Cut Card Cases
 

This could as easily have gone in the pre-1980 category.

What is the story behind Topps' Cut Card Cases that pop up across all sports and non-sports issues? What was their purpose? How were they distributed?

Hi-

I do not know much, but I purchased one at a flea market a couple of years ago. I am going from memory here, so I might be off on a couple of details. It contained 1978 Topps Football and it originally came from Rotmans in Worcester which was a large card and supply seller in the 70s and 80s. It had cards cut from two of the four sheets, and had multiples of all of the stars and commons (I think there were about 13 or 14 per card) from those sheets. I believe I was told Topps sold them to vending companies primarily (I forget where I heard that).

I got mine at a great price and sold it for a nice profit. The condition was overall EX/NRMT but there were some corner problems and centering issues. I also remember the case stated what sheets were cut on the side (I might have had B and C or B and D). I hope others can provide better information for you.

Alan

I do know they were used in the Duryea factory. Freshly sheet-cut cards were loaded into them and then transported to the packaging dept. Since they were well suited to transport they could have been a useful vehicle for direct sales to vending companies as Alan speculated.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/n4...-w704-h1221-no


Full thread here

I appreciate the conversation, and hope more can join and offer their insights. Topps sold vending boxes to dealers and vendors - why would they also have shipped these?

I can remember years ago looking through a Renata Gallasso magazine and one line I still remember was, when talking about how she got her cards to make all those set she sold, "I receive my cards directly from Topps in bundles of one player" - as a kid I imagined huge bags full of a thousand mint Reggie Jacksons or a thousand mint Red Sox team photos. Vending boxes wouldn't do that. Cut card cases would get closer in the sense that a single case cut from just a single sheet would produce dozens and dozens of each card from that sheet.

When you open a cut card case and pull a brick of cards out, how are they ordered - by player or by the position on the sheet?

I opened one or two cut card cases back in the day and don't remember all the players being together. But because it was usually just one (or sometimes two) sheets, then you would have bigger assortments of players. And in the 1978-81 period when cards were double printed you would get a huge amount of those cards.

Examples of Double Prints include: 1978 Pete Rose; 1979 Reggie Jackson; etc.

To the bold part. I know Score did this with star players. They would pull 10s and 100s of thousands of cards of each of the star players to sell directly to large dealers.

This old CU post has some good info on CC Cases and contains most of what I have heard about collation -

https://forums.collectors.com/discus...-cut-card-case

Cut card cases appeared at the end of the card year. I bought one or two at one point and they were just bulk cards thrown into a box. I think what Topps did is just take the left over sheets at the end of the production run and cut them to be liquidated. They didn't go through any collation process, which explains why only 1-2 sheets would appear in cases. They obviously were useless in putting together sets. I remember some of the sheets that ended up in cut cases had Ripken RC or other keys so when those cards got hot obviously the cut cases got hot- imagine getting 65 Ripken RC in a case?