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Originally Posted by Volod
Thanks again Dave. According to the year-by-year account provided in your excellent history, 1953 was the year that Topps really struggled to sign players to exclusive deals: just 26 to Bowman's 388. You state that the next year, 1954, things had almost evened out, with Topps holding 124 exclusives to Bowman's 136.
I suppose that the Cleveland pitchers might have had exclusive contracts with Bowman after 1953, as all but Lemon appeared in Topps' '53 set, but none of them in the '54 or '55 sets, and all reappeared in the Topps '56 set. If it were possible, it would certainly be interesting to compare which players the two gum pushers targeted for exclusive deals in those years.
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There are some lists in the court cases and there was an old SCD book years ago that collected some articles, one of which has a complete list of which player was signed where but I never managed to get a copy of it. I thought about doing up a full list myself but so far have not been able to enthuse myself enough to do so!