Topps Baseball Cards
Topps Baseball Card Company was the dominant manufacturer of baseball cards after swallowing up their biggest competitor by the 1956 baseball season, . Aside from a couple of short-lived competitors, Topps Baseball Cards would enjoy a virtual monopoly on the hobby for the next quarter century.
Topps Baseball Card changed the dimensions of its baseball cards when it issued its 1957 baseball card set. The cards were pared down to 2 1/2" by 3 1/2", a standard card size still in use today. Nearly every year, baseball grew and Topps Baseball Card would increase the size of its baseball card sets, from 206 in 1955 to over 700 by 1970. Regular-issue team baseball cards arrived in 1956; checklists showed up the same year. Topps Baseball Card issued its first subset featuring the year's All-Star players in 1958. The league statistical leaders began to be recognized on cards by the early 1960s. In 1962, Topps featured its "Rookie Parade" subset, and kept multi-player rookie cards for years afterwards.
1962 Topps Larry Sherry Topps Baseball Cards saw its first direct competition during this era in 1959, when the Fleer Gum Company of Philadelphia signed Ted Williams to an exclusive contract and then issued a set honoring the slugger. While Leaf, Post and Jell-O issued sets of major league players, Fleer issued sets of old-timers in 1960 and 1961, which competed with Topps but not directly. In 1963, Fleer issued 66 cards of a set of current major league players and sold them with cookies instead of gum; Topps Baseball Cards went to court and stopped Fleer from issuing any more cards.
The practice of issuing baseball sets in several series throughout the baseball season ended with the release of Topps' 1974 Baseball Cards set, which was issued in its entirety before that baseball season began. For the first time, an entire set could be put together and sold without waiting for the season to end; after this, a hobby began to develop itself and card dealers began to appear. Topps Baseball Cards issued its first set of traded cards in 1974, which were distributed with the regular issue cards in packs sold toward the end of the baseball season; this practice would be repeated in 1976. Annual "Traded" sets would arrive in 1981, but only sold by dealers as complete sets.
1975 Topps Lou Brock During the 1970s, Topps Baseball Cards maintained their virtual monopoly of national baseball card set distribution. There was a small amount of competition by Hostess and Kellogg's, which included baseball cards in food packages, but Topps Baseball Cards had a stranglehold on the hobby. Some collectors have argued that the quality of Topps' sets had begun to decline from the lack of competition (and some sets, especially the 1972 and 1975 designs, were polarizing). In 1976 an upstart company called SSPC began to market a set of current major leaguers which was well-designed. Topps again went to court and halted production of the set. The courts, in a different suit, would eventually rule against Topps in 1980 and allow other companies to compete, later adding a condition that the competitors' cards not be sold with gum. This action effectively ended 25 years of Topps Baseball Cards domination.
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