The Topps Woolworth Box Sets by Russell Streur

 

THE TOPPS WOOLWORTH BOX SETS

Russell Streur

 

 

For decades, Woolworth stores defined Main Street retailing in the United States.  Thousands of stores operated across the country selling everything from alarm clocks to parakeets and parchesi games and zebra-pattern evening dresses in the general merchandise version of the five and dime chain.  Barbie dolls and Superman comic books could be found in the aisles, and Easy-Bake ovens, and skateboards and baseball cards.  Lots of baseball cards.  In the junk wax era, the company partnered with Topps and produced annual exclusive boxed sets, eventually settling on a five-year run of season highlights printed on high gloss card stock.  It took a couple years to find the formula.

 

The first effort arrived in stores in 1985, in a 44-card set of all-time record holders carrying the Woolworth brand on the box.  A mix of black-and-white and color photographs are framed by a false wood border that faintly recalls the Topps 1962 design.  The player’s name and team are centered on a yellow plaque at the bottom of the card.  The set ranges from Hank Aaron’s 755 home runs to Cy Young’s 511 career wins.  Many of the names are instantly recognizable—Ernie Banks, Rickey Henderson, and Nolan Ryan to name three.  The inclusion of other players may be less obvious.  Johnny Frederick, who hit a record six pinch hit home runs for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1932, is in the set.  So are season extra base hit leaders Earl Webb (67 doubles in 1931 for the Red Sox, Card 37) and Owen Wilson of the Pittsburgh Pirates (36 triples in 1912, Card 41).

 

 

Many on-line sources attribute the 1986 Champion Superstars set as a Woolworth product though it doesn’t carry a Woolworth brand.  Priced at a standard $1.99, it employs the soon-to-be standard 33 high-gloss photo card format and consists of batting, home run and RBI leaders in the two major leagues for the ten years between 1976 and 1985.  Visually, it is not an exciting set.  Except for a handful of cards, the photographs are all posed—ordinary bat-on-shoulder fare or stock portraits.  All the expected names are in the set—Wade Boggs, George Brett, Rod Carew, Reggie Jackson and Mike Schmidt as examples.  The surprise is Bobby Grich, who had his career year in the strike-shortened 1981 campaign and tied for the home run lead in the American League with 22.   Gorman Thomas pictured in Seattle Mariners garb on card 30 is just plain wrong.  In The Bible of Baseball, that blue-collar Wallbanger is now and always and forever a Milwaukee Brewer.

 

 

Topps issued its first Baseball Highlights set in 1987.  Sources again list it as Woolworth set, again in the absence of a brand.  A diagonal Collectors’ Series banner cuts across the top left, balanced by a parallel card title in the lower left.  On-field, live-action photographs give the set a colorful immediacy.   There are exceptions, notably the first card in the set, a retro portrait of Steve Carlton posed against a cloudless blue sky that commemorates the pitcher’s 4,000th strikeout.  The next five cards chronicle other 1986 regular season milestones including Rickey Henderson’s 600th stolen base, Jim Rice’s 2000th hit and Don Sutton’s 300th win.   

 

Then, ten cards feature the season’s batting and pitching leaders and rookies of the year.  The rest of the set is devoted to the post-season.  Marty Barrett is pictured midway through his 11-hit ALCS MVP series on card 17 and the NLCS MVP Mike Scott is shown on card 18, though the card is titled for his Cy Young award.  The remaining 15 cards focus on the back and forth of the classic seven-game World Series duel between the Red Sox and the Mets.  Mercifully for Bill Buckner, his 10th inning error in Game Six is not shown.  Instead, Ray Knight’s earlier hit in the inning is given top billing.

 

1986 Season Batting Leaders (Left:  Wade Boggs, AL, .357 Average, Card 10.  Right:  Tim Raines, NL, .334 Average, Card 11.)

 

Woolworth began distributing a branded Highlights set in 1988.  It followed the same order as the original set—the first cards consisting of 1987 season milestones, followed by the league leaders and award winners. Dave Righetti gets his own card as AL Fireman of the Year, but the award for his NL counterpart Steve Bedrosian is excluded in favor of Bedrosian’s Cy Young award on card 10.  The balance of the box is devoted to the league championship playoffs and the World Series. 

