Tacoma, Washington

Tacoma has ten sister cities: Ålesund (Norway), Davao (Philippines), Fuzhou (China), George (South Africa), Qiryat Motzkin (Israel), Kitakyushu (Japan), Gunsan (South Korea), Cienfuegos (Cuba), Vladivostok (Russia), and Taichung City (Taiwan). Topps made its first foray into the world of games in July 2003 by acquiring the game company WizKids for $28.4 million in cash. [6]. The Topps Pokémon cards were purely for entertainment and collecting, but a new niche of collectible card games was also developing during this period (a Pokémon trading card game was produced simultaneously by Wizards of the Coast). Tacoma was named America's most stressed city in 2004 by Best Places Magazine. Pokémon cards would accomplish the same feat for a few years starting in 1999. [5]. For a period beginning in 1973, the Wacky Packages stickers managed to outsell Topps baseball cards, becoming the first product to do so since the company's early days as purely a gum and candy maker.

Tacoma is mentioned in the song "He's a Grungewhore" from the norwegian punk rock band Turbonegros 1994 album Never Is Forever. Although baseball cards have been Topps's most consistently profitable item, certain fads have occasionally produced spikes in popularity for non-sports items. Tacoma is also mentioned at the end of Sir Mix-a-Lot's song "Jump On It" ("Tacoma, jump on it..."). Kennedy. Tacoma is mentioned in the Sir Mix-a-Lot song "My Hooptie" ("Rollin' in Tacoma, I could get burned (Sound of automatic gunfire) Betta make a u-turn"). Topps has also covered celebrities and other cultural phenomena ranging from The Beatles to the life story of John F. Toyota has named a popular line of pickup trucks the "Toyota Tacoma" after the city. Examples of the latter include The Waltons, The Mod Squad, Emergency!, Welcome Back Kotter, Mork and Mindy, and many others.

Sources: ([[2]]) ([[3]]) ([[4]]}. Topps has also issued trading card series for movies, including the Star Wars and Star Trek series, and a number of popular television programs. The long-running series of Tugboat Annie radio dramas, television shows and films (one of which starred a young actor named Ronald Reagan) was based on Tacoma tugboat operator Annie Foss. Among Topps's most notable achievements in this area have been Wacky Packages, a takeoff on various household consumer products, and a series of stickers called Garbage Pail Kids, a parody of the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. In addition, significant parts of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) were shot in a North Tacoma home. These artistic talents carried over into more general efforts at parody as well. Other films featuring a Tacoma location include Get Carter (2000). The 1962 Mars Attacks cards, sketched by Wood and Powell and painted by Norman Saunders, later inspired a Tim Burton movie.

Also featured was the 1927-vintage Java Jive, a Tacoma tavern shaped like a giant coffee pot. Drawing on their previous work, these artists were adept at things like mixing humor and horror, as with the Funny Monsters cards in 1959. Kevin Kline's pizzeria was located in the flatiron building downtown. Some artists might work only on a project or two; others were regulars, like Art Spiegelman, who worked for Topps for over twenty years. I Love You to Death (1990) was filmed in downtown and central Tacoma. They also brought in others from the underground comix movement, including Bill Griffith and Kim Deitch. Parts of the movie 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), whose plot is based on William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, were filmed at Stadium High School and in the nearby North End neighborhood, although most other exterior scenes were filmed in Seattle. Topps creative directors Woody Gelman and Len Brown capitalized by hiring a number of artists from the industry, such as Jack Davis, Wally Wood, and Bob Powell.

A running gag in the 1985 Tom Hanks film Volunteers is the repeated references to Tacoma by John Candy's character, "Tom Tuttle from Tacoma, Washington.". The shift from sports to other topics better suited the creative instincts of the artists and coincided with turmoil in the comic book industry over regulation by the Comics Code Authority. Tacoma is also prominently mentioned in the 1977 Steve Miller Band song "Rock 'N Me" (I went from Phoenix, Arizona, all the way to Tacoma, Philadelphia, Atlanta, L.A.). Many Topps artists came from the world of comics and continued to work in that field as well. Richard Brautigan wrote of his Tacoma childhood in his autobiographical short stories "Corporal," "The Armoured Car," "The Auction," and "The Ghost Children of Tacoma.". Topps has continued to create collectible cards and stickers on a variety of subjects, often centered around movies, TV shows, musicians, and other entertainment phenomena. The album also includes a song called "South Tacoma Way.". For example, the Space Race prompted a set of "Space Cards" in 1958.

Neko Case's song "Thrice All American", featured on her album Furnace Room Lullaby, is an ode to Tacoma, which she considers her hometown. As its sports products relied more on photography, Topps redirected its artistic efforts toward editorial trading cards on themes inspired by popular culture. For the 1994-1995 season, the Seattle SuperSonics played in the Tacoma Dome while the Seattle Center Coliseum was gutted and renovated into Key Arena, the team's current home. Under pressure by shareholders, the company considered selling off its confectionery business in 2005, but was unable to find a buyer to meet its price and decided to cut management expenses instead. At one point, the Tacoma Dome was home to a professional indoor soccer team, the Tacoma Stars. One particular focus has been lollipops, such as Ring Pops. The Tacoma Dome does still host traveling sports and pseudo-sports events such as pro wrestling, figure skating tours, and the Harlem Globetrotters. In recent years, Topps has added more candy items without gum.

