1951-61 Topps sales numbers discovered

As I said in my last presentation (May 9), I am not adept at navigating legal web sites so it was almost accidental when I recently discovered a federal government document that almost made me wish I was still editor of Sports Collectors Digest so that I could enjoy the thrill of presenting the hobby with some long-sought data.

Some of the most often asked -- but never answered -- questions about post-World War II baseball cards concern production numbers. How many cards did Topps, Bowman, etc., produce in the Golden Age of the 1950s-1960s? 

Admittedly, having access to those numbers would little change current market realities, for the value for such cards is as much a factor of demand as of supply. 

Still, because production numbers have never been revealed and are probably now lost to history, it is human nature to speculate. 

Unfortunately, I did not discover production numbers . . . but I've got the next best thing. An arcane entry in the 1965 compilation of Federal Trade Commission decisions has provided the first presumably accurate figures I've ever seen that list annual sales of baseball cards for Topps 1951-1961, Bowman 1951-54, Goudey 1933-1942, Fleer 1959-1962 and Leaf 1960.

If I ever had the mathematical acumen to translate these sales figures into production numbers, I no longer have the professional incentive to do so. About all I can do with these figures is draw relative comparisons, i.e., if Topps sold $950,000 worth of baseball cards in gum packs in 1953, and $1.9 million in 1957, the company must have printed about twice as many cards in 1957 as in 1953 (since the number of cards in a 5-cent wax pack was nearly the same).

Keep in mind that the numbers we'll be seeing represent wholesale sales and that they provide no data that would be useful in trying to determine the ratio between the quantities of early-season low numbered cards and late-season short-printed high-numbers.  

Some of the Topps figures separate sales of baseball cards with gum (wax packs) from sales of baseball cards without gum (vending boxes, rack and cello packs). Depending on which packaging Topps offered in any given year, this can provide a tantalizing clue as to relative production of the various packagings.

Because baseball card sales in that era were totally coincident with the baseball season, I think we can assume that sales figures for a given year represent only that same year's production of baseball cards.

As I mentioned in my last entry, I stumbled across this information while searching the internet for information about 1949 Bowman v. Leaf baseball card litigation.

These numbers are found in a Federal Trade Commission decision of April 4, 1965, regarding anti-trusts allegations against Topps made in a Jan. 20, 1962 complaint.

The decision runs about 100 pages in a pdf format. I'm sure that besides providing baseball card sales numbers it contains a lot of other information about the card companies' activities of 50 years ago. I didn't read the document thoroughly and, again, have no interest in trying to digest its findings in this venue. About all I took away from the legalese is that the examiner did find Topps guilty of at least come of the particulars in the complaint, though it would require a close reading by a legal mind to determine how that finding affected the company and its baseball cards in the aftermath.

If you want to read the document for yourself, and perhaps share your findings and analysis with the hobby, here's a link:

http://www.ftc.gov/os/decisions/docs/Vol%2067/ftcd-vol67(JANUARY-JUNE1965)PAGES744-855.pdf

I'm just going to print here the sales numbers given and let you enjoy making of them what you will.

Unfortunately, a blog is not a great place to facilitate a dialogue about these numbers, but I invite you to share your thoughts, speculations, etc., Keep in mind that my blog doesn't accept anonymous comments, so you'll have to follow the directions at the bottom of this post to comment.

To make it easier, you can email me at scbcguy(at)yahoo(dot)com, and I can add appropriate follow-ups to this posting.

So, here's what the FTC found concerning Topps sales from 1951-1961. The FTC document did not have some data for some years, a N/A indicates "not available." Veteran collectors know that Topps was selling baseball cards without gum in cello packs as early as 1952, and in vending boxes by at least 1955, so we are left to assume that those numbers were not significant before 1956 and were rolled into the "with gum" number. There was some rounding of figures. 

We could be a lot closer to estimating production numbers if we had an idea of what Topps charged at the wholesale level for its products, but such information was not included in the FTC findings. Did the retailer who sold a wax pack for a nickel pay Topps 2 cents? 2-1/2? 3 cents? I have to think that some Topps wholesale price lists remain extant, though I can't specifically remember seeing them.

In future installments we'll look at similar baseball card sales numbers from the other bubblegum companies and some hobby odds and ends I noticed within the FTC document.

