Products from Topps
Topps is one of the leading manufacturers of trading cards and US sports memorabilia.
Topps Company Inc. is a New York City company that primarily manufactures confectionery and collectibles such as trading cards and merchandising. The company itself was founded in 1938, but the company's roots go back to the American Leaf Tobacco concern founded in 1890. After problems during the war, tobacco production was stopped and the focus was on other products. Topps made chewing gum and small decals were placed in the packs to promote sales. So it came about that the bestseller, the bazooka chewing gum, led to baseball trading cards finding their way into Topps packs from 1952.
In 1951, Topps produced its first baseball cards as two different sets now known as Red Backs and Blue Backs. Each set contained 52 cards, like a deck of playing cards, and indeed the cards could be used to play a card game designed to simulate the events of a baseball game. Like playing cards, the Topps cards had rounded corners and were blank on one side colored either red or blue (hence the names given to these sets). The other side had a portrait of a player inside a baseball diamond in the center and in opposite corners a picture of a baseball along with the event for that card, such as B. "Fly Out" or "Single". In 1952, Topps changed his approach and this time created a much larger (407 total) set of baseball cards and wrapped them with his branded product, chewing gum. The company also decided their playing card model was too small (2 "by 2-5 / 8") and changed the dimensions to 2-5 / 8 "by 3-3 / 4" with square corners. The cards now had a color portrait on one side and information on the other. This set became a landmark in the baseball card industry, and today Topps considers this their first true baseball card set. Many of the oil paintings for the sets were painted by the artist Gerry Dvorak. In 1957, Topps downsized the dimensions of its cards slightly to 2-1 / 2 inches by 3-1 / 2 inches, setting a standard that is still the basic format for most sports cards produced in the USA to this day. It was at this point that Topps began using color photographs in his sets. The cards were released in several series over the course of the baseball season, a practice Topps would maintain with its baseball cards through 1974.
Between 1972 and 1987 the company changed from a family business to a corporation, The Topps Company Inc. Until 1988, when the Upper Deck group began to conquer the market, Topps was the undisputed market leader. Even the expansion of Topps to Europe could not prevent the company from being sold to an investment company in 2007. After that, Topps grew through the creation of digital products and the production of extensive trading cards for a wide variety of sports.
The combination of baseball cards and chewing gum was very popular with young boys, and given the mediocre quality of the chewing gum, the cards quickly became a major attraction. Indeed, the chewing gum eventually became a hindrance as it tended to stain the cards, diminishing their value to collectors who wanted to keep them in pristine condition. It was eventually removed from baseball card packs (along with the traditional gray cardboard) in 1992, although Topps launched its Heritage line in 2001, which included chewing gum.
At Taass you will find Topps trading cards from the leagues MLB (baseball), NFL (American football) and soccer.