The city has struggled to keep a minor league hockey franchise, having lost the Tacoma Rockets of the WHL to relocation and having the Tacoma Sabercats of the former West Coast Hockey League go defunct due to financial woes. Sales declined significantly in the 1970s, however, when this relatively hard gum was challenged by Bubble Yum, a new, softer form of bubblegum from Lifesavers. The Rainiers play inside Cheney Stadium, named after local businessman and baseball enthusiast Ben Cheney. For quite a few years, the company stuck within familiar confines, and virtually all of these products involved gum in some way. Tacoma, in addition to the professional sports teams of Seattle, has one minor league baseball franchise, the Tacoma Rainiers, a Triple-A team playing in the Pacific Coast League as a farm team of the Seattle Mariners. Even though baseball cards became the company's primary focus during this period, Topps still developed a variety of candy items. Tacoma also has Greyhound and Amtrak service, accessible via Tacoma Dome Station. In 1953, Topps began selling smaller penny pieces with the Bazooka Joe comic strip on the wrapper as an added attraction.

Tacoma is also served by Washington State Ferries system, which has a dock at Point Defiance, providing ferry access to Tahlequah at the southern tip of Vashon Island, typically on the ferry M/V Rhododendron. Unlike the gum sold with baseball cards, it was of better quality and capable of selling on its own merit. This line is presently under consideration for extension. Bazooka was introduced in 1947 as a bar of gum that sold for five cents. Sound Transit has also established Tacoma Link light rail, a 1.6-mile electric streetcar line linking Tacoma Dome Station with the University of Washington, Tacoma, Tacoma's Museum District, and the Theater District. The longest-lived Topps product line remains Bazooka bubblegum, small pieces of gum in patriotic red, white, and blue packaging.
Sound Transit, the regional transit authority, provides daily Sounder Commuter Rail service and express bus service during the week. Its best-selling title was The X-Files, based on the Fox TV show.

Several primary routes of note are:. Topps Comics specialized in licensed titles, particularly movie and television series tie-ins, though it also published a smattering of such original series as Cadillacs and Dinosaurs and several based on concepts by then-retired industry legend Jack Kirby. Bus service operates at 15 or 30 minute frequencies on weekdays. This division of the company published comic books from 1993 — during the first half-decade's comics-industry boom, which attacted many investors and new companies — through 1998. Pierce Transit operates a total of 55 bus routes on busses powered by natural gas and diesel. In imitation of Bowman and other competitors, Topps eventually also began producing trading cards and other collectibles for a variety of topics unrelated to sports. Public bus service is provided by Pierce Transit, which serves Tacoma and Pierce County. Other gum and candy products followed.

Tacoma has a wide array of alternative transportation services available including busses, commuter rail, light rail, and ferries. Originally, Topps was purely a gum company, and its first product was simply called "Topps gum". Seattle-Tacoma International Airport lies about 22 miles to the north in the city of SeaTac. In a more recent addition to its lineup, Topps began producing cards for soccer in 1996, in partnership with Major League Soccer. Washington State Route 16 runs along a concrete viaduct through Tacoma's Nalley Valley connecting Interstate 5 with West Tacoma, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and the Kitsap Peninsula. Topps finally returned to basketball cards in 1992, several years after its competitors. I-5 links Tacoma with Seattle to the north and Portland, Oregon, to the south. It started again in 1969 and continued until 1982, then abandoned the market for another decade.

The dominant intercity transportation link between Tacoma and other parts of the Puget Sound is Interstate 5. Topps first sold cards for basketball in 1957, but stopped after one season. In newer portions of the city to the west and south, residential cul-de-sacs, four-lane collector roads and indoor shopping centers are more commonplace. This ultimately left the sport to Upper Deck, which emerged as the sole licensee when the league resumed play. The Proctor, Old Town, Dome, Sixth Avenue, and Lincoln Business Districts are some of the more prominent and popular of these and coordinate their efforts to redevelop urban villages through the Cross District Association of Tacoma. However, anticipating the 2004-05 NHL lockout, Topps allowed its license for hockey to expire after the 2003-04 season. Twelve such districts have active, city-recognized business associations and hold "small town"-style parades and other festivals. Topps then acquired the rights to use the O-Pee-Chee name on sports cards after that company was sold to Nestlé.