 

The 1988 set also introduced a new card design.  A red banner across the top of the card carries the Woolworth imprint in white lettering.  Beneath, the Baseball Highlights title of the set is printed in red against a yellow text box.  A blue border frames a photograph of on-field action.  There are two exceptions.  Card 11 shows a sour-faced Roger Clemens slouched against the back wall of a dugout, and Wade Boggs is shown pre-game in a batting cage on card 13.   With changes in the color combinations, this design will last through the end of the Highlights production in 1991.

 

1987 Highlights (Left:  Eddie Murray, Switch Hit HRs in 2 Consecutive Games, Card 5.  Right:  Mike Schmidt, Sets HR Mark at 3^rd Base, Card 7.)

 

 

Topps applied a new organization to the 1989 set.  Awards begin the set and are limited to six cards—the 1988 AL and NL MVPS, the Cy Young winners, and the Rookies of the Year for leach league.  Regular season highlights follow and include George Bell’s three Opening Day home runs, Tom Browning’s perfect game, and Randy Johnson’s September debut as the tallest player ever to take the field in a major league game.

 

Pat Tabler of the Kansas City Royals also gets a card, number 18, for his remarkable 7th hit in 8 bases-loaded at-bats in 1988.  A clutch hitter without compare, Tabler batted just under .500 with the bases loaded in his career, adding 11 walks and 9 sacrifice flies to his production.  He also reached base twice on errors and once by being hit by a pitch.  

 

The next four cards recount the league championship series.  The throttling of the Oakland A’s in five games by Orel Hershiser and Kirk Gibson and the rest of the Los Angeles Dodgers is documented on cards 23 through 33.  Gibson’s dramatic game-winning home run in Game One is pictured on card 24.  Mark McGwire’s Game Three winner is pictured on card 27.

 

 

The 1990 set follows the new pattern.  Awards again begin the set and are limited to six cards—the 1989 AL and NL MVPS (Robin Yount and Kevin Mitchell), the Cy Young winners (Brett Saberhagen and Mark Davis, and the Rookies of the Year for leach league (Gregg Olson and Jerome Walton).  The bridge to the post-season cards is built on season highlights.  It’s a longer bridge than normal and includes Vince Coleman’s 50 consecutive stolen bases on card 10, Dale Murphy’s pair of three-run homeruns in the same inning on card 15, and Ryne Sandberg’s single-season record of 90 games at second base without an error on card 21. 

 

Only 11 cards (numbers 23 through 33) are needed to cover the postseason and four-game sweep of the Giants by the Oakland A’s in 1989.   A portrait of Dave Stewart marks his World Series MVP award on card 33.  The card shows the pitcher refusing to look at the camera.  Instead, Stewart looks off to the left, with the beginnings of a sneer, as if daring the Devil himself to come to the plate and take a swing or two.  Stewart gives the same look on Card 449 of the Bowman set that year.

 

 

The 1991 Highlights set is the final and the most attractive of the series.  The red banner of the 1988 set returns along with the white Woolworth lettering.  A yellow border replaces the 1988 blue, and the two colors also trade places for the title background.  The color schemes make good bookends. 

 

For the last time, the first six cards are reserved for award winners with regular season highlights leading up the post-season half of the set.   A collegiate Alex Fernandez in a suit and tie collecting the Golden Spikes award is pictured on card 11. 

 

 

Bobby Thigpen’s 57 saves on card 21 is also featured.  Highlights also include Dave Parker hitting the 500th double of his career on card 16, but Parker in a Milwaukee Brewers uniform is just plain wrong.  In The Bible of Baseball, the one and only Cobra is now and always and forever a Pittsburgh Pirate. 

 

 

Post-season cards begin on number 23, where Rob Dibble and Randy Myers of the Cincinnati Reds share the space as co-MVPs of the 1990 NLCS. 

