Hobby history: Card dealers of the early 1960s, part 1: Taylor vs. Gelman

[chicagoaustin]

I bought the 1958s in wax packs of 6 cards with bubble gum in the Chicago neighborhoods, at ma and pa grocery stores or local Walgreen’s. Those 4 cards, Harrell, Ward, Geiger and Hardy were simply not included in those wax packs—they were the only unmarked cards on my topps series checklist. My friends who collected had the same problem with those four. Later in the year I went to downtown Chicago, to some event with my parents; we went into a downtown Walgreen’s, and they were selling cello packs of 10 cards, fifth series, no bubble gum, where you could see the top and bottom card. I instantly saw all four rare cards on the tops and bottoms of several of these packs, so I bought three packs—enough to insure I got one of each, I got two of each except Ward. So I would conclude, whatever the actual volume of those four cards was in relation to others in the same series, the distribution of those four cards was not consistent in wax packs, where all cards in a series can ordinarily be expected to be found in roughly equal numbers.

The first four series of topps 1958 were actually issued in groups of 110, so the first four "series" covered 1-440. The fifth series was exactly half that, 55 cards, from 441 to 495. You’d think Topps could have used the ordinary 110 card sheet to print the fifth series in duplicate, without creating any short prints, so the reason for those four short prints is still a mystery to me.