1966 Topps Baseball Punchouts - Expanding the Knowledge Base

[Archive]

Posted By: Dave Hornish

Well last week's efforts to gather additional information about the 1963 Topps Famous American Stamps was semi-successful although no one has been able to come up with an album for the set. This week I'm going to try getting new information on a set that is possibly the rarest Topps baseball issue, 1966 Punchouts.

My fifteen year old description from the http://oldbaseball.com com site reads as follows

"This is one of the all time rarest Topps issues and without a doubt is another Gelman job. At least one of the known examples is from Woody's personal album, taped in no less (!) and then removed for sale years later.. These are often confused with the officially issued 1967 Punchboard set, but the two are decidedly different. This test issue features two players on the front, arranged like a playing card. That is, one of the players is upside down with respect to the other. The punch out pieces resemble baseballs, unlike the 1967 issue, which has square pieces. There is much confusion regarding Topps Punchboards, but the inclusion of Bobby Richardson, who retired in 1966, makes it virtually certain the year of issue is 1966. This set marks the beginning of a Topps corporate philosophy that kids would like to play games with some cards, which lasted through 1971, when it apparently fell into disfavor. If you can even find one of these very elusive cards consider yourself blessed. If you can afford it, you are more blessed still. I have never seen a checklist for this set and none of the annual price guides even hint at it, at least the ones I have don't and I have a bunch. It's possible this set was never released to the public, or was only marketed at a few select locations. Topps liked to test cards near their headquarters in Brooklyn among other places like Scranton, Pennsylvania and sometimes only a box or two made it out of the factory and into the hands of the public. I like to think that Gelman managed to latch onto a box of everything Topps produced, which is plausible, but no wrappers have been reported for these cards, which probably either means 1) no official release or 2) release in Fun Packs. Fun Packs came out every Halloween and contained a variety of Topps offerings. Designed to move product that had outlived its shelf life or was not deemed worthy of regular packaging and distribution, Fun Packs probably a source of many a mysterious Topps issue over the years. Some Non-Sports sets that have no documented wrappers were issued in Fun Packs so that could be the case here. The checklist is arranged by individual player and additions to the list are welcomed."

Well, a partial checklist has indeed been published in the interim by SCD (my edition is from 2007 and the Standard Catalog is the only printed guide I've ever seen with a checklist)and it notes the following cards:

Banks/Stottlemyre
Clendenon/Kaline
Flood/Skowron
J.R. Hart/Mantle
Koufax/Yastrzemski
Roseboro/Richardson (Gelman's-known from an REA Auction 3/26/92)

This is an incomplete list as a Grant/Callison exists (a 67 is shown next to it) and I have a grab of it:


A Marichal/Rollins is also known (REA Auction 10/29/91):


A Stargell/Mantilla also exists in the SGC Registry.

These are all final stage cards from what I have seen and I presume more pairs are out there. These were likely printed in strips and not sheets but that is an educated guess. If anyone has more info or scans, etc. please post!