Tony Stewart

In addition to his 3 wins in the Indy Racing League, Stewart has also won 2 International Race of Champions events. 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. During the 2005 season, Stewart won a total of $13,578,168, including $6,173,633 for winning the championshiop, making this the largest season total in NASCAR history. 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). He was also praised by fellow competitors, notably NASCAR veteran Mark Martin who proclaimed Stewart as the greatest NASCAR driver of this generation. Pokémon cards would accomplish the same feat for a few years starting in 1999. After winning his second championship, Stewart because only the third active driver in NASCAR to win multiple championships, along with Jeff Gordon and Terry Labonte. 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.

He is also one of the youngest drivers to win multiple championships. Although baseball cards have been Topps's most consistently profitable item, certain fads have occasionally produced spikes in popularity for non-sports items. On November 20, Stewart won his second NASCAR Nextel Cup Championship, joining Jeff Gordon as the only active drivers to have won multiple championships. Kennedy. He mentioned in a press release from his sponsor, "I plan to keep winning races and helping to drive down the cost of home improvement for The Home Depot customers.". Topps has also covered celebrities and other cultural phenomena ranging from The Beatles to the life story of John F. After his Allstate victory, Home Depot presented fans who presented the advertisement of his Allstate 400 win with a discount on purchasing bricks. Examples of the latter include The Waltons, The Mod Squad, Emergency!, Welcome Back Kotter, Mork and Mindy, and many others.

After his second full climb of the fence in Loudon, NH, they ran a discount on ladders and fencing at the stores with a campaign named, "Hey Tony, we've got ladders," where anyone who presented the advertisement in national newspapers in their stores earned the discount. Topps has also issued trading card series for movies, including the Star Wars and Star Trek series, and a number of popular television programs. It also led to sponsor Home Depot cashing on Stewart's success with some promotions reminiscent of Stewart's Eldora Speedway drivers. 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. Tony was quoted as saying "I'm too fat for this," and recently purchased $17,000 worth of exercise equipment to remedy the problem. These artistic talents carried over into more general efforts at parody as well. Stewart has, following his second win of the season, begun a tradition of climbing the fence separating the fans from the racetrack after each victory, a practice adopted from two-time Indy 500 winner Hélio Castroneves . The 1962 Mars Attacks cards, sketched by Wood and Powell and painted by Norman Saunders, later inspired a Tim Burton movie.

In an apparently unrelated incident, Kyle Busch was also fined $10,000 and placed on identical probation for ramming Anthony Lazzaro's car after the Sirius Satellite Radio race, also at Watkins Glen. Drawing on their previous work, these artists were adept at things like mixing humor and horror, as with the Funny Monsters cards in 1959. Stewart was also placed on probation until December 31st. Some artists might work only on a project or two; others were regulars, like Art Spiegelman, who worked for Topps for over twenty years. Stewart was driving a Busch series car owned by Kevin Harvick at the time. They also brought in others from the underground comix movement, including Bill Griffith and Kim Deitch. On August 16th Stewart was fined $5000 for hitting the car of another driver, Brian Vickers, after the completion of the Busch Series Zippo 200 at Watkins Glen International. 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.

He won five races, including the Allstate 400 at The Brickyard, a race that Stewart said he would give up his championship to win, and took with it the #1 seed headed towards NASCAR's Chase for the Nextel Cup 10-race playoff. 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. 2005 was one of Stewart's most successful years in the Nextel Cup. Many Topps artists came from the world of comics and continued to work in that field as well. In addition to placing fourth, the trio placed third in the Daytona Prototype class. 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. With 15 minutes left in the race, and with Stewart at the wheel, one of the rear wheels came off, finally ending their run. For example, the Space Race prompted a set of "Space Cards" in 1958.

The result does not show the trio's performance, however: they had dominated the race until the last two hours, when the suspension cracked. As its sports products relied more on photography, Topps redirected its artistic efforts toward editorial trading cards on themes inspired by popular culture. in a Boss Motorsports Chevrolet to take fourth place in the 24 Hours of Daytona sports car race. 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. In 2004, Stewart teamed with Englishman Andy Wallace and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. One particular focus has been lollipops, such as Ring Pops. He also still makes the occasional cameo on dirt tracks, appearing regularly at an ARCA race on dirt and at many prominent midget car events, USAC's Turkey Night Grand Prix, and the indoor Chili Bowl Midget Nationals. In recent years, Topps has added more candy items without gum.

