Straight from a press release from Mile High:

The Mile High 1968 Topps Plaks Find

November 18, 2008 From the perspective of a standard-issue company set collector, 1968 was not a great year for The Topps Company. More PSA 10s have surfaced from the lackluster 1968 Topps Baseball set, for example, than from every other Topps Baseball issue of the entire 1960s combined. Frankly, they're just not that tough, and toughness is the defining characteristic of a sustainable collectible. But don't disparage the Topps gang for taking it too easy in 1968.

That year, true to the zeitgeist of the times, Topps set into motion a wide-ranging series of experiments unlike anything they'd ever attempted before, with production ranging from Deckle Edge Proofs to Color Player Posters, from 3-Dimentional Tests to Topps Discs, to game cards, tip books, and stickers. Just as other American industries responded to the rampant turmoil of 1968 with an unprecedented level of "countercultural" productions, it was clearly a creative time at Topps.

Among the most experimental Topps test issues of 1968 were the "All Star Baseball Plaks." Virtually unknown to most collectors today, Topps Plaks are bronze-colored plastic busts of two dozen stars of the late '60s issued in three-player sprues, like model airplane parts, along with one of two checklists and two sticks of bubblegum in a ten-cent wax pack. The checklist cards feature photos of the 24 players presumed to have been included in the set, and they are far easier to locate today than the actual Plaks. In fact, so scarce are the plastic busts that no one has yet been able to confirm the existence of all 24 checklisted players. Until now.

Acting on a phone call from a couple outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania, Brian Drent, founder and President of Mile High Card Company, recently traveled to The Topps Company's former hometown to examine what he'd been told was a pile of plastic baseball parts produced sometime in the late '60s. The owner's mother had worked at the Topps factory for a number of years and would occasionally treat the neighborhood kids to free candy and miscut cards. She also had permission to take home any of the failed test issues, as she did with an armful of Topps Plaks wax packs.

She quickly learned, however, what Topps management had already concluded, that what kids wanted most was cards and candy, that you couldn't really flip a plastic bust, and that they had no negotiable street value. So she put them in a bucket on a shelf in her garage where they sat for the next forty years.

Mile High Card Company is now pleased to announce a public offering of what is arguable the most significant Topps find since Alan Rosen's discovery of 6,000 1952 Topps high number in 1986, which included 75 Mickey Mantles. What separates Drent's Plaks from Rosen's find, however, is a matter of numbers. Whereas Rosen needed a few boxes to haul away his treasure, Drent swears he could have stuffed the Plaks, every last one of them, into the admittedly spacious confines of his winter coat pockets. Several players, in fact, are represented by as few as just four examples, all of which may be the only four to exist.

The Mile High Plak find is significant for a number of reasons, but primarily because it helps to clear up several questions concerning the checklist. From the 24 players slated for production, no collector with whom we've spoken has ever seen a single example of Aaron, Drysdale, Mays, Peters, or Frank Robinson, and it is our belief that they were simply never produced. As far as we can tell, every player in the set can be found in two separate three-player sprues, save for Pete Rose, who only appears in one sprue arrangement, and another five players-Davis, Hunter, Killebrew, Longborg, and Wynn-who all appear on three different sprues. We believe that these five players, for whatever reason, took the place of the notorious five whose existence, after weeks of telephone calls to the hobby's most prolific collectors, we still cannot confirm.

The checklist to the 1968 Topps "All Star Baseball Plaks" test issue is therefore more likely complete at (19):

1. Max Alvis
 2. Dean Chance
 3. Jim Fregosi
 4. Frank Howard
 5. Jim Hunter
 6. Al Kaline
 7. Harmon Killebrew
 8. Jim Longborg
 9.Mickey Mantle
10. Carl Yastrzemski
11. Richie Allen
12. Orlando Cepeda
13. Robert Clemente
14. Tommy Davis
15. Tim McCarver
16. Ron Santo
17. Rusty Staub
18. Pete Rose
19. Jim Wynn

Since acquiring the Plaks, the staff at Mile High has been diligently scouring every major auction catalog in our research library and has been unable to locate a single record of a 1968 Topps Plaks sale. We've also spoken with numerous collectors, two of whom identified themselves as experts on this scarce issue. Together, we determined that the only known examples to come to market within the last decade occurred earlier in 2008 when Kit Young Cards auctioned off (8) common single players on eBay in separate lots, averaging $1000 per sale. Testing the market, Mile High also released (7) singles on eBay in late October of this year, and the results were the same. In short, we believe the Topps Plaks to be the second or third scarcest, non-proof, Topps test issue ever produced, behind only to the 1961 Topps Dice Game and, debatedly, the 1967 Topps Stand-Ups, which, in an uncanny way, are quite similar to the Plaks.

One final note of interest that potential collectors should bear in mind concerns one of the key issues from the set, Mickey Mantle. Upon sorting our small find and attempting to understand the mysterious absence of the five aforementioned players, we discovered that, while the bust for each player is consistent in shape and size, there exist two distinct Mantle variations. The first displays a slanted, interlocking "NY" on Mick's cap, as opposed to a perfectly square logo on the second. Mick's lips, nose and ear are also of noticeably larger proportions on the first, and the placement of his right eye and the width of his collar also vary to a degree well outside the bounds of manufacturing error. No doubt, they came from distinct molds. So, while a very good question to ask an advanced Topps collector may be: do you own a Mantle Plak? - a better question would now be: do you own, or have you ever even seen, a Mantle Plak variation, or more precisely, the "Big Nose" variation.                         

