1952 Topps High Number survival numbers

[Volod]

Which kind of begs the question: if they had been sitting in a warehouse for eight years, why did they suddenly have to be destroyed? If Topps couldn't interest dealers or collectors (such as they were) in taking them off their hands for a couple of hundred bucks, why not just put them out back next to the dumpster for the normal trash pickup? Was Sy just pulling the SCD writer's chain?

[steve B]

Businesses do some odd things.

A friend of mine got a nice lathe and an 1800's milling machine for a six pack @1981. A company had abandoned them at a moving company near our school and the moving co was rolling them across the parking lot to dump in a small stream. The milling machine worked, but wasn't saleable, the lathe was easily worth a couple hundred.

Another guy I know buys old stocks of bicycle parts from all over europe. One place he was buying a huge room full of rims, something like 3000 of them. Behind the rims were 30 lista cabinets. (Big filing cabinet like drawer units usually used to store machine tools) He asked what was in them and the warehouse guy had to check. He found they were full of Campagnolo parts a couple decades old and more. Figuring he'd be in trouble for not having sold or junked them years ago he told the guy he could have the rims for $1 less a hundred, but he'd have to take the cabinets too! The cabinets alone retail for roughly 1000 each and he figured the parts inside were worth over 50K. And he was being offered a discounted price on the other stuff to take them.

No telling if Topps really dumped them. If it was in the Atlantic dumping ground they'll be buried deep under NYCs trash of the 60's. Somewhere in the Hudson may not be much better, and chances of anything surviving are small, but it would be interesting to locate the site.

Steve B