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![]() At $5,000 per pack, the value of the cards dumped into the Atlantic on that fateful day is a staggering $1,440,000,000. Currently, a pack of 1952 Topps is worth at least $5,000. No one at the time, of course, knew the collector's value the cards would one day attain. The cards included Mickey Mantle's first Topps card, the most valuable card of the modern era. The cards were then dumped into the Atlantic Ocean. Arriving without an appointment, Sy succeeded by speaking in Yiddish to Brian Epstein, the Beatles manager.Īround 1960, during a spring cleaning effort at the Topps Brooklyn headquarters, Sy hired a garbage boat, loaded 300 to 500 cases of 1952 high-series cards, and rode with them as a tugboat pulled them off the New Jersey shore. Recognizing his negotiating skills, the Shorins sent Sy to London in 1964 to negotiate the rights for Topps to produce Beatles trading cards. Berger would work for Topps for 50 years (1947-97) and serve as a consultant for another five, becoming a well-known figure on the baseball scene, and the face of Topps to major league baseball players, whom he signed up annually and paid in merchandise like refrigerators and carpeting. The so-called "Father of the modern baseball card" would be Sy Berger, a 28-year old World War II veteran who went home and designed the 1952 Topps baseball card set on his kitchen table, with photos, autograph facsimile, name, position, team and logo on the front height, weight, bats, throws, birthplace, birthday, baseball stats and a short bio on the back. When Topps next introduced baseball cards as a product, the cards immediately became its primary emphasis. Starting in 1950, the company decided to try increasing gum sales by packaging them together with trading cards featuring Western character Hopalong Cassidy (William Boyd) at the time Boyd, as one of the biggest stars of early television, was featured in newspaper articles and on magazine covers, along with a wave of Hopalong merchandising. Topps's most successful early product was Bazooka bubblegum, which was packaged with a small comic on the wrapper. The chosen field was the manufacture of chewing gum, selected after going into the produce business was considered and rejected.Īt the time, chewing gum was still a relative novelty sold in individual pieces. ![]() To do this, they relaunched the company as Topps, with the name meant to indicate that it would be "tops" in its field. Shorin's sons, Abram, Ira, Philip, and Joseph, decided to focus on a new product but take advantage of the company's existing distribution channels. (American Leaf Tobacco should not be confused with the American Tobacco Company, which monopolized US-grown tobacco during this period.)Īmerican Leaf Tobacco encountered difficulties as World War I cut off Turkish supplies of tobacco to the United States, and later as a result of the Great Depression. ![]() imported tobacco to the United States and sold it to other tobacco companies. Founded in 1890 by Morris Shorin, the American Leaf Tobacco Co. Topps itself was founded in 1938, but the company can trace its roots back to an earlier firm, American Leaf Tobacco. ![]()
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