In portions of the city dating back to the Tacoma Streetcar Period (1888-1938), denser mixed use business districts exist alongside single family homes. O-Pee-Chee had already obtained a license to print Topps baseball cards for the Canadian market, and for a number of years the two companies would produce often-identical cards for both sports, but each under its own brand for its respective market. Most streets east of Pacific Avenue are labeled "East." This system of numbering extends beyond city limits to much of the western portion of Pierce County. After Parkhurst disappeared from the market in the 1960s, Topps then reached an agreement with O-Pee-Chee, another Canadian company, to jointly produce hockey cards. Many first-time visitors have encountered difficulty with this. Topps did not make a serious effort to take on Parkhurst Products, the leading Canadian hockey card manufacturer, for a couple more years. This can lead to confusion, as Union Avenue intersects both North and South 11th Streets. at the time (Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, and New York Rangers).

North- and south-running streets are given a name or a letter, and are also labeled "North" or "South" in relation to 6th Avenue. After football, its next venture was into ice hockey, with a 1954 set featuring players from the four National Hockey League franchises located in the U.S. Numbered streets run east to west and are labeled "North" or "South" according to their relationship with 6th Avenue or Division Street. Topps also makes cards for other major American professional sports. The majority of the city has a system of gridded streets oriented in relation to Pacific Avenue and 6th Avenue, both beginning in Downtown Tacoma. The situation continued until growth in the sports card market generally prompted two new companies, Pro Set and Score, to start making football cards in 1989. Tacoma's system of transportation is based primarily on the automobile. In spite of the lack of competition, or perhaps to preempt it, Topps also created two sets of cards for the short-lived United States Football League in the 1980s.

Out of the total population, 20.6% of those under the age of 18 and 10.9% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line. After the AFL-NFL Merger was agreed to, Topps became the only major football card manufacturer beginning in 1968. 15.9% of the population and 11.4% of families were below the poverty line. Although more competitive for a time, the football card market was never as lucrative, so the other companies did not fight as hard over it. The per capita income for the city was $19,130. Philadelphia Gum then secured the NFL rights for 1964, forcing Topps to go for the AFL and leaving Fleer with no product in either baseball or football. Males had a median income of $35,820, versus $27,697 for females. Fleer produced a set for the AFL in 1960, then featured both leagues for one year before focusing on the AFL again.

The median income for a household in the city was $37,879, and the median income for a family was $45,567. However, the emergence of the American Football League in 1960 to compete with the established National Football League also allowed Topps's competitors, beginning with Fleer, to make inroads. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.3 males. Since then, Topps has sold football cards every season. For every 100 females there were 95.2 males. After buying out Bowman, Topps took over the market the following year. The median age was 34. For football cards Bowman dominated the field, and Topps did not try again until 1955, when it released an All-American set with a mix of active players and retired stars.

In 2000, the population's demographics were evenly distributed: 25.8% under 18, 10.4% from 18 to 24, 31.6% from 25 to 44, 20.3% from 45 to 64, and 11.9% who were 65 years of age or older. In addition to baseball, Topps also produced cards for American football in 1951, which are known as the Magic set. The average household size in 2000 was 2.45 and the average family size was 3.10. The 1964 set issued cards for 2 then-recently-dead players--Ken Hubbs of the Cubs with a different "In Memoriam" front design compared the the standard cards, and Colts pitcher Jim Umbricht's regular card with a special note on its back about his April 1964 death (from cancer). Almost one third of households (31.7%) were made up of individuals living alone; 10.4% of these were 65 years of age or older. The 1959 set had card 550 as "Symbol Of Courage - Roy Campanella", with a color photo of the paralyzed former Dodger in his wheelchair and a black-and-white photo of him in uniform inserted to the upper left. There were 76,152 households in Tacoma in 2000; 30.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 41.6% were married couples living together, 13.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 39.7% were non-families. On rare occasions, Topps issued special cards for players who had either died or had been injured.

6.85% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race. It involved the clearly-readable obscenity on the bottom of the bat of Orioles infielder Billy Ripken. The racial makeup of the city was 69.08% White, 11.24% African American, 1.96% Native American, 7.57% Asian, 0.93% Pacific Islander, 2.94% from other races, and 6.28% from two or more races. The most celebrated error in baseball-card history was not printed by Topps, but by competitor Fleer in 1989. There were 81,102 housing units at an average density of 625.3/km² (1,619.4/mi²). The photo's cropping captured only the last 3 letters of one sign, so that the word "ASS" appears in vivid letters behind Sadecki. In 2000, Tacoma's population density was 1,492.3/km² (3,864.9/mi²). The full-figure pitching-pose of Sadecki is normal; the problem was with the advertising signs on the outfield fence that he posed in front of.

2004]). The prime example of this was the Topps 1964 card for Cardinals' pitcher Ray Sadecki (#147). D3 [Sept. Yet another class of card is the "unintentional error," in which something in the photo makes it look as if an actual error has occurred. Census Bureau estimated that Tacoma's population had increased by 1.7%, to 196,800 (Trends, No. This gives the card a "3-D" look. Four years later, the U.S. An interesting type of error is the print separation.

