This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 9/15/2017
In the mid 1960s, Topps cranked out several different Beatles sets to take advantage of the "British Invasion" of John, Paul, George and Ringo. One such set never made it past the testing stage, the 1964 Beatles Plaks collection. These oversized pasteboards had pre-scored cardboard pieces that, when removed, formed "hooks" and "slots" so that the plaks could be connected together like rungs of a latter, with encouragement on the display box to "hook 'em up!" Since it never received national distribution, certain examples from the 55 card set are extremely difficult to find and acquiring even a wrapper or display box is a near impossibility. But our consignor, a hobby executive at a rival confectionery company, secured this box over a half century ago with 26 of the 36 packs (the others were removed for research purposes) and the original display box, which is in rough condition with the top of the box detached. The packs are not sealed, and although we cannot confirm it, this may have been intentional as we have seen other test issues in the past with wrappers very similar to this. As a result, Steve Hart of Baseball Card Exchange cannot authenticate them. The contents of each do not seem to have been disturbed, but with no other known packs to use as a basis of comparison, we can only speculate. In any event, it's an amazing offering of an ultra-rare Beatles test issue.