Anyone Collect 1959 Bazooka Football?

[clamendo]

Picked this up on Ebay a long time ago. I got an email from the under bidder saying he had looked for this card for 10 years and offered my 3X what I paid. I hung on to it. Tracy, Groza, and Connerly are the keys.t.jpg

[jefferyepayne]

Jim Brown is a toughie as well! I love this set.

I have a lot of info on this set and completed it a few years ago. Have a bunch of doubles as well. What do you want to know about the set?

Here are the two Conerly Cards. The originally had Conerly playing for the Colts instead of the Giants but it was corrected during printing.





jeff

[quinnsryche]

I guess questions like: why are the tough ones tough? Was it limited distribution of particular players or difficulty due to geographic distribution? What are approximate quantities of various players still available (10's/100's/1000's)? Any interesting stories about production or finds (singles or groups). Much has been written about the baseball issue, not much about these.

[jefferyepayne]

In early 1959 Topps released a nine card Bazooka baseball card set on the bottom of 25 piece Bazooka gum boxes. The promotion was so popular that they added 14 additional baseball players to the set later in the season. These 14 are short prints. Late in the year Topps replaced the baseball players on Bazooka boxes with football players. It is likely that the SP's are ones added later just like the SP's in the baseball set.

I don't know the population counts for these but bet there are many more raw ones than graded ones. I was collecting them one by one and had about 1/2 the set when an opportunity presented itself to purchase a near complete set a few years ago. That's how I completed the set and why I have doubles.

jeff

[CowboysGuide]

I've seen lots of complete Bazooka boxes from the 1971 football set, but never seen any from the 1959 set. Does anyone have a complete box they could post a photo of?

[TanksAndSpartans]

I know nothing about this set, but did notice it must be popular as I've seen several cards posted here on net54 from time to time. So, you had to buy a box of gum? The store owner didn't open the boxes and allow the gum to be sold individually? Were there perforations to separate the card from the box or were these hand cut?

[skelly]

My all time favorite set. I'm biased, but doesn't get the respect it deserves in my opinion. Rather than writing a long paragraph, I'll make a few points which people can agree / disagree with add on to etc...

1. More attractive than the baseball set in my opinion. The first nine cards issued in the baseball set are so much easier than the single prints that to me the baseball set is really two separate sets.

2. The Tom Tracy card is impossible, I MEAN IMPOSSIBLE to find. I could be wrong, but I can't image that more than 50-60 total exist, and I feel I am being conservative with those numbers.

3. The Groza and the Conerly are listed as single prints, and they are tough, but not impossible if you are patient and willing to pay when you find them.

4. You would think that the Unitas and Jim Brown would sell for about the same price, but for whatever reason, the Brown seems to always sell for a couple hundred more than a Unitas in similar condition.

5. The toughest non-single prints in my opinion are the Howie Furguson ( packers ) Joe Perry ( 49ers ) and the Alan Ameche ( Colts )

6. For whatever reason, there are a decent amount of these cards out there in good shape. You would think that the large size and the fact they had to be hand cut would be problematic, but they can be found in good condition.

7. These cards are tougher than people realize. Even at the national, very few dealers have them / have access to them. I don't really consider this an "oddball" set, as it was made by topps.

[finalscore]

The 59 Bazooka's are one of my favorites to. Groza and Tracy were the last two I needed way back when to complete my set. Here are some scans of one of my boxes (empty of course!).

Originally Posted by CowboysGuide

I've seen lots of complete Bazooka boxes from the 1971 football set, but never seen any from the 1959 set. Does anyone have a complete box they could post a photo of?

[brian1961]

Mike---

Thanks ever so much for taking the time and trouble of posting the photos of your fabulous 1959 Bazooka Alan Ameche box. A king-sized gem.

For the gentleman who asked, Bazooka marketed a box containing a large number of individual one-cent twin chews of their wonderful bubble gum. These fit the category of penny candy, which existed at that time and was sold at small grocery stores, drug stores, and dime stores.

Topps wanted a way for kids to purchase more than a few pennies' worth of gum at one time, so they developed this type of box with 20-25 individual twin chews. I do not know exactly when Bazooka first issued a box of this design, but I am rather certain they wanted to increase sales of their product, and since they were already offering the regular wax packs and cello packs of trading cards, come 1959 they decided upon the perfect incentive to goose those sales of Bazooka gum---with a free prize baseball and then football card.

They were by no means punched off the box. As the others have said, they were purely hand cut cards, which caused all sorts of condition degradation on top of the other condition problems that arose from their manner of sale.

This is a great set, in every way.

As an aside, I am so glad Bazooka got the much better pose and natural happy expression of all-time great Johnny Unitas, rather than the looney-looking appearance Johnny gave the photographer for the other shot, chosen for the 1960 Topps. ---Brian Powell