The census^GR2 of 2000 indicated that 193,556 persons, 76,152 households, and 45,919 families resided in Tacoma. These are generally considered "ghost cards". A daily newspaper has been in circulation in Tacoma since 1883; in the period from 1907 to 1918, three dailies were published: The Tacoma Ledger, The News, and The Tacoma Tribune. Another error type is when the back stats are overprinted on the front of the card. The paper's circulation is about 128,000 (Sundays 144,000), making it the third-largest newspaper in the state of Washington. Anticipating that possibility, Topps substituted the term "Washington Nat'l League" onto early-series Padres' cards, since the nickname of the potentially re-located team was not known. The city's only daily newspaper is The News Tribune, since 1986 a subsidiary of McClatchy Newspapers. This came about when there was a strong possibility that the San Diego Padres might move to Washington after the 1973 season.

Also, one of the elementary schools, Sheridan Elementary, operates three foreign language immersion programs (Spanish, French, and Japanese). The 1974 "Washington Nat'l League" cards are considered errors too, but were corrected during the run. One of the district's high schools, Henry Foss High School, operates an acclaimed International Baccalaureate program. In addition, misspelled words/names, print blotches, missing border sections, and different colored backgrounds (like the 1973 manager cards) are all considered errors although relatively few of these are corrected. The district also has 5 high schools, one alternative high school, and one School of the Arts. Another type of card that is considered an error is the blankback (or blankfront) Most likely however, these are first run proofs from the company not intended for distribution. The school district contains 36 elementary schools and 11 middle schools. It is possible to find a centered back and off center front.

Tacoma's main public school district is Tacoma Public Schools. Most wrongbacks have the backs off center. The total area is 20.01% water. This occurs when the sheet is mated with a back which is up side down or reversed. 129.7 km² (50.1 mi²) of it is land and 32.5 km² (12.5 mi²) of it is water. Another type of error is the "wrongback." You can find these in just about any year. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 162.2 km² (62.6 mi²). The Reniff card's number was still incorrect in this second printing, so a third, corrected one of his was produced, resulting in 1 'true' Reniff card and 2 errors (each error card with a different photograph).

Its elevation is 116 meters (380 feet). All remaining photos were re-cropped for the re-printing (e.g., some photos were moved a bit to one side, and others moved up or down), thus giving every card in the series an error card. Tacoma is located at 47°14'29" North, 122°27'34" West (47.241371, -122.459389)^GR1. The entire series was re-printed and re-distributed, with the photo inks in proper proportion and with 8 photos replaced with different poses (Reniff's among them). In addition, Comcast also offers digital cable and internet services in the area. All the photos were somewhat out of focus, and card number 159 (Yankees Pitcher Hal Reniff) was incorrectly numbered as 139. Tacoma Power is, along with Tacoma Water and Tacoma Rail, a part of Tacoma Public Utilities. The set's entire second series (the 87 cards numbered 110 through 196) was first printed and distributed without the proper amount of ink for the photographs; the result has been known ever since as the "Green Tint" series, for the sky and dirt in the backgrounds of some cards are decidedly green, rather than blue or brown.

Tacoma Power also operates the Click! Network, a cable television and internet service, one of the first public utilities to provide such a service. The Topps 1962 baseball set saw the 'grandaddy' of all error situations. Electrical power is furnished by Tacoma Power, a division of Tacoma Public Utilities, which owns hydroelectric plants on the North Fork of the Skokomish River. The result was that said cards occur in two variations, based on the back color. On April 26, 2003 Tacoma's Chief of Police, David Brame, shot and killed his wife and himself in Gig Harbor, Washington. The photographs and information on the cards themselves were not in error. Tacoma was named after Mount Rainier, whose original name was Tahoma, which derived from the Puyallup tacobet, or "mother of waters.". Certain cards were printed on two different types of cardstock; one produced a white back, and the other a darker gray.

The next day two Chinese settlements were burned to the ground.". One example of "variations" happened in the 1959 and 1960 Topps baseball sets. 3, 1885, "several hundred men, led by the mayor and other city officials, evicted the Chinese from their homes, corralled them at 7th Street and Pacific Avenue, marched them to the railway station at Lakeview, and forced them aboard the morning train to Portland, Oregon. Some errors are corrected and re-printed within the print runs of the same set, resulting in an "Error Card;" others are not corrected, and are referred to among collectors as "Uncorrected Errors.". To quote from the account prepared by the Chinese Reconciliation Project: On the morning of Nov. Topps and other card publishers were not immune to production 'glitches,' and such mistakes gave collectors unusual items to seek for their collections. What came to be known as "Tacoma method" was used in November 1885 to expel several thousand Chinese peaceably living in the city. In 1993, Topps finally managed again to incorporate a player photo on the back as well as the front of the card, after some competitors had been doing so for a number of years.

