1981 Topps Home Team vs. Super National

[tulsaboy]

Thanks for posting the photos, Al! The all yellow pack is a test pack (I believe) and should contain a white backed card. White appears to have come first, followed by the gray backs. I don't think that any packs were issued for the National set from 1980. I think that was simply distributed as sets to dealers. I have seen cases of the complete sets, where the sets are bundled together by a rubber band, but no packs or boxes. Odd, but Topps did lots of odd things.

kevin

[tulsaboy]

I also have an uncut sheet of gray backs that is battered and well worn, but is instructive because it shows that there were a number of cards that were printed in multiples. I am curious to know if the sheet was the same for the white backed cards or not.
kevin

[ALR-bishop]

Thanks for that input Kevin

[tulsaboy]

Here are a couple of photos of the uncut sheet, along with the product code that is printed on the lower left hand corner of the sheet. A couple of observations: There are 66 cards printed on the sheet, configured in six rows of eleven cards each. The 66 cards means that there are 6 double prints. Those players are:
Brett
Parker
Schmidt
Garvey
Jackson
Carew

All six of the double prints are found in the last column, at the end of each row. Three of the double prints (Jackson, Garvey, and Parker) are upside down for some reason. Hope this is of some interest. The sheet is gray backed. The product code is completely different from the product code on the bottom of the unopened box that I have, and different from the product code of a 5 card pack of gray back cards that I have.

kevin

[tulsaboy]

And just for good measure, to round things out, here is an unopened box (though note that it is an "X-Out" box and has the little white stickers for 5 cards stuck over the places where it should say "3 cards"), both the exterior of the box and what it looks like opened. This is the only one of these that I've ever seen.
kevin

[tulsaboy]

Al,
One other thing that I just noticed when I was comparing the two photos you took of your unopened packs... the "5 card" version, which should have gray backs in it, has the newer Topps logo used starting in 1981, while the "3 card" version, which should have white backs in it, has the older Topps logo that was used through 1980. I think that makes it fairly clear to me, along with the 1981 copyright on the back of the 5 card packs, that Topps issued these cards in both 1980 and 1981, or at least was developing packaging to get rid of surplus 1980 cards but using 1981 product codes and logos. Funny thing is, the packaging on the 5 card packs has the new Topps logo on the front, while the backs of the cards themselves have the old Topps logo. Wonder if this is the only time that happened?
kevin