Located in Rossburg, Ohio, Eldora is a half-mile dirt track known to many as "Auto Racing's Showcase Since 1954." Stewart began racing there in 1991 and continues racing in special events alongside other Nextel Cup drivers and dirt track legends. 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. In November of 2004, Stewart became the owner of one of the most legendary short-tracks in America, Eldora Speedway. For quite a few years, the company stuck within familiar confines, and virtually all of these products involved gum in some way. His current driver lineup in USAC consists of Josh Wise in the midget, sprint, and Silver Crown cars and Jay Drake in the sprint car and Silver Crown Series. Even though baseball cards became the company's primary focus during this period, Topps still developed a variety of candy items. Yeley in 2003 and Jay Drake in 2004. In 1953, Topps began selling smaller penny pieces with the Bazooka Joe comic strip on the wrapper as an added attraction.

He also collected owner titles in USAC's National Sprint Car Series with J.J. Unlike the gum sold with baseball cards, it was of better quality and capable of selling on its own merit. Yeley, and in 2004 with Dave Steele. Bazooka was introduced in 1947 as a bar of gum that sold for five cents. Stewart has won USAC car owner titles in the Silver Crown division in 2002 and 2003 with J.J. The longest-lived Topps product line remains Bazooka bubblegum, small pieces of gum in patriotic red, white, and blue packaging. In addition to his Nextel Cup gig, Stewart, nicknamed "The Columbus Comet" (for his present hometown of Columbus, Indiana), "The Rushville Rocket" and "Smoke", is also the owner of a World of Outlaws sprint car driven by Danny "The Dude" Lasoski. Its best-selling title was The X-Files, based on the Fox TV show.

He only won twice that season, but led more laps than he'd done the previous year and was highly competitive in the final races of the year. 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. Driving a Chevrolet instead of his previous Pontiac ride (Gibbs switched), Tony actually had his worst Cup season, but it was still good enough for a 7th place finish in points. 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. As defending champion, Stewart managed to have a relatively incident-free 2003. 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. At the end of the year, Stewart held off a charging Mark Martin to win his first Winston Cup championship. Other gum and candy products followed.

Stewart went on to win the race immediately after being disciplined, and went on a tear in the final races, finishing consistently in the top five. Originally, Topps was purely a gum company, and its first product was simply called "Topps gum". NASCAR put Stewart on probation for the rest of the season. In a more recent addition to its lineup, Topps began producing cards for soccer in 1996, in partnership with Major League Soccer. The second half of his season was plagued by an altercation he had with a photographer after the Brickyard 400. Topps finally returned to basketball cards in 1992, several years after its competitors. He won twice early in the season though, but was only 7th at the halfway point of the season. It started again in 1969 and continued until 1982, then abandoned the market for another decade.

Tony started 2002 even more inauspiciously than he'd started his previous season, as his Daytona 500 lasted just two laps due to a blown engine. Topps first sold cards for basketball in 1957, but stopped after one season. Tony, understandably, earned a reputation for being NASCAR's bad boy. This ultimately left the sport to Upper Deck, which emerged as the sole licensee when the league resumed play. Stewart was not allowed to practice until wearing one, and only managed to practice after his crew chief intervened. However, anticipating the 2004-05 NHL lockout, Topps allowed its license for hockey to expire after the 2003-04 season. He confronted the same official at the race in Talladega after refusing to wear a mandated head and neck restraint. Topps then acquired the rights to use the O-Pee-Chee name on sports cards after that company was sold to Nestlé.

This resulted in another fine and longer probation. 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. At the same race, he also got into an incident with a reporter, kicking away a tape recorder. 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. He got into further trouble at Daytona, when he confronted a Winston Cup official after ignoring a black flag. Topps did not make a serious effort to take on Parkhurst Products, the leading Canadian hockey card manufacturer, for a couple more years. Stewart was fined and placed on probation by NASCAR. at the time (Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, and New York Rangers).

Gordon pulled a "bump and run" on Stewart to gain a better finishing position in a race in Bristol, and it resulted in Stewart retaliating in a post-race incident by spinning Gordon out on pit road. 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. The season was not without controversy though. Topps also makes cards for other major American professional sports. Statistically, he had a worse season than 2000, but he was the runner up to Jeff Gordon for the Cup championship. 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. He recovered to win three more races, and as he'd done before, ran near the front most of the season. 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.

Amazingly, he walked away nearly unscathed. After the AFL-NFL Merger was agreed to, Topps became the only major football card manufacturer beginning in 1968. Tony's 2001 got off to a frightening start, as he was involved in a nasty crash in the Daytona 500 where his car violently flipped over several times. 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 two are still heated rivals to this day, with Gordon always seeming to outlast his competetitor. 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. Stewart made his displeasure towards Gordon known in an obscenity-laden tirade. Fleer produced a set for the AFL in 1960, then featured both leagues for one year before focusing on the AFL again.

