1956 Topps Elston Howard question

[commishbob]

Topps had fun with this sort of thing (there's a terrific thread here on N54 showing pics used for cards).

The action on Sandy Amaro's '56 has the shot of him sliding in under Yogi in the '55 Series. It's is pretty similar to the Howard/Hoeft thing:

gettyimages-515024160-2048x2048.jpg

gettyimages-515213006-2048x2048.jpg

Mighty crowded there around the plate. Topps took out everyone but the two principals:



Not exactly the same since Amoros' head took up the space where the on deck hitter and the coach(?), batboy(?) were positioned. But still kind of neat.

[Volod]

I think you're right, Bob - Topps must have edited the ump and Tuttle out of the card, but it must have been important to them to have gone to that much trouble - on the Amoros card, they merely had to paste his huge noggin over the other guys - but on the Howard card, it took some really fine detailing to eliminate those guys. Was Topps afraid of legal issues about using images of people not under contract, or something?

[swarmee]

It's not a photograph; it's a drawing based on the picture. So they didn't have to do any fine editing.

[Phil68]

Originally Posted by swarmee

It's not a photograph; it's a drawing based on the picture. So they didn't have to do any fine editing.

Actually...they are colorized photos. Wax pencils were used to edit out things that were not wanted by the mid-50's. The '53 set was actually canvased--which is unreal when you think about it. 1954-1956 were hand colored b/w images...as was '52. The use of the most FANTASTIC looking medium is responsible for the unique look of 1952 Topps. It was called Flexichrome.
Oddly, I have tried numerous tools to prepare art for the cards I produce but nothing quite compares to the magical vibe of Flexichrome.
It screams "1950's".
Here's an outstanding article on the details of Flexichrome and how it came to be and how it was done...
https://www.thetoppsarchives.com/201...rome-away.html