets but it's an inexact science and compounded (confounded) by Card Collectors Company getting what I estimate to be as much as 3-5% of the annual print run directly from Topps.

So with cards issued series by series, the 250K figure is meaningless unless it's an average. And if it's an average it's still mostly meaningless as we don't know comparative series amounts.

Topps also hit peak baseball card production (for the pre-1981 days) in 1959 IIRC which makes sense as I think the number of children as a % of overall population in the US peaked in 1959. Baby boom indeed!

Personally, I think they were producing more cards than they ever let on. This links to an estimate I did for 1952 Baseball production and also shows the FTC info Al references. I think they were making more than 250,000 of each lower series card in 1952 alone and they sold more than that from 1953-55 and then once 1956 rolled around they vastly increased their output. I doubt the true production figures will never be known until the time that the MLBPA got Marvin Miller involved (1968-69).

https://www.thetoppsarchives.com/202...bers-game.html

I think the expansion of baseball west also inflated those numbers. I grew up in the Los Angeles area. When my brother and I were buying collections in the late 60s-early 70s, we got lots of cards from 1958-1968, but few from 1951-1957. I don't think Topps shipped much west before 1958. With the Dodgers and Giants in California, that opened up a large market for Topps.

[toppcat]

Originally Posted by rats60

I think the expansion of baseball west also inflated those numbers. I grew up in the Los Angeles area. When my brother and I were buying collections in the late 60s-early 70s, we got lots of cards from 1958-1968, but few from 1951-1957. I don't think Topps shipped much west before 1958. With the Dodgers and Giants in California, that opened up a large market for Topps.

Yes, they did distribute in the west but much more starting in 1958. California certainly got 1952 highs, but it seems not until 1953!

[jchcollins]

Good discussion.

The question for me with postwar vintage goes back to the argument that many over on the main page make - and justifiably, that there was just so much less stuff made in the prewar days, and indeed even for Goudey and T206 and other prewar flagship sets - the pop counts are generally way less than what you find with postwar Topps and Bowman. This argument has been used for years to justify true investment pieces being thought of more as prewar and less postwar.

While I can see this logic, I think if nothing else the hobby boom / bubble of 2020-21 also proved that things like scarcity and pop count don't necessarily matter at least in the short term - when we are talking about key postwar cards of marquee HOF'ers and superstars. In other words, I don't think that anyone here expects there to be a time when nice Mickey Mantle base cards are not prime investment objects - no matter how many of them were or were not made.

The trend here along these lines for the future of postwar singles is just intriguing to me.

[steve B]

There are very certain things that affected both production figures and survival for almost anything made pre WWII compared to postwar.

The depression would have lowered production, and at least in cards there was some competition that spread the buying dollars out over different companies. That would have held for most of the 1930's.

At the time as well, there were scrap paper dealers that would buy accumulations of anything paper. (Actually there were scrappers for very nearly everything) The opportunity to sell whatever "junk" paper items were around the house would have been very attractive especially at the worst of times.


The with WWII we had paper drives, metal drives, etc. A big portion of what didn't get scrapped in the 30's went in the mid 40's.


Afterwards? We had a few decades of general prosperity, ups and downs, but seldom bad enough that digging those old cards out of an attic would have been a priority. Plus the collecting/hoarding attitude leftover from the depression leading to people saving stuff for a "rainy day" that rarely came.
Stuff might have gotten tossed in a cleaning frenzy, but more often it was saved. Oddly, even when being tossed some stuff might get saved. Like a kids box of cards being thrown out or given away but their favorite players kept. (Even into the 80's, I bought two small collections being sold by the kids parent, each held back the kids favorite players. )

[tulsaboy]

I think that there is far, far more "vintage" out there than anyone suspects. Probably more 1950's stuff than people think, but definitely more 1960's. There is no substantial shortage of Topps 1960's products, and absolutely no shortage of 1970's products. The really interesting thing to watch will be how bulk, low to mid-range cards fare in the coming decades. There will always be some completionists, but they are increasingly the exception. More and more people seem to be interested in projects (like team projects, or player projects, or all star game projects) than they are in just an old fashioned "complete set" of given years. There is certainly still a market for 1960's commons, but how long will that last? At some point, the sheer challenge of storing tens or hundreds of thousands of commons simply for others to use as set fillers becomes cost prohibitive. I also think that people just won't care as much. There will always be a market for Mantle and Mays and Aaron etc., but how long will there be a substantial market for, say, bulk 1964 Topps commons? I think that era is drawing to a close, generally speaking. At some point, I just wonder if even 1960's and 1970's commons are tossed as more trouble than they are worth.
Just an interesting thing to ponder in the coming decades.
kevin