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Merkle923 · 04-22-2016, 05:05 PM

Funny you should bring this up while I'm on my way back from one of my consulting sessions at Topps.

In the immediate post-monopoly era there were guys, Heaton, Kevin McReynolds, Chili Davis, etc, who held out for more from Topps while signing with Donruss, Fleer or the others. That didn't mean Topps didn't keep trying to photograph them - otherwise they'd have had no images ready for whenever a player like Heaton finally agreed.

Though the problem was amplified by an army of outside manufacturers, it was not new. The Topps-Bowman lawsuits over player contracts seemed to have exceeded in number the size of the average set of the mid-'50s. Other players, like Musial, had exclusive contracts for their image with sporting goods manufacturers, etc (explaining why he didn't appear in a card until 1958). When Fleer first tried to put out MLB cards in the early '60s it put several guys - Marshall Bridges, Jack Reed, Chris Short, Maury Wills, etc - under exclusive contracts. Yet Topps kept shooting these guys in anticipation of their eventual contractual availability.

Then there are a few examples - Tony Horton being the most prominent and frightening one - of players who just didn't want to be on cards. Topps probably took 120 shots of Horton, the last in 1969, and has sold many of them on eBay, even though they never put out a card of him.

04-22-2016, 05:05 PM	#27606
Merkle923 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Aug 2013 Posts: 2,169	Neal Heaton and others Funny you should bring this up while I'm on my way back from one of my consulting sessions at Topps. In the immediate post-monopoly era there were guys, Heaton, Kevin McReynolds, Chili Davis, etc, who held out for more from Topps while signing with Donruss, Fleer or the others. That didn't mean Topps didn't keep trying to photograph them - otherwise they'd have had no images ready for whenever a player like Heaton finally agreed. Though the problem was amplified by an army of outside manufacturers, it was not new. The Topps-Bowman lawsuits over player contracts seemed to have exceeded in number the size of the average set of the mid-'50s. Other players, like Musial, had exclusive contracts for their image with sporting goods manufacturers, etc (explaining why he didn't appear in a card until 1958). When Fleer first tried to put out MLB cards in the early '60s it put several guys - Marshall Bridges, Jack Reed, Chris Short, Maury Wills, etc - under exclusive contracts. Yet Topps kept shooting these guys in anticipation of their eventual contractual availability. Then there are a few examples - Tony Horton being the most prominent and frightening one - of players who just didn't want to be on cards. Topps probably took 120 shots of Horton, the last in 1969, and has sold many of them on eBay, even though they never put out a card of him.