Goudey sales figures offer limited insight

Those who have been following this blog for the past two weeks have seen the results of my cursory study of baseball card bubblegum sales as reported in a 1965 decision by the Federal Trade Commission on allegations of anti-trust violations by Topps.

If you haven't already done so, I urge you to read the posting of May 12, wherein I presented the background of the FTC document and some caveats concerning its application to the hobby today.

In laying out the history of baseball cards sold with bubblegum, the FTC examiner in the Topps case dug up -- lord only knows where -- sales figures from the Goudey Gum Co. for the years 1933-1942.

The numbers presented in the FTC report were already 20-30 years old, and they were categorized in a manner differing from the Topps and Bowman reports. Still, they offer insights into baseball card sales -- and by extension baseball card production -- during Goudey's years in that market.

Notice that the Goudey sales chart has only three columns.

Total Sales are presumed to be company's gross wholesale receipts. I'm not sure what other "non-card" products, if any, Goudey may have offered in that era, but they may have had other confectionery items on the shelves besides bubblegum. 

Let's assume that the "Gum Alone" column presents sales of Goudey gum that was sold without accompanying baseball or non-sports cards.

That leaves the column titled "Baseball Packs." This column raises several questions. Foremost among them is what the sales reported in that column actually comprised, because in some of those years Goudey didn't offer its line of Big League Gum cards traditionally sold with bubblegum.

In 1939, for instance, Goudey's only baseball products were the premium photos (designated in the American Card catalog as R303-A and R303-B) that were distributed at candy store counters as wrapper redemptions. Goudey had no baseball products at all in 1940 or in 1942, yet sales are reported for Baseball Packs in all those years.

And, in the years when Goudey offered both baseball cards and premiums -- 1935-1937 -- do the Baseball Packs figures include only the standard baseball card bubblegum packs, or were the sales of gum that included premium redemptions rolled in? And how were sales of the flip-book movies Thum Movies and Big League Baseball Movies accounted for? Those novelty products were not packaged with bubblegum.

Similarly, are the Canadian sales of World Wide Gum bubblegum baseball cards included in the Baseball Packs column, the Total Sales column, or not all all?

Also unmentioned in the FTC decision was Goudey's sales of non-sports bubblegum cards throughout that span. It has long been accepted within the hobby that Goudey's Indian Chewing Gum and Horrors of War far outsold its baseball cards. If we subtract the Baseball Packs and Gum Alone columns from the Total Sales column, it is reasonable to assume that the remainder represented non-sports sales for that year? 

My eye was drawn to the Baseball Packs column because it seems to offer a reasonably clear picture of relative sales (and thus, production numbers) among the years that Goudey marketed its Big League Gum baseball cards.

Using 1933 as the base year, when Big League Gum was Goudey's only baseball card product, it can be seen that sales dropped by more than half in 1934. This was probably the result of the deepening of the Depression, and the fact that Goudey's card set dropped from 240 player cards in 1933 to just 96 cards in 1934.

In 1935, baseball card sales were again nearly halved, perhaps reflecting contemporary dissatisfaction with the 4-on-1 concept and puzzle backs, as opposed to the traditional format on a single player on front and a stats-heavy biography on back. 

For 1936, when Goudey issued a game-back card set of just 25 player cards -- in black-and-white no less -- sales in the category declined another 18 percent. In 1937, Goudey dropped player pictures entirely with its Knot Hole Game set and "Baseball Packs" sales plummeted to $36,000, a decline of more than 60 percent.

When Goudey returned to the use of baseball player pictures with its set known to today's collectors as Heads Up, sales more than doubled, even though only 24 players were included in the series. 

Before presenting the Goudey sales chart, let me summarize the baseball and non-sports bubblegum cards that were issued each year.