A plaque in downtown Tacoma marks the start and finish point. These appeared on card backs as late as 1982, but gradually declined in the prominence of their placement and the proportion of cards on which they appeared. In 1880, he staged a global circumnavigation starting and ending in Tacoma to promote the city's centrality. This primarily involved using various types of cartoons drawn by its stable of artists. George Francis Train was a resident of Tacoma for a few years in the late 1800s, and was an early civic booster. Before statistics, biographical information, and commentary became the dominant element on the backs of cards, Topps also featured artwork there. Its early hopes to live to be the "City of Destiny" were frustrated in the late 19th century, when the discovery of gold in the Klondike turned Seattle into a boom town, eclipsing Tacoma's early lead. These problems diminished as Topps's selection of photographs gradually improved.

Tacoma was officially incorporated on November 12, 1875. In a few cases, a misidentification meant that the player didn't even appear in the picture. (A replica of Job Carr's cabin, which also served as Tacoma's first post office, was erected in "Old Town" in 2000 near the original site.). The photos were sometimes out of focus or included several players, making it difficult to pick out the player who was supposed to be featured on the card. The town was originally settled by pioneer and postmaster Job Carr, a Civil War veteran and land speculator who hoped to profit from the selection of Commencement Bay as the terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad. When used for the cards of individual players, some of the early action photography had awkward results. It was visited by European and American explorers, including George Vancouver and Charles Wilkes, who named many of the coastal landmarks. Since that time, Topps has mixed game photography with posed shots in its sets.

Tacoma was inhabited for thousands of years by Native American people, predominantly the Puyallup people. Starting in 1960 a few cards showed true game action, primarily highlights from the World Series, but the photographs were either in black-and-white or hand-tinted color until 1971. . In the absence of real action photography, Topps still occasionally used artwork to depict action on a handful of cards. Chef-author Jeff Smith learned to cook and began his career in Tacoma at the Chaplain's Pantry, later known as the Gourmet Pantry (now closed), on Tacoma Avenue. (Cards for 'rookies' were also prepared by airbrushing over their minor-league uniforms in photos.). A number of noteworthy individuals have come from Tacoma, among them bowling legend Earl Anthony, singer Bing Crosby, authors Richard Brautigan and Frank Herbert, cartoonist Gary Larson, serial killer Ted Bundy, serial sniper John Allen Muhammad, actress Dyan Cannon, conspiracy gadfly Fred Crisman, Andrew and Thea Foss, first owners and operators of Foss Launch and Tug Company, Puyallup Indian rights activist Robert Satiacum, auto racer Pat Austin, prize fighter Sugar Ray Seales, NFL receiver Ahmad Rashad, Major League baseball player Ron Cey, glass artist Dale Chihuly, and musicians the Wailers, Jerry Miller (Moby Grape), Jerry Cantrell and Neko Case. Another was to paint out, by airbrush, the former team logo on both cap and uniform, or to paint on their new team cap logo.

In the late 1990s, however, Simpson Tacoma Kraft reduced total sulfur emissions by 90%, largely eliminating the problem, but a strong smell is occasionally still detectable. One way was to show the player without any team cap. Beginning in the 1930s, Tacoma became known for its malodorousness, called the "Aroma of Tacoma" -- a distinctive, acrid odor produced by local paper manufacturing on the industrial tide flats. Topps used various ways to cope with players changing teams before the company could issue a card of them in their new uniform. It contains Wright Park Arboretum. Photographs did not appear in sharp focus and natural color until 1962. Schwagerl and Ebenezer Rhys Roberts. If using such a prop, the player might pose in a position as if he were in the act of batting, pitching, or fielding.

Wright Park, located near downtown, is a large, English-style park designed in the late 1800s by E.O. From 1957 on, virtually all cards were posed photographs, either as a head shot or together with a typical piece of equipment like a bat or glove. Another park in Tacoma is Titlow Beach, which is a popular scuba diving area. The close-up head shots of some individual players were reused each year. One of the largest urban parks in the U.S, Point Defiance Park, which includes the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium and Fort Nisqually, is located in Tacoma. For 1956, the close-up tinted photo was placed against a tinted full-background 'game-action' photo of the player. Tacoma's downtown Cultural District is also the site of the Washington State History Museum (1996) and the Tacoma Art Museum (2003). The same basic format was used in 1955, this time with the full-length photo also hand-tinted.

It includes a functional glassblowing studio. After starting out with simple portraits, in 1954 Topps put two pictures on the front of the card--a hand-tinted 'color' close-up photo of the player's head, and the other a black-and-white full-length pose. The Museum of Glass opened in downtown Tacoma in 2002, showcasing glass art from the region and around the world. The cards themselves had been in color from the beginning, though for the first few years this was done by using artist's portraits of players rather than actual photographs. Tacoma is a major international deep-water container port. Although the 1971 set was an aborted experiment in terms of putting photos on card backs, that year was also a landmark in terms of baseball card photography, as Topps for the first time included cards showing color photographs from actual games. and the Russell Investment Group, as well as institutions of higher learning, including Pacific Lutheran University, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma Community College, and the University of Washington's Tacoma campus. The practice of showing complete career statistics became permanent in 1963, except for one year, 1971, when Topps sacrificed the full statistics in order to put a player photo on the back of the card as well.