 

 

The Reds disposed of the A’s in four games in the World Series that year, and the cards for the Fall Classic mirror the lopsided nature of the contest.  Of the nine cards devoted to the Series, only one shows an A’s highlight—Rickey Henderson’s single and two doubles in Game One on card 26.  Everything else is all Queen City—Eric Davis’s first pitch home run in Game One, Billy Hatcher’s seven consecutive hits in Games One and Two, Chris Sabo’s pair of home runs in Game Three, and Jose Rijo’s wins on the mound in Games One and Four.

 

 

The World Series Celebration cards in the sets evoke the World Series Thrills cards Topps produced in the 1950s and 1960s.  Upper: Mets Celebrate Amazin’ Comeback, card 32, 1986 Baseball Highlights.  Lower:  Reds Celebrate after Sweeping A’s in Four, card 32, 1990 Baseball Highlights.

 

Woolworth founder Frank Winfield Woolworth built the world’s tallest building in the early 1910s, paying much of the cost for the Manhattan skyscraper in cash out of pocket.  The good times lasted sixty years.  Eventually, beset by competitors, suburban malls, and bad marketing strategies, Woolworth fell from its pedestal, out of customers and out of chances to recover.  In 1997, the company was delisted from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the once formidable market symbol Z disappeared from the financial pages soon afterwards.  Today, the legal successor Foot Locker and the “Cathedral of Commerce” at 233 Broadway are the only reminders of past glory.

 

 

It’s debatable whether Main Street is better off with or without the Woolworth store on the corner. It’s debatable whether baseball card collecting is better off with or without these small box sets.  But don’t debate whether to try the bubble gum that somehow survived intact the decades stuck to the back of the Gorman Thomas card in the Champion Superstars box.   Just don’t give into the temptation.  That desiccated confection from 1986 will instantly dissolve in your mouth, and you’ll need some Listerine to clear out an unpleasant aftertaste.  Thomas would recommend a frothier beverage, something with barley and hops.

 

---Russell Streur

Thank you, Russell!

NEXT FRIDAY: 2022 Topps Archives...a decision not to buy.

Topps 2022 Update RETAIL : When Fear of Missing Out is Really JUST Missing Out

 

Sorry.

            About last week.

            An unexpected break.

            A brief explanation as to my absence. I usually get up to write four or five mornings a week. At around 4:45 a.m. Been doing this for almost a couple of decades now. Was much, much easier when I was younger. Trust me. In fact, getting down to four mornings a week is sometimes because I simply cannot get out of bed. Especially after working a later shift at the day gig. Sometimes I want to sleep.

            Don’t get me wrong; I like my morning schedule. I’m a morning person. For years I tried writing at night, but after capitalism has its way with me, I’ve learned that I’m not much use in the evenings and nights, other than having a few drinks on the couch and reading a book. I like to write in the mornings before the work world, and all that encompasses, gets to have its way with me.

            And it’s worked.

            Most of the time.

            I do have a small body of work out there on small presses.

            For about a year now I’ve been balancing my writing mornings between this blog, poem writing (when an idea comes to me), and a new novel that I’ve been working on. I don’t want to say much about it except that it involves Wiffle ball, baseball cards and middle-aged men carrying around lifelong grudges against each other. Don’t worry…it’s fun stuff. I’m in the home stretch with the novel now, so I’ve been dedicating more mornings to it, while writing this blog while at work.

            Sometimes work gets in the way.

            As if did last week.

            So…I’m sorry.

            Anyway…enough about my creative endeavors. We’re here to talk about cards. And talk about cards we shall, goddamn it! Two weeks ago, I gave a somewhat harsh review of the inserts in Topps 2022 Update Hobby Box. Or, in my case, you win some/you lose some/nobody likes a sore loser. I thought my Hobby Box is crap. But as the movie Grinch says, one man’s garbage is another man’s potpourri. So, perhaps it wasn’t all bad.

            And I went to the well again.

            Not a Hobby box this time.

            But a Retail box.

