Kip Young was a founding owner and executive of Topps Chewing Gum Inc., most famous for producing iconic baseball cards that captivated children and collectors alike for decades. As Topps established itself as the dominant brand in the baseball card industry from the late 1940s through the 1960s, Young played an important role in the company’s success and helped popularize the modern baseball card.
Topps was founded in 1938 by four Brooklyn candy businessmen, including Herman “H.R.” Grant, as a way to package their popular chewing gum with prizes and novelties inside in order to drive sales. In the early 1940s, Topps began experimenting with including baseball cards inside gum packages. It wