Card of the Day - 2024-04-30

Topps Orange Sticker Star Wars
Topps [trade : gum : USA] "Star Wars" stickers, fifth series (1977)

After our original card of the day for the week, here we actually have a card of George Lucas adjusting of a character called Greedo. 

In total there are fifty-five stickers in this, the original Topps Star Wars set. They can be confusing to new collectors, not only because you can get them with either one or two asterisks on the front (and nobody seems to know why), but because they come in very different styles that seem to have no bearing on each other : 

Stickers 1 to 11 form the first group, and they were enclosed in Series One packets, one sticker in each, along with a stick of bubble gum, and some of the blue bordered cards that were numbered from 1 to 66. Stickers 1 to 10 have a head and shoulders portrait of one of the stars, though curiously sticker 5 is titled "See-Threepio" rather than C-3P0 and sticker 6 is "Artoo-Detoo" not R2-D2.  All these stickers have a thick coloured line separating them from a dark background with stars and planets - though card 3, of Han Solo, has only two small stars on the background. The coloured line follows the outline of the person or character shown, and in the middle of this is a thin white line where the sticker can be lifted up and extracted. Stickers 1 to 4 have a green outline, 5 to 7 are reddish orange, and 8 to 10 are yellowy orange. Sticker 11 alone is totally different though, being a square picture of a battle in outer space, with rounded corners, and the yellow outline follows this shape. In addition the outside of the border is plain black. Even more excitingly, it is the first action scene from the movie, rather than a portrait of a character.

Stickers 12 to 22 were included in the Series Two packets, again one sticker per pack, inserted with a selection of the red bordered cards that were numbered 67 to 132. Strangely, after the action scene that closed the last batch, stickers 12 to 16 return to the original style of being portraits, and also with the thick coloured line separating them from a dark background with stars and planets - though the line on these stickers is all in red, matching that used on the cards. However it must be noted that numbers 12 (Han and Chewbacca) and 14 (A Tusken Raider) are waist length portraits, not head and shoulders - and that sticker 15 again repeats the "See-Threepio" error spelling. Stickers 17 to 22 then follow the same style as that errant number 11, having a square, red, picture frame with rounded corners and a scene inside it, and outside the frame being just a plain black background, with no planets or stars. However the first and last two alone are action scenes - the middle two show portraits, sticker 19 being of Chewbacca, and sticker 20 being of R2-D2 and  C-3PO

The rest of the stickers have an entirely different look, being framed like a clip of film, in different colours. 

Stickers 23 to 33 had black film cell borders, and they were issued in the Series Three packets, with a selection of the yellow bordered cards numbered 133 to 198, one sticker, and a stick of bubble gum

Stickers 34 to 44 had red film cell borders, and they were issued in the Series Four packets, with a selection of the green bordered cards numbered 199 to 264, one sticker, and a stick of bubble gum

Stickers 45 to 55 had orange film cell borders, matching the orange bordered cards numbered 265 to 330 that formed Series Five. The packets contained a selection of cards, one sticker, and a stick of bubble gum. This group was advertised on the box as having "New Cantina Scenes", but more of a selling point ought to have been that it contained actual scenes of the filming. Our sticker was quite a prize, being George Lucas, though he was not named on the card. He also appears on sticker 55 with some diners at the Cantina. but there are also scenes of technicians with C-3P0, and Chewbacca in the make up department. 

Sadly none of these stickers have text on the reverse, and in time it may even be forgotten that they show Star Wars at all. I realise the back was but a carrier for the sticker, to be discarded once the picture was affixed elsewhere, but it does seem a shame that they were not utilised to bring us more information.

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