            You see, I live in New York City. That’s not a boast. It’s an actual fact. I go outside my door and there’s New York City. Well, not the Statue of Liberty. Although if I walk a number of block I can see Lady Liberty far off in the distance. I’m more South Brooklyn. Not the South Brooklyn rich people in Park Slope think they’re in. I’m in the part of Brooklyn that connects to Staten Island. So, technically, I walk out the door into New York City every morning.

            But…I digress.

            Being a card collector in New York City poses some challenges…especially if you don’t own a car. For one, I don’t get to take advantage of a random trip to Target or Wal-Mart. I have a lot of FOMO, or maybe its mild jealous, seeing other collectors get to stop off at big box retail stores and grab product right off of the shelf. I only get to do that if I’m visiting family in Buffalo or Pittsburgh…and thanks to Covid, that hasn’t been as often as I’ve liked. Or when I’ve been to either place, the card shelves were bare because of all of the card insanity in 2020 and into 2021.

            I do have LCS here. But they’re few and far between. And, to be honest, New York City rent overhead makes buying product in those stores a touch prohibitive. We have Targets but they don’t carry sports cards. At least not the ones in Brooklyn. I don’t know if it’s a space issue or what. There is the Major League Baseball Flagship store. But its in Midtown. Like across the street from Radio City Music Hall. And as any good New Yorker knows, avoid Midtown at all costs. Especially in the summer. Most especially during this time of the year. So… card collecting for me is primarily buying product online. That usually means shipping costs along with the cost of the product.

            Which is…fine.

            But sometimes I just want to pop off at the Wal-Mart and see that wall of sports card product waiting for me.

            It’s not FOMO.

            I actually AM missing out.

            Very long story short…with this in mind…I bought a Retail box.

            And I didn’t do too badly.

The Witt Jr. Gold alone was probably worth the price of admission.

            …unless he doesn’t pan out.

            It seems to be my year for Short Print cards.

            Any Astros fans out there looking to trade…I’m a Pirates fan, size XL.

            I’ll take anything Oneil Cruz.

            …and the Juan Soto Short Print is nice.

            Explain to me again why rookies like Michael Harris II can’t be in this set, yet Soto in a Padres uniform can?

            For the Kris Bryant lover.

            …which isn’t me.

            A nice assortment of the All-Star cards.

             Although I still gripe that they aren’t a part of the base set of Update, and I get celebration cards for dudes hitting 100 career home runs.

            That said, I’ve ended up getting a number of the big All-Stars in that set, and might make a run at completing my first ever insert set.

            Here’s the best of the rest.

            The shiny cards.

            The 1987 cards.

            It pains me to write this…but between 1987 inserts and Topps (probably production related) laziness of including 1987 as a part of Archives (a product I did not buy this year, as I saved my pennies for football cards instead); I thought I’d never say this…but I’m getting tired of 1987 Topps baseball. The design needs to go on the backburner for a few years.

            Here come the “bells and whistle” cards.

            Lastly, in nearly every pack of Update Retail you get a Stars of the MLB.

            And here they are for your perusal.

            I take, well, I almost take, umbrage with the word “stars” in this instance. Some of the guys here were once stars…or almost stars. Some guys…are they stars yet? Is Ryan Mountcastle a star? Johnathan India? I’m asking in all sincerity. And a lot of these guys…they’re rookies. I know Julio Rodriguez just won Rookie of the Year…and good for him. He deserved it. But is he a star? Stars to me are Aaron Judge. Mike Trout.

            But I guess they were all used up in Series 1 and 2.

            I like the Stars of the MLB inserts…but here it mostly seems like just another reason to slap an insert card with the RC logo on it, and let history and statistics figure out if Topps got it right.

            All’n’all I liked my Retail Box experience. It’s not the random joy of coming across a blaster or a hanger in a Target (maybe I’ll get to in December!), but it was a fun rip. Full disclosure…this isn’t the first time I’ve opened a Retail Box. And, to be honest, I tend to like the inserts in Retail better, and I tend to DO a lot better in what I pull. Honestly, I think I’d rather buy a Retail box over a Hobby box. But there’s a problem inherent in that thinking. Retail tends to come out weeks to a month after Hobby does. And I lack the patience to wait.

