THE MODERN HOBBY GUIDE to TOPPS CHEWING GUM: 1938 to 1956
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THE MODERN HOBBY GUIDE TO TOPPS CHEWING GUM: 1938 to 1956 History, price guide & checklists DAVID HORNISH THE MODERN HOBBY GUIDE TO TOPPS CHEWING GUM: 1938 to 1956 Cover credits: Topps Chewing Gum Sign from Bush Terminal – Robert Edward Auctions Topps Gum, U.S. Military Ration – Jeff Shepherd General inquiries should be directed to: [email protected] Please visit http://themodernhobbyguide.blogspot.com/ for many more pictures, updates, corrections, etc. Images herein are not all shown to size. Version 2.0 Copyright © 2013 David Hornish. All rights reserved. With the exception of copies downloaded for personal use, reproduction and distribution of this work without the written consent of the author is prohibited. Trademarks used herein are the property of the respective owners. Author disclaims all warranties, express and implied concerning the accuracy or completeness of the information herein. 2 THE MODERN HOBBY GUIDE TO TOPPS CHEWING GUM: 1938 to 1956 DEDICATION & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For Susan, who may not understand but certainly inspires, Ryan and Alex for the quiet times, and Buster, who almost saw it all. The author acknowledges with thanks the contributions of Jeff Shepherd and the following good people: Josh Alpert, Mark Aubrey, Tom Boblitt, Bobby Burrell, Dan Calandriello, Bill Christensen, Lonnie Cummins, Les Davis, Frank Evanov, Bob Fisk, Doug Goodman, Lois Grabash, Carl Greenfeld, Carol Jablow, Bob Lemke, Robert Lifson, Leon Luckey, Jay Lynch, Gary May, Bruce McCanna, Mark McKernon, Ken Meyer, Dana Mofenson, John Moran, Michael Moran, Anthony Nex, Keith Olbermann, Keith Pennington, Charlie Ramone, Al Richter, Howard Shookhoff, George Vrechek, Rhett Yeakley and Ted Zanidakis. Countless others also provided comments, occasional brickbats, inspiration and pointed me toward new sources. Photo and Attendees key from 1956 Topps National Sales Meeting. The man playing the accordion is not identified. (courtesy Carol Jablow) 3 THE MODERN HOBBY GUIDE TO TOPPS CHEWING GUM: 1938 to 1956 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 5 Beginnings 6 Topps Before The Second World War 11 Cards Begin 18 Topps And Bowman Sales Figures 49 Set Descriptions, Checklists & Pricing 53 Gum 260 Candy 284 Topps For Toys 287 Bubbles, Inc. 288 Trading Card Guild 288 Premiums & Prizes 289 Ed-U-Cards 292 Red Ball Jets 294 Doeskin 294 Sports Illustrated Inserts 295 Matchbooks 297 Uncut Sheets, Artwork & Proofs 299 Ephemera 300 Appendix A – Table Of Topps Card Sizes 301 Appendix B – The Shorin Family 302 Bibliography & Resources 303 4 THE MODERN HOBBY GUIDE TO TOPPS CHEWING GUM: 1938 to 1956 INTRODUCTION This guide started off simply enough. I planned to gather all the information I could find on the small, penny gum tab sized cards Topps issued in 1948-49, create some checklists and scans and then put out a pamphlet much like Scot Reader’s fabulous Inside T206, which was an inspiration of sorts. Then I wrote some articles for The Wrapper, Les Davis’s indispensable magazine covering the Non-Sports world that comes out eight wonderful times a year (just like Mad Magazine –hah!) and unearthed a couple of surprising facts. Namely, that Morris Shorin, patriarch of the family that founded Topps Chewing Gum in 1938 had started out in the U.S. with the name of Chigorinsky and had arrived after his supposed storied founding of the predecessor firm, American Leaf Tobacco Company, that gave rise to Topps. Then there was the discovery of American Gas Stations, which was another Shorin owned business in the decade before they founded Topps and the later realization there was scant information available on many old card issues. After that there was the discovery that when Topps bought out their biggest competition in the card and gum trade, Bowman Gum, its namesake founder had been dispatched five years previously and a man named John Connelly had actually orchestrated the sale of the firm. So the snowball began rolling downhill from there and resulted in what I believe is a revealing and reasonably comprehensive look at the history of Topps from 1938-56 plus the Shorins and some of their businesses prior to that. I do not intend this to be a biography of Morris Shorin or his son Joseph although both are deserving of a longer history than I give them here. Instead I want to lay a foundation for future research, not only of the family, or American Leaf Tobacco Company or Bazooka, or Woody Gelman, or the 1954-55 Hockey set but also to help people imagine the totality of all of it. There’s a tendency in the hobby to compartmentalize the baseball issues, the football cards, the Non Sports sets and the like but I realized about twenty years ago that it’s all inseparable. Joe