1973 (or 1974) Topps Action Emblems

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

Al:

I am remiss on a number of fronts right now; unbelievably busy at work and home, which will not end for another 4 weeks or so. Just finished recovery from my hard drive cras as well (almost, iTunes is giving me some little hiccups) That said, I am on lunch break!

The 80 coins and their non-attendant scratchoff card are interesting. If the coins and the scratchoff are not designed to be packaged together, then what do we make of the scratchoffs, of which a good sized pile exist? Were they designed for use with another project that never got off the ground? I would think there would have been a baseball theme to whatever product was envisioned. The fact Joe Sak had a lot from the Topps "Warehouse" is interesting too as he would often buy excess or unused inventory and sell it at showsn and in BHN/SCD back in the day, if my memory is correct. That almost suggests the product launch for the 80 scratchoffs failed. I had never heard of them until I saw a listing on Ebay a year or two ago but that is not uncommon with weird Topps "Proof" cards.

What basis is there for the theory the coins were not designed to be packaged with the scratchoff? The coins seem rarer as well.

As for the 73/74 Action Emblems, you may have bought the uncut sheet on Ebay in an auction I forgot to bid on a while back. I had bought a partial sheet just before that auction and wrongly assumed things were being blown out by the Topps Vault. For some reason I never tracked the full sheet.

Does your uncut sheet have a date stamp on it? I am presuming the 1973 date is correct for these based on a Jan 73 stamp on my partial sheet (displayed here in another thread) and the fact they have no logos, common also to the 73 pinups/comics and the candy lids (I think that's right on the candy lids, not at home, can't double check). I find it strange the cardboard versions may have been inserted into packs as it would seemingly make more sense if they were proofs for the cloth sticker version. Now, another question is, what is the ratio of cloth to cardboard. It seems cloth is more prevalent but the sample size for both types is small. An what was with Topps and cloth in the 70's? 1970, 72, 76 and 77 all saw cloth baseball proofs/product plus whatever year these actually came out. Weird.

Action Emblems are tough in either format, although unopened packs/wrappers do seem to pop up regularly. I only have 1 cloth emblem and 1 scratch off plus 8 of the Cardboard versions (I'm going to keep one and sell/trade the rest). I do not collect unopened packs, although wrappers have tempted me for a long time. Well, back to work (in a minute, I want to start a thread!)