1983 was a transition year for baseball cards as the dominant brands of the 1970s were losing popularity and opening the door for new players in the market. For collectors of 1983 cards, it was a year defined by new brands emerging while longtime favorites wound down production. Chief among the new brands was TCMA, which launched with ambitious plans to compete against industry leaders Topps and Donruss.
TCMA stood for Topps Competitor Marketed Attraction and the company was established as a joint venture between Spalding Sports Worldwide and Consorcio Unido Internacional, a Mexican marketing firm. TCMA intended to directly challenge Topps, who had long held a virtual monopoly on the baseball card market in the United States. Topps’ stranglehold began weakening in the late 1970s as the emergence of Donruss and Fleer starting eating into their market share. This created an opening for an aggressive new competitor like TCMA to make a major impact.
TCMA hired veteran baseball card designer and manager Bill Mastro to lead their new baseball card division. Mastro had previously worked at Topps for over 25 years and was one of the leading creative minds behind some of Topps’ most popular and innovative baseball card sets of the 60s and 70s. His extensive experience in the industry gave TCMA valuable expertise as they looked to quickly establish themselves. Mastro oversaw TCMA’s entire baseball card production process, from photography and design to distribution and sales.
While Topps and Donruss focused on photographer action shots for their cards, TCMA opted for a unique designed focused on headshots of players against solid color backgrounds. These portraits were shot vertically to give the cards a tall and narrow look compared to the usual horizontal layout. The headshots were intended to clearly show off each player’s face which some felt helped make individual players more recognizable compared to typical action shots where faces could be smaller or obscured.
The card designs themselves featured thick colored borders surrounding the headshot portraits along with a white box below for statistics and information. Player names appeared above the photos in bold yellow letters. On the reverse, statistics were listed along with career highlights. One innovative element was that rookie cards were specially noted as “Rookie Star” on the front in addition to any special rookie logo on the back. Each card included the classic ring of photo corners as well.
Distribution of TCMA cards followed the model popularized by Topps. Like most other major brands at the time, they focused on selling packs via mass merchandisers like drugstores and supermarkets rather than specialized hobby shops. A typical wax pack cost $0.25 and contained 5 cards with one of the five sometimes being a special ‘star’ card of a top MLB player. Overall printing numbers for individual players and sets varied but were generally in line with what competitors produced.
In addition to full size trading cards, TCMA also released smaller 2-1/8 inch soda fountain and stickers cards that were popular impulse purchase items. These smaller format cards usually featured the same player photography and design elements as the traditional larger cards in packs but had a wide array of promotions, redemption offers, and oddball parallels. Some examples included award stamps, premium offerings, and mail-in opportunities for specialty subsets.
While the 1983 set featured all major league teams and players as you would expect, there were also a number of special insert sets included. Most notably were 40th Anniversary cards commemorating Hall of Famers, All-Star subsets, Ledgendary Leaguers featuring stars from previous decades not active in 1983, and cards highlighting top minor leaguers and NFL football players. TCMA hoped these specialty inserts would add excitement and collectors value, differentiating their product from competitors.
On the player collection side, rookie cards in the 1983 TCMA set included future stars like Reggie Jackson in his final season, Andre Dawson in his first full season with the Expos, and Cubs shortstop Shawon Dunston. Other notable rookies included Ozzie Smith, Dave Stieb, and Rick Sutcliffe. Star veterans featured included Nolan Ryan, Mike Schmidt, and George Brett among many others. Overall the coverage and photography quality of career MLB players was on par with Topps and Donruss releases that year.
While TCMA debuted with grand ambitions, challenges emerged that hindered their longterm success. Chief among these was distribution problems getting product out to stores on time and in sufficient quantities, leading to short supplies in many areas. Some retailers also resisted stocking yet another baseball card brand competing for shelf space. The new vertical headshot design also received mixed reviews from collectors used to more traditional horizontal action shots.
After only one successful year in 1983, parent company Spalding decided to fold the TCMA brand citing production and distribution issues. Their cards are now regarded as one of the more coveted and collectible debut sets for any brand. It marked the end of TCMA’s brief experiment competing directly against powerhouse Topps and the other major licenses. While they foreshadowed changes eventually bringing more competition, TCMA themselves were not able to successfully establish in the long run. Despite being a short lived brand, their 1983 set remains an important part of baseball card history from that transitional period.