The 1968 Topps Plaks Mickey Mantle "Big Nose" variation, left shows considerable enough variation to assume that it came from a distinct mold before Topps decided to scrap the project. Confirming the scarcity of this test issue, such variation suggests that the Topps gang had yet to finalize the design before terminating the project.

Below is a list of Mile High's 1968 Topps Plaks available for sale, in both single player form, as well as in three-player sprues.

Single Player Form
Max Alvis $750
Dean Chance $750
Jim Fregosi $1000
Frank Howard $850
Jim Hunter $1500
Al Kaline $1500
Harmon Killebrew $1500
Jim Longborg $850
Mickey Mantle $6250
Carl Yastrzemski $2500
Richie Allen $850
Orlando Cepeda $1350
Roberto Clemente $1500
Tommy Davis $750
Tim McCarver $850
Ron Santo $1000
Rusty Staub $1000
Pete Rose $2500
JimWynn $750

Three Player Sprues
Yaz, Killebrew, Clemente $8500
Killebrew, Longborg, Davis $3000
Mantle, Hunter, Longborh (Big Nose) $15,000
Allen, Fregosi, Mantle (Small Nose) $15,000
Wynn, Clemente, Santo $6500
Killebrew, Cepeda, Howard $3800
Alvis, Chance, McCarver $2000
Santo, McCarver, Staub $2300
Hunter, Wynn, Kaline $3800
Hunter, Rose, Kaline $6000
Davis, Wynn, Allen $2000

eBay's controversial paypal-only payment system has kicked in, along with some other changes and it seems to have collectors calling for someone to challenge the auction giant. While there is a grace period, we are no longer able to pay with or accept money orders, checks, etc. Imagine if your local grocery store did this.

It seems like almost every day, I read several new threads about people's dissatisfaction with eBay. Whether it's the paypal thing, or the new feedback system, which allows buyers to give sellers a negative feedback, but doesn't allow sellers to give buyers a negative feedback, or even the freezing of funds in your paypal account if your user rating drops below 4.3 on a five-point scale.

Collectors continue to become more angry with each new major "improvement" announced, although it's so difficult to just pick up and leave. When you still need to sell, it's tough to go to a site with significantly less eyes and traffic. When you want to buy something, especially something that is tougher to find, it's nearly impossible to not scour the largest selection on the internet. We'll see if another auction site can come along in the next year to give them some competition.

I am coming off my week-long suspension from blogging after posting that nasty eBay auction and I'm going straight to the Luke Walton story. We've all read the reports about a woman being arrested for stalking the Lakers forward and I'm sure some of us have envisioned some blonde, SoCal hottie following the Lukester to the beach during the entire offseason.

Well, that may have been true, but I sincerely hope not. Have you seen her? Walton must have been scared to death during all of this mess. Thanks for a site called http://bittenandbound.com, we can now share in Walton's misery and view her mugshot.

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As you may know, I'm a major Lamar Odom fan and I'm not happy with how Phil Jackson has gone into the pre-season determined to mess with him. First, he said Odom might come off the bench this year in favor of Trevor Ariza. Now, he's trying him out at point guard and ripped his performance in the first game pretty badly. If you aren't familiar with Odom, he's 6"10', handles the ball like a point guard, finished seventh in the NBA last year in rebounding and is one of the most unselfish, team players in the league. He's actually more point guard minded than anyone on the Lakers roster and I like this experiment, but it's not fair to rip on him that badly after one pre-season game. How many players in the league can play power forward one year and then point the next?

It didn't take long for Topps and Upper Deck to come up with Sarah Palin cards. They had issued most of the notable candidates in products already, but since Palin come out of nowhere somewhat, she wasn't featured yet. Well, we didn't have to wait long.

Palin will have two cards in future Topps products with one picturing her as she appears today and the other picturing her as an Alaskan Beauty Queen. The Beauty Queen single will be in Topps Update & Highlights, which hits the second week of Oct. and will have a limited print run.

Upper Deck will add to its Presidential Predictors insert with a pair of illustrated cards, featuring Palin (PP-15) and Joseph Biden (PP-16). They will be available in SP Authentic Baseball, which hits this week. Biden is depicted as longtime Washington Senator's pitcher Walter Johnson, while Palin is shown atop a dogsled and sporting a tiara.



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Also, I will briefly share this crazy eBay item I found with the help of PSA's forum. The item has been pulled by now, but luckily I did a screen grab of it. It has the title: "Husband left me and his Griffey RC..." The description adds that her husband left her, but forgot to take his sports card collection so she is selling it. The most bizarre part is the photo she includes with the auction listing. A picture tells a 1,000 words, so I'll just post the screen grab. I've read the auction a few times and still have no idea what she's selling.

I was 11 years old the last time the Brewers made the playoffs and though I can't say I've been a faithful fan through those years, the fact that they are in the playoffs and start today at 2:07 central time is big. Most of my co-workers are taking half days so they can watch every minute. I'll through lunch and leave early so I can catch the end of it.

I did stumble across a website today that was quite disturbing. I think the URL says is all: www.peeyourpantsforthebrewers.com. Yes, it's a site with fans pledging to pee their pants if the Brewers made the playoffs. It has 7,200+ names pledged to do this. And yes, it has some video.

While I hate to give attention to the site, it's just so disturbing and, ok, funny, to ignore. I can't help but think of the phrase "Act like you've been there before" though as I see the list of fans pledging to pee themselves if/when the Brewers make the playoffs.