Tacoma is the home of such international companies as Labor Ready, Inc. Over the next few years, Topps alternated between this format and merely showing the past season plus career totals. 2004]). For the first time in 1957, Topps put full year-by-year statistics for the player's entire career on the back of the card. D3 [Sept. Bowman promptly imitated this by putting statistics on its own cards where it had previously only had biographical information. Census Bureau to be 196,800, and a metropolitan area of 750,000 (Trends, No. the 1951 season for cards in the 1952 set) and another with the player's lifetime totals.

1, 2004, was estimated by the U.S. The cards originally had one line for statistics from the most recent year (i.e. The 2000 census reported Tacoma's population as 193,556; the city's population on Apr. It also had some pedagogical benefit by encouraging youngsters to take an interest in the underlying math. Tacoma (IPA: [tə ˈko mə]) is the county seat of Pierce County^GR6, Washington, USA, situated on Puget Sound's Commencement Bay, Tacoma Narrows, and the estuary of the Puyallup River. Those who played with baseball cards could study the numbers and use them as the basis for comparing players, trading cards with friends, or playing imaginary baseball games.
Location of Tacoma in
Pierce County and Washington State. While baseball cards themselves had been around for years, including statistics was a relative novelty that fascinated many collectors.

West End. At the time, complete and reliable baseball statistics for all players were not widely available, so Topps actually compiled the information itself from published box scores. South Tacoma. One of the features that contributed significantly to Topps's success beginning with the 1952 set was providing player statistics. South End. Some of these were the company's own innovations, while some were ideas borrowed from others that Topps helped popularize. Northeast Tacoma. In addition to establishing a standard size, Topps developed various design elements that are considered typical of baseball cards.

Dome District. Although Topps did not invent the concept of baseball cards, its dominance in the field basically allowed the company to define people's expectations of what a baseball card would look like. Stadium District. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed, but Topps charged a $3.7 million after-tax loss on its books in connection with the sale. North End. This undertaking was not very successful, however, and Topps unloaded the site on Naxcom in January 2006. McKinley Hill. The purchase was for $5.7 million cash in August 2001 after Topps had earlier committed to invest in a round of venture capital financing for the company.

Hilltop. Topps also acquired ThePit.com, a startup company that earlier in 2000 had launched a site for online stock-market style card trading. Eastside. After a sale, the cards are held in a climate-controlled warehouse unless the buyer requests delivery, and the cards can be traded online without changing hands except in the virtual sense. Central. The quantity sold depends on how many people offer to buy, but is limited to a certain maximum. Old Town. These cards are sold exclusively online through individual "IPOs" in which the card is offered for a week at the IPO price.

Route 3, "Downtown Tacoma – Lakewood via Tacoma Mall". Working in partnership with eBay, Topps launched a new brand of sports cards called etopps in December 2000. Route 2, "South 19th – Bridgeport Way via Tacoma Community College", and. Although most of its products were distributed through retail stores and hobby shops, Topps also attempted to establish itself online, where a significant secondary market for sports cards was developing. Route 1, "Pacific Avenue – 6th Avenue". The union announced that for 2006, licenses would only be granted to Topps and Upper Deck, the number of different products would be limited, and players would not appear on cards before reaching the major leagues. The resulting glut of different baseball sets caused the MLBPA to take drastic measures as the market for them deteriorated.

Topps continued adding more sets and trying to distinguish them from each other, as did its competitors. The initial Topps effort at producing a premium line of cards, in 1991, was called Stadium Club. Following Topps's example, other manufacturers now began to diversify their product lines into different sets, each catering to a different niche of the market. Also beginning in 1989 with the entry of Upper Deck into the market, card companies began to develop higher-end cards using improved technology.

As a further step in this race, Topps resurrected its former competitor Bowman as a subsidiary brand in 1989, with Bowman sets similarly chosen to include a lot of young players with bright prospects. This card from the 1984 squad appeared in Topps's regular 1985 set, but by the next Olympic cycle the team's cards had been migrated to the "Traded" set. Olympic baseball team and thus produced the first card of Mark McGwire, one that would become quite valuable to collectors. For example, Topps obtained a license to produce cards featuring the U.S.

Increasingly, they also included highly touted minor league players who had yet to play in the major leagues. Since a "rookie card" is typically the most valuable for any given player, the companies now competed to be the first to produce a card of players who might be future stars. In order to fill out a 132-card set (the number of cards that fit on a single sheet of the uncut cardboard used in the production process), it would contain a number of rookie players who had just reached the major leagues and not previously appeared on a card. While "Traded" or "Update" sets were originally conceived to deal with players who changed teams, they became increasingly important for another reason.

