∀ A quite interesting (and supremely rare) Topps salesman's sample recently came across my transom, courtesy of Friend o'the Archive Larry Sarver. While most samples are related to Topps Baseball cards, and ran through 1967, with the occasional Football piece mixed in, non-sports samples are almost never seen. In this case, Topps was hawking one of the best sets they ever produced: 1955's Rails & Sails! True salesman's samples had only just premiered with the 1952 Baseball set, so this is an early one indeed and Topps was still tweaking the formula here: Isn't that a thing of beauty?! The reverse is just as intriguing, with a pitch clearly aimed at the father's of the time: Two cards numbers are obscured by the sticker (which I will get to in a second), they are, from the top #37 and #73. However, the blurb drawing attention to the first four color backs for a Topps set really caught my eye. Topps was constantly trying to improve and sharpen the lo...
