Unearthing a 1953 Topps Ad, Revisiting Steve Urkel, and More

If only you had a quarter 72 years ago…

I’ve written about a lot of non-sport stuff over the last few weeks, so ol’ J.R. Fickle wanted to shift gears a little and share something baseball-ey and cool. I found this while browsing newspapers.com. It’s an old Topps wax pack ad from June 25, 1953, from the Leader-Telegram in Eau Claire, Wisconsin: 

Here’s the whole ad, for your enjoyment:

Imagine having 20 cents to spend at the neighborhood Ford Hopkins and opting to buy 2,000 matches instead of six wax packs? Which were really advertised as gum…

We often think of cards as just a series of images on eBay — or laid out on tables at shows. I’m not sure we give ourselves a chance to really go back and kind of immerse ourselves in the year 1953 and what it must have been like to walk into a store with packs of these cards just sitting there. 

There’s a book called “Time and Again” that I read years ago where a guy recruited by the government goes back to 1882 by sitting in a room and meditating himself (for lack of a better description, and to avoid spoilers) back in time. It’s a cool book; it isn’t great, but it’s conceptually neat and historically wonderful (lots of images of an unassembled Statue of Liberty just sitting around in parts of NY, stuff like that). This Topps ad made me think of that. Immerse yourself in the ad; go back to 1953, get yourself a chic vibrator (for face, scalp and general massage) and six packs of cards!

The Topps 2025 Series 1 design has been almost universally embraced. Count J.R. Fickle among the fans. Topps has been on a tear recently with design, starting with the 2019 callback to 1982. I loved the 2024 neon. I really loved the 2023 design, which simultaneously reminded me of the 1984 “little picture at the bottom” and the 1988 Big Baseball feel. 

We love ranking things here (and Boss Evan says it’s good for engagement!), so let’s do a quick Power Ranking of Topps designs since 2019:

1. 2019 - Love the overt homage to 1982

2. 2023 - See above

3. 2024 - Super bold and risky, love it so much

4. 2025 - Has a lot of potential and feels fun already

5. 2020 - They did such a good job of picking the perfect photos for this design 

6. 2021 - I like how they low-key connect when you put them next to each other

7. 2022 - Clean and simple design, it just came out in a really great era for design

We all follow The Great Curator here, right? Just in case you aren’t on board yet, he’s been sharing videos of shoppers crushing other shoppers for Pokemon cards. We laugh at them but they’re still making money off this:

the.great.curator

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You know, I want to go back to that “2,000 matches vs. six packs of gum” conundrum for a moment, because 36 cards from the 1953 set might have a lot of busts in there. You could go through the trouble of going alllll the way back in time to buy six packs of cards… and you might end up with $70 worth of modern-day value if things break poorly for you (damn you, Ford Hopkins pack limits!!). Buuuut if you need 2,000 matches as a 12 year-old in the early 50s, you have some kind of need or intent there. So maybe it was a budding chemist who discovered something important later in life, and changed the course of history for the better! J.R. Fickle apologizes for judging without considering all the various paths and nuances of history. Get those matches! You can buy someone else’s Mickey Mantle later in life with your pile of gold. 

Update from a couple weeks ago: we did not buy the $450 Marilyn Monroe box after quickly discovering that the Leaf site used stronger language about the possible hits than what was actually inside. We opted instead to bid on singles (we have yet to win one), but only of select cards: the iconic Seven Year Itch “grate” scene cards, of which there appear to be two — cards 42 and 46 — seem to be the most sought-after and expensive. But there are some other cool ones — card 48 has Monroe in a tub, and there are a couple other “ballerina” pictures that could qualify as “iconic,” as well.

Still, I keep going back to the all-important question as I think about increasing my bid when someone one-ups me: “then what?” I’m never going to sell one of these $11 wins for $100. I could keep it in my collection but it’s not like I was obsessed with Marilyn Monroe and I need to complete a rainbow of her posing with a ukulele. The designs are incredible and should win some kind of award for presentation and color, though. Kudos to Leaf for the look of these. 

Also, this is a weird inflection point for this Marilyn Monroe set — I can’t quite figure out if it’s early and things are still a bargain, or if everything is inflated because of its newness. And this is our collective struggle, right? Especially in the non-sports realm. What could possibly happen to drive up demand of Marilyn Monroe cards? I have no idea, so I stop my bidding at about $11 at each auction and I’ll let the market settle down to me. 

Another update from last week: We passed on the Urkel package, but it led us down a path of “how much is a Steve Urkel rookie worth?” More than you think. 

Rather than get killed for one card that I do think will spike in value with Jaleel White’s resurgence, I opted to buy a full box of 1991 Impel Laffs for a fraction of the price and take my chance at getting one in the wild, while tripping down TGI Friday memory lane.

See you next week.