In response to the competition, Topps began regularly issuing additional "Traded" sets featuring players who had changed teams since the main set was issued, following up on an idea it had experimented with a few years earlier. Other manufacturers later followed, but Topps remains one of the leading brands in the baseball card hobby. Fleer and Donruss began making large, widely distributed sets to compete directly with Topps, although they still avoided packaging their cards with gum. The Topps monopoly on baseball cards was finally broken by a lawsuit that let Fleer and another company, Donruss, enter the market in 1981.

Topps appears not to have considered the Kellogg's cards a threat and took no action to stop them. The Kellogg's sets contained fewer cards than Topps sets, and the cards served as an incentive to buy the cereal rather than being the intended focus of the purchase, as tended to be the case for cards distributed with smaller items like candy or gum. A semblance of competition returned to the baseball card market in the 1970s when Kellogg's began producing "3-D" cards and inserting them in boxes of breakfast cereal (originally Corn Flakes, later Raisin Bran and other brands). In addition, Topps is the only manufacturer able to produce cards of players who worked as replacement players during the 1994-95 baseball strike, since they are barred from union membership and participation in the group licensing program.

Topps, however, can negotiate individually and was belatedly able to create a 2004 card of Bonds. On the other hand, if a player opts out of group licensing, as Barry Bonds did in 2004, then manufacturers who depend on the MLBPA system will have no way of including him. Players who decline to sign individual contracts will not have Topps cards even when the group licensing system allows other manufacturers to produce cards of the player, as happened with Alex Rodriguez early in his career. The difference has occasionally affected whether specific players are included in particular sets.

This contrasts with other manufacturers, who all obtain group licenses from the MLBPA. As a byproduct of this history, Topps continues to use individual player contracts as the basis for its baseball card sets today. Although Fleer declined the proposal, by the end of the year Topps had agreed to double its payments to each player from $125 to $250, and also to begin paying players a percentage of Topps's overall sales. After continued discussions went nowhere, the union before the 1968 season asked its members to stop signing renewals on these contracts, and offered Fleer the exclusive rights to market cards of most players (with gum) starting in 1973.

At this time, Topps had every major league player under contract, generally for five years plus renewal options, so Shorin declined. MLBPA executive director Marvin Miller then approached Joel Shorin, the president of Topps, about renegotiating these contracts. After initially putting players on Coca-Cola bottlecaps, the union concluded that the Topps contracts did not pay players adequately for their rights. Struggling to raise funds, the MLBPA discovered that it could generate significant income by pooling the publicity rights of its members and offering companies a group license to use their images on various products.

That same year, however, Topps faced an attempt to undermine its position from the nascent players' union, the Major League Baseball Players Association. The decision gave Topps an effective monopoly of the baseball card market. However, Fleer chose not to pursue such options and instead sold its remaining player contracts to Topps for $395,000 in 1966. The Commission concluded that because the contracts only covered the sale of cards with gum, competition was still possible by selling cards with other small, low-cost products.

A hearing examiner ruled against Topps in 1965, but the Commission reversed this decision on appeal. Stymied, Fleer turned its efforts to supporting an administrative complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that Topps was engaging in unfair competition through its aggregation of exclusive contracts. However, Topps held onto the rights of most players and the set was not particularly successful. Two of these sets were produced before Fleer finally tried a 67-card set of currently active players in 1963.

Williams retired the next year, so Fleer began adding around him other mostly retired players in a Baseball Greats series, which was sold with gum. Fleer signed star Ted Williams to an exclusive contract in 1959 and sold a set of cards oriented around him. The next company to challenge Topps was Fleer, another gum manufacturer. This left Topps as the dominant producer of baseball cards for a number of years.

The competition, both for consumer attention and player contracts, continued until 1956, when Topps bought out Bowman. As the contract situation was sorted out, several Topps sets during these years had a few "missing" cards, where the numbering of the set skips several numbers because they had been assigned to players whose cards could not legally be distributed. The contract issue proved more difficult because it turned on the dates when a given player signed contracts with each company, and whether the player's contract with one company had an exception for his contract with the other. The court rejected Bowman's attempt to claim a trademark on the word "baseball" in connection with the sale of gum, and disposed of the unfair competition claim because Topps had made no attempt to pass its cards off as being made by Bowman.

The lawsuit alleged infringement on Bowman's trademarks, unfair competition, and contractual interference. federal court. Bowman responded by adding chewing gum "or confections" to the exclusivity language of its 1951 contracts, and also sued Topps in U.S. Topps also tried to establish exclusive rights through its contracts by having players agree not to grant similar rights to others, or renew existing contracts except where specifically noted in the contract.

However, because Bowman had signed many players in 1950 to contracts for that year, plus a renewal option for one year, Topps included in its own contracts the rights to sell cards with gum starting in 1952 (as it ultimately did). To avoid the language of Bowman's existing contracts, Topps sold its 1951 cards with caramel candy instead of gum. The language of these contracts focused particularly on the rights to sell cards with chewing gum, which had already been established in the 1930s as a popular product to pair with baseball cards. Bowman had become the primary maker of baseball cards and driven out several competitors by signing its players to exclusive contracts.