1933
baseball -- Big League Gum, R309-1 wrapper redemption premiums
non-sport -- Indian, Sea Raiders, World War, Soldier Boys, Boy Scouts
(where Goudey accounted for sales of its multi-sport Sport Kings cards is unknown)

1934
baseball -- Big League Gum, R309-1 wrapper redemption premiums
non-sport -- Indian, World War

1935
baseball -- Big League Gum (4-on-1), R309-2 premiums
non-sport -- Indian, G-Men and Heroes of the Law, Mickey Mouse, Film Funnies

1936
baseball -- Big League Gum (game cards), "Wide Pen" premiums
non-sport -- Indian, G-Men and Heroes of the Law

1937
baseball -- Knot Hole Game, Thum Movies, Wide Pen premiums
non-sport -- Indian, Wild West

1938
baseball -- Big League Gum (Heads Up), Big League Baseball Movies
non-sport -- Indian, Auto License Plates, Action Gum

1939
baseball -- R303-A, R303-B premiums
non-sport -- Indian, World in Arms, War News

1940
baseball -- none
non-sport -- Indian, Superman, Lone Ranger

1941
baseball -- Big League Gum
non-sport -- War Gum

 1942

baseball -- none
non-sport -- War Gum

All of this provides interesting food for thought, analysis and speculation. You're welcome to share your findings by emailing me at scbcguy(at)yahoo(dot)com.

Feds reported 1951-54 Bowman baseball sales

To get the full benefit of this posting, you really should go back to my May 12 entry for the background on where these figures were unearthed.

That being said, let me preface this installment by saying that the Bowman wholesale sales numbers found in the 1965 Federal Trade Commission decision on anti-trust allegations against Topps were nowhere near as comprehensive as the Topps figures. And that's a shame.

The Bowman sales figures in the FTC report covered only the years 1951-1954, and they included only Total Sales and Baseball Card Gum.

I'm assuming that Bowman's Total Sales figures for those years included not only baseball cards, but also football and non-sports cards, as well as its popular Blony brand bubblegum that was sold as a stand-alone product. If the numbers in the FTC report are accurate, it is noteworthy how large of a percentage of Bowman's total sales that baseball cards represented.  

What immediately caught my attention as a collector -- as both a boy and a man -- was how precipitously Bowman's baseball card sales dropped in 1953. That iconic card set sold only 41 percent as well as the last of the "small" Bowman baseball cards in 1952. 

If I had to cite a single cause for such a decline, my money would be on the fact that Topps began to dominate the market by 1953, feeding off the success of its much larger -- both in format and in number of cards -- set of 1952. I'd still be at a loss, however, to figure out why Bowman baseball card sales rebounded so well for 1954.

To allow easier comparison, in the chart presented here, I've added a column for Topps baseball card sales for 1951-1954.

Within the FTC findings, besides the Bowman sales numbers, there was a fair amount of information about the sale of Bowman to Topps. Among the things I did not know heretofore were . . .

• On Jan. 20, 1956, Topps actually bought Connelly Containers, Inc., the company formerly known as Bowman Gum and Haelan Laboratories, for $200,000. Topps bought all of the company's gum-producing assets and all of its contracts with ballplayers. In addition, Bowman agreed to a five-year non-compete clause.
• Bowman signed baseball players to contracts for $10. If the player was on a Major League roster on Opening Day and for the next 31 days, he was paid an additional $100. 
• In the ongoing litigation between Topps and Bowman over the legitimacy of each company's player contracts, Bowman spent as much as $110,000 a year in legal expenses, and Topps "only slightly less."

As I said on May 12, the FTC document offers a great deal of insight into the legal wranglings between Topps and its competitors, but that's not really an area in which I have great interest, so I'm leaving it to others to analyze and present that information to the hobby. 

In my next presentation, we'll look at the sales numbers that the feds found for Goudey baseball cards in the years 1933-1942.

Fleer, Leaf sales had little effect on Topps 1959-63

This is the last installment of my rudimentary analysis of baseball card sales history that I discovered in a 1965 Federal Trade Commission decision against Topps in an anti-trust action.

As before, you really need to read the introductory piece that I posted on May 12 for context and general information.

The FTC document included basic sales information for Fleer 1959-1963 and Leaf 1960 baseball cards.

I've charted the figures they presented and, for comparison, have added Topps baseball card total sales for the same years. 

I don't think it can be definitively cited as the principal reason for the decline in Topps baseball card sales 1959-1961 (the only years' data available in the FTC report), but it seems likely that competition from Fleer and Leaf was at least a minor factor in that trend.

As with the other baseball card sales data from the FTC findings, the figures are presumed to be wholesale sales. In quoting the Fleer sales numbers, the FTC examiner stated they represent sales "before returns and allowances."

As with the other sales data that has been presented here since May 12, you are welcome to do your own analysis and draw your own conclusions as to what the sales figures tell us 50 years later about quantities of cards produced.