Monday, May 7, 2012

1960s Topps Stamps Part 1

Today's card isn't a card at all, it's a stamp that came with cards:


Each five-cent wax pack of 1961 contained two-stamp panels of stamps as an insert. The players were available in two tints:


There was a green tint (seen above) and a brown tint as shown below:


As you can see, the players weren't given a league-specific tint.

There were 207 players in the set. However, that number can't be divided by two, so Al Kaline is found with both tints. That makes 208 stamps in a compete set, which is very affordable for collectors because there's limited interest in non-card inserts. Superstars from the set are able to be picked up for a fraction of their corresponding card from the base set.

Advanced collectors have identified 182 different panel combinations as well. Surprisingly, most complete panels do not have a large premium over the combined price of the two individual stamps. For instance, the panel price for two common players is about a dollar over the stamps' combined value. For stars, however, a premium is more significant because of their collectability.

An stamp album was also available from Topps as a mail-in offer for 10 cents.

6 comments:

  1. These are really cool. I hadn't ever seen them.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Any pics of what the stamp album looks like?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Google image search for Topps 1961 Stamp Album. A guy is selling one on Craigslist and has pics. I can't get to it from here at work. It's the green album with team pages inside.

      Delete
  3. These were my favorite inserts' as a kid collecting back then (although we didn't call them inserts). I liked these even more than the full color ones that came later.

    ReplyDelete
  4. There were two stamp sets in hockey - a 1961-62 Topps set that mimicked these and a '69-70 Topps/OPC release that was meant to be stuck to the back of the cards in the set. Both are tough to find.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hm. The Bob Allison stamp says "Minn. - St. Paul" as the team, with no mention of the Twins. Does that indicate they were put together well before the 1961 first series of cards?

    ReplyDelete