            If my envy of watching people buy retail at Target or Wal-Mart isn’t really FOMO.

            Then my lack of patience waiting on Retail boxes to come out sure as hell is.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

NEXT FRIDAY: Well, I just hope to have a blog post. I’ll come up with something. Maybe I’ll write a blog post about Wiffle ball, cards and middle-aged men with maturity issues….wait…I’m already doing that somewhere else.

Topps 2022 Update : Or...An Ode to Being Underwhelmed

 

Well…

            I bought a hobby box of 2022 Update.

            But I wasn’t excited about it.

            A lot of other collectors were excited about it. I can see why. There’re some big rookies in the set. Big rookie cards drive collecting. Although I tend to roll my eyes at big rookies. Or maybe it’s FOMO.

            You wanna know what the last card in my hobby box was?

            Yep...last card…last pack.

            I was sweating it out too.

            Julio Rodriguez is actually one of the big shot rookie cards that I do care about.

            The others?

            I’m kind of meh on them.

            In fact, my hobby box of Topps 2022 Update was kind of meh as well.

            Let’s start with the silver pack.

            Yeah…I know…Mike Trout. I’m kind of meh on Mike Trout. I don’t collect him. I know people compare him to Mickey Mantle. And I can see the comparisons…Mickey Mantle got hurt a lot too. I’m sure Mike Trout will limp to Hall of Fame numbers. For me, I’d rather see Yordan and Vlady Jr. in the Silver Pack.  As for the rest: PED guy and two other so-called big rookies from years past.

            First card/first pack action.

            My 1987 inserts.

           Two pitchers who will probably end up getting Tommy John surgery, the 2022 version of Dave Kingman, a formerly great Cub who decided the money was worth playing the gulag in Colorado (and, yes, I’m a Pirates fan, I recognize the hypocrisy in that statement), and a HOF Pitcher whom I lost respect for because he defended the indefensible…in my humble opinion.

            What else did we get?

            Got some all-stars showing up.

            2022 Dave Kingman makes his second insert appearance. Love the Yordan though.

            I did get an auto card...

               ...of Alex Wells.

               Of course, I can't forget all of the bells and whistles a hobby box brings

            Anyone as underwhelmed as I was on an early Saturday morning?

    

            But then THIS happened.

            Which I'm happy to trade to any Red Sox fan who has some Pittsburgh Pirates goodies.

            Speaking of Pirates.

            I know I'm supposed to be excited for these guys.

            I was more excited to get these guys.

            But let's not get TOO EXICTED. Topps, proving that they absolutely could not care less for a 

team like the Pittsburgh Pirates, rounded out my Pirates checklist with these guys.

            Four guys who no longer play for the team and one guy who was hurt almost all season.

            I thought this was a classy move by Topps.

            These, on the other hand, were head scratchers for me.

           

            When did Topps start celebrating 100 Home Run marks? Or weren't Ohtani and Soto on enough 

cards this season?

            Getting back to rookie cards. I counted at least twenty-nine Rookie Debut cards in my Hobby 

Box. TWENTY-NINE. You won't put all-stars in the set, other than inserts, but you'll put at least 

TWENTY-NINE of what I consider to be the DIET cola of rookie cards. I'm probably in the minority 

opinion on Rookie Debut cards. But rookie debut cards are lame.

            Speaking of lame rookie cards.

    

            You can give at least TWENTY-NINE dudes a second rookie card, but Topps can't even give 

some players their OWN rookie card.

            And, lastly, a found this card to be a little bit ominous.

            This is looks like a final Albert Pujols card. It FEELS like a final Albert Pujols card. It probably

is a final Albert Pujols cards. This means, in Topps traditional fashion, that we're not going to get a 

career encapsulating card for Albert Pujols in 2023 base.

            ...but maybe Ronald Acuna Jr. will hit his 150th home run!

           

            Sorry I sound so cynical on this post.

            Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

            NEXT FRIDAY: I'll try and not be so negative and maybe we'll take a look at something from 

my PC.