The most well known of these came at Watkins Glen, when he and Jeff Gordon tangled and crashed into each other. 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. Tony also began to get some bad press for his on-track incidents. Since then, Topps has sold football cards every season. However, he "slipped" to 6th place in the standings because of a handful of DNFs, and an increase in the number of competitive drivers, among them his teammate Labonte, who won the Cup championship. After buying out Bowman, Topps took over the market the following year. Stewart showed no signs of a sophomore slump in Winston Cup in 2000, as he won six races. 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.

His attempt at "The Double" was mildly successful, as he finished in the top 10 at both races, but he fell 10 miles short of completing all of the miles. In addition to baseball, Topps also produced cards for American football in 1951, which are known as the Magic set. Tony also attempted to race 1,100 miles on Memorial Day, as he attempted to race the Indy 500 during the day and the Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte at night. 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). Not surprisingly, he ran away with the Winston Cup Rookie of the Year award. 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. He finished his first year an unprecedented 4th in points, the highest points finish by a rookie in the modern era (since 1972), and only bested by James Hylton, who finished 2nd as a first-timer in 1966. On rare occasions, Topps issued special cards for players who had either died or had been injured.

He won a pair of pole positions at short tracks, and tied a rookie record with three victories. It involved the clearly-readable obscenity on the bottom of the bat of Orioles infielder Billy Ripken. He only failed to finish a race once, and even then he finished 9th. The most celebrated error in baseball-card history was not printed by Topps, but by competitor Fleer in 1989. Stewart spent most of his rookie season wowing people, as his car was often in the top 10. 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 the 500 itself, Stewart ran near the front until problems with the car relegated him to a midpack finish. 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.

The Intimidator came out on top, but Tony had nonetheless impressed quite a few people with his performance. The prime example of this was the Topps 1964 card for Cardinals' pitcher Ray Sadecki (#147). He showed courage in one of the Gatorade Twin 125 races, when involved in a great battle with Dale Earnhardt for the win. 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. Stewart started his Winston Cup career with a bang, as he qualified his No 20 Home Depot Pontiac in second place in his first Cup race, the Daytona 500. This gives the card a "3-D" look. With that move, Stewart ended his three year career as a full time IRL driver. An interesting type of error is the print separation.

Gibbs had enough confidence in Tony that he was moved into Cup for the 1999 season. These are generally considered "ghost cards". Stewart finished a solid 2nd place in 2 (of 31) starts, ahead of six drivers with more starts, and had an average finish that was comparable to some of the series' top 10 finishers. Another error type is when the back stats are overprinted on the front of the card. He came extremely close to winning his first Busch Series race in Rockingham, but was beaten on a last lap pass by Matt Kenseth. 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. On the Busch side, he finished in the top-five five times in 22 starts. This came about when there was a strong possibility that the San Diego Padres might move to Washington after the 1973 season.

His season was something of a disappointment, especially as he finished last in the Indy 500 because of an engine failure. The 1974 "Washington Nat'l League" cards are considered errors too, but were corrected during the run. In the IRL, he won twice and finished 3rd in the championship. 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 double duty did not affect his performance in either series. 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. Stewart so impressed Gibbs that he was signed to drive the majority of the Busch schedule in 1998 to go along with a full-time IRL schedule. It is possible to find a centered back and off center front.

When Stewart was able to finish, he was in the top 10, and had a 3rd place in Charlotte. Most wrongbacks have the backs off center. This time, he was racing for Joe Gibbs, the former (and current as of 2004) coach of the Washington Redskins who was having a lot of success with driver Bobby Labonte in Winston Cup. This occurs when the sheet is mated with a back which is up side down or reversed. As he had done the previous year, he raced a handful of Busch Series races. Another type of error is the "wrongback." You can find these in just about any year. Despite an average end to his season, finishing 7th, 14th, and 11th, and five DNFs, Stewart did just enough to beat Hamilton for the IRL title. 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).

He became the leading contender for the series' championship after a bad slump knocked points leader Davey Hamilton out of first place. 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. Tony finally got his first career win at Pikes Peak, where he led all but seven laps of a 200 lap race. 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). At that year's Indy 500, Stewart had a good enough car to win his first IRL race, as he led 64 laps, but tailed off near the end of the race and settled for 5th. All the photos were somewhat out of focus, and card number 159 (Yankees Pitcher Hal Reniff) was incorrectly numbered as 139. He failed to finish the first three races of a ten race schedule, but recovered to finish second in Phoenix. 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.

Tony was poised to improve his IRL standing in 1997, but struggled with finishing at times. The Topps 1962 baseball set saw the 'grandaddy' of all error situations. He had more success in a one-time ride in the Craftsman Truck Series, where he finished 10th. The result was that said cards occur in two variations, based on the back color. In nine races, however, he had only a best finish of 16th place. The photographs and information on the cards themselves were not in error. Tony also made a handful of starts in NASCAR's Busch Series that year. Certain cards were printed on two different types of cardstock; one produced a white back, and the other a darker gray.