This promptly brought Topps into furious competition with Bowman Gum, another company producing baseball cards. The later acquisition of rights to additional players allowed Topps to release its second series. Topps first became active in this process through an agent called Players Enterprises in July 1950, in preparation for its first 1951 set. During this period, baseball card manufacturers generally obtained the rights to depict players on merchandise by signing individual players to contracts for the purpose.

It was finally dropped from baseball card packs in 1992. In fact, the gum eventually became a hindrance because it tended to stain the cards, thus impairing their value to collectors who wanted to keep them in pristine condition. The combination of baseball cards and bubblegum was popular among young boys, and given the mediocre quality of the gum, the cards quickly became the primary attraction. The last series in 1952 started with card #311, which is Topps' first card of Mickey Mantle and remains the most valuable Topps card ever.

As a result, cards with higher numbers from this period are rarer than low numbers in the same set, and collectors will pay significantly higher prices for them. In later years, Topps either printed series in smaller quantities late in the season or destroyed excess cards. Topps was left with a substantial amount of surplus stock in 1952, which it largely disposed of by dumping many cards into the Atlantic. However, the later series did not sell as well, as the baseball season wore on and popular attention began to turn towards football.

The cards were released in several series over the course of the baseball season, a practice Topps would continue with its baseball cards until 1974. This set became a landmark in the baseball card industry, and today the company considers this its first true baseball card set. (In 1957, Topps shrank the dimensions of its cards slightly, to 2-1/2 inches by 3-1/2 inches, setting a standard that remains the basic format for most sports cards produced in the United States.) The cards now had a color portrait on one side, with statistical and biographical information on the other. The company also decided that its playing card model was too small (2 inches by 2-5/8 inches) and changed the dimensions to 2-5/8 inches by 3-5/8 inches with square corners.

Topps changed its approach in 1952, this time creating a much larger (407 total) set of baseball cards and packaging them with its signature product, bubblegum. The other side featured the portrait of a player within a baseball diamond in the center, and in opposite corners a picture of a baseball together with the event for that card, such as "fly out" or "single". Also like playing cards, the cards had rounded corners and were blank on one side, which was colored either red or blue (hence the names given to these sets). Each set contained 52 cards, like a deck of playing cards, and in fact the cards could be used to play a game that would simulate the events of a baseball game.

In 1951, Topps produced its first baseball cards in two different sets known today as Red Backs and Blue Backs. Management was left in the hands of the Shorin family throughout all of these maneuverings. In this incarnation, the company was incorporated in Delaware for legal purposes, but company headquarters remained in New York. The new ownership group again made Topps into a publicly traded company in 1987, now renamed to The Topps Company, Inc.

The company returned to private ownership when it was acquired in a leveraged buyout led by Forstmann Little & Company in 1984. After being privately held for several decades, Topps offered stock to the public for the first time in 1972 with the assistance of investment banking firm White, Weld & Co. In 1994, the headquarters would move to One Whitehall Street in Manhattan. Corporate offices remained at 254 36th Street in New York, a location in the Brooklyn waterfront district by the Gowanus Expressway.

The entire company originally operated out of Brooklyn, but production facilities were moved to a plant in Duryea, Pennsylvania in 1965. It later incorporated under New York law in 1947. The company began its existence as Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., a partnership between the four Shorin brothers. Topps then added baseball cards as a product, which quickly 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. Topps's most successful early product was Bazooka bubblegum, which was packaged with a small comic on the wrapper. At the time, chewing gum was still a relative novelty sold in individual pieces. The chosen field was the manufacture of chewing gum, selected after going into the produce business was considered and rejected.

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 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. (American Leaf Tobacco should not be confused with the American Tobacco Company, which monopolized US-grown tobacco during this period.).

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. .

It is best known as a leading producer of baseball cards and other sports-related trading cards. The Topps Company, Inc. NASDAQ: TOPP is a publicly traded company based in New York City that manufactures candy and collectibles. New York: Warner Books. Topps Baseball Cards: The complete picture collection, a 40 year history.

Slocum, Frank & Red Foley (1990). ISBN 0-312-32222-4. Martin's Press. New York: St.

The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics. Schwarz, Alan (2004). Chicago Reader, 25 June 2004. "Culture Jamming for the Swingset Set".

Schwartz, Ben. 1953). 904 (E.D.N.Y. Topps Chewing Gum Co., 112 F.Supp.

v. Haelan Laboratories, Inc. 1953). Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., 202 F.2d 866 (2d Cir.

v. Haelan Laboratories, Inc. 1981). Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., 658 F.2d 139 (3d Cir.

v. Fleer Corp. 1980). Pa.

485 (E.D. Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., 501 F.Supp. v. Fleer Corp.

Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., 103 F.Supp. v. Bowman Gum, Inc.