Shorin did not suddenly proclaim after a dozen years in the confectionery trade that he wanted to sell baseball cards; rather he and his brothers built their way up to it, through hard work and planning, carefully thought out PR campaigns and -- even though they lost most big cases -- really sharp lawyers. They sought advantage against others and repelled it when others went after them. Often I was aided and abetted by Jeff Shepherd, a man who knows his Bazooka and without whose generous assistance and help would find me writing the introduction to a rather thinner tome. Others helped immensely: Dan Calandriello and his vast gallery of scans on Network54, Bill Christensen and his immense knowledge of obscure issues and of course Les Davis and his band of merry men and women. Even as the cards grew from postage stamp size into something close to the dimensions of a vintage Kodachrome photograph and then erupted into a classic five year run of colorful Giant Size issues before reaching their denouement, there was still a sense of wonder, a feeling of mystery and an imagined aroma of sweet, stale bubble gum and aging cardboard that lingered and teased. This first era of Topps cards, from the first tatoos and tiny inserts in 1948 until Elvis Presley brought us standard sizing in 1956, is one that defies easy explanation and resists close scrutiny, due in no small part due to the reticence of the Shorin family to reveal their past. But no matter, there was enough to piece it together and create an impression of the pre-Sputnik era at Topps. It was during this time that the world began to rely less upon artistry and imagination and more upon first person accounts and the immediacy of film and television. Topps cards from 1948-56 exist in an almost suspended state that spans these two worlds. It’s a state that requires a kid’s sense of wonder and speaks to the magic of Red Barber and bases FOB, Friday Night Fights, Saturday morning matinees and breathless, staccato news bulletins as America abruptly and irrevocably entered the video age. Enjoy! June 2013 5 THE MODERN HOBBY GUIDE TO TOPPS CHEWING GUM: 1938 to 1956 BEGINNINGS The origins of Topps Chewing Gum cannot be told without first looking at the Shorin family and two earlier businesses they owned and ultimately sold to finance the venture. Morris Shorin and the story of his founding the American Leaf Tobacco Company (ALTC) in 1890 have been the stuff of Topps PR legend for decades now. The patriarch of the family though, was not originally known as Morris Shorin and his connection with the ALTC occurred far later than told in the official story. Morris Shorin and The American Leaf Tobacco Company The lineage of Topps Chewing Gum began half a world away from Brooklyn when Morris Shorin was born in Russia in 1867. There is some circumstantial evidence he was from Kiev in the Ukraine but there is also some evidence he hailed from a place called Rhzev, in what is now Latvia or even a place called Gorokhovets, near Nizhniy Novgorod, a major trading center in the 19th century. It’s possible the family had branches in all three areas if they were involved in widespread trade. Gorokhovets was once home to a merchant firm referred to as the House of Shorin but it is unclear if there is a connection, although Morris almost certainly grew up in a family of tobacco merchants and cigar makers. In 1891 he fathered a son name Moses, generally referred to as Moe, possibly with a woman from Kiev. In the best of circumstances details from this period and place can be hard to discern and, as will be detailed herein, the nuclear Shorin family also was adept at giving conflicting or incomplete information concerning their personal and business dealings, so the lack of certainty regarding the background of Morris Shorin in Russia is not surprising. Morris emigrated, without Moe, to the United States that same year and ended up with the last name of Chigorinsky upon arriving in New York in July 1891. It’s unclear if there is any linkage between the birth of his son and his departure from Russia, which was likely via Hamburg. He soon settled in Brooklyn, living and working in a congruent section of the Williamsburg and Bedford (later Bedford-Stuyvesant), neighborhoods, both with large Russian Jewish communities. It would seem probable he had family or associates who arrived ahead of him or came with a commission in hand to conduct business on behalf of others but this is not definite. His activities during these early days are largely unrecorded and he arrived, as it turns out, after the founding of the first iteration of the ALTC, almost certainly working in the tobacco trade once he settled in. Cigars were quite in vogue at the time. As for the American Leaf Tobacco Company, there is solid evidence of it being founded in Boston in 1890, by one S.