When he wasn't racing Indy Cars, he raced stock cars. One example of "variations" happened in the 1959 and 1960 Topps baseball sets. In 1995, Stewart became the first driver to win USAC's version of the Triple Crown, earning championships in all three of USAC's major divisions, National Midget, Sprint, and Silver Crown. 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.". Stewart was the USAC rookie of the year in 1991, and was the National Midget series champion in 1994. Topps and other card publishers were not immune to production 'glitches,' and such mistakes gave collectors unusual items to seek for their collections. He raced three-quarter midgets for a handful of years before moving up to the USAC series. 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.

Born in Columbus, Indiana, Stewart grew up racing go karts, highly successfully, winning the world karting championship in 1987. 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. . This primarily involved using various types of cartoons drawn by its stable of artists. Anthony Wayne "Tony" Stewart (born May 20, 1971), is an auto racing driver who has won championships in sprint cars, Indy cars, and stock cars. Before statistics, biographical information, and commentary became the dominant element on the backs of cards, Topps also featured artwork there. 2002 and 2003 Virginia is for Lovers 200 (Richmond). These problems diminished as Topps's selection of photographs gradually improved.

2005 Hershey's Take 5 300 (Daytona). In a few cases, a misidentification meant that the player didn't even appear in the picture. 1999 Exide NASCAR Select Batteries 400 (Richmond), Checker Auto Parts/Dura Lube 500 (Phoenix), Pennzoil 400 presented by Kmart (Homestead). 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. 2000 MBNA Platinum 400 (Dover), Kmart 400 (Michigan), thatlook.com 300 (Loudon), MBNA.com 400 (Dover), NAPA AutoCare 500 (Martinsville), Pennzoil 400 presented by Discount Auto Parts (Homestead). When used for the cards of individual players, some of the early action photography had awkward results. 2001 Pontiac Excitement 400(Richmond), Dodge/Save Mart 350 (Sonoma), Sharpie 500 (Bristol). Since that time, Topps has mixed game photography with posed shots in its sets.

2002 MBNA America 500 (Atlanta), Chevy American Revolution 400 (Richmond), Sirius Satellite Radio at The Glen (Watkins Glen), also won Winston Cup Championship. 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. 2003 Pocono 500 (Pocono), UAW-GM Quality 500 (Charlotte). In the absence of real action photography, Topps still occasionally used artwork to depict action on a handful of cards. 2004 Tropicana 400 presented by Meijer (Chicago), Sirius at The Glen (Watkins Glen). (Cards for 'rookies' were also prepared by airbrushing over their minor-league uniforms in photos.). 2005 Dodge/Save Mart 350 (Sonoma), Pepsi 400 (Daytona), New England 300 (Loudon), Allstate 400 at The Brickyard (Indianapolis), Sirius at The Glen (Watkins Glen), also won Nextel Cup Championship. 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.

One way was to show the player without any team cap. Topps used various ways to cope with players changing teams before the company could issue a card of them in their new uniform. Photographs did not appear in sharp focus and natural color until 1962. If using such a prop, the player might pose in a position as if he were in the act of batting, pitching, or fielding.

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. The close-up head shots of some individual players were reused each year. For 1956, the close-up tinted photo was placed against a tinted full-background 'game-action' photo of the player. The same basic format was used in 1955, this time with the full-length photo also hand-tinted.

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 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. 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. 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.

Over the next few years, Topps alternated between this format and merely showing the past season plus career totals. 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. Bowman promptly imitated this by putting statistics on its own cards where it had previously only had biographical information. the 1951 season for cards in the 1952 set) and another with the player's lifetime totals.

The cards originally had one line for statistics from the most recent year (i.e. It also had some pedagogical benefit by encouraging youngsters to take an interest in the underlying math. 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. While baseball cards themselves had been around for years, including statistics was a relative novelty that fascinated many collectors.

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. One of the features that contributed significantly to Topps's success beginning with the 1952 set was providing player statistics. Some of these were the company's own innovations, while some were ideas borrowed from others that Topps helped popularize. In addition to establishing a standard size, Topps developed various design elements that are considered typical of baseball cards.

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. 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. This undertaking was not very successful, however, and Topps unloaded the site on Naxcom in January 2006. 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.

Topps also acquired ThePit.com, a startup company that earlier in 2000 had launched a site for online stock-market style card trading. 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. The quantity sold depends on how many people offer to buy, but is limited to a certain maximum. These cards are sold exclusively online through individual "IPOs" in which the card is offered for a week at the IPO price.

Working in partnership with eBay, Topps launched a new brand of sports cards called etopps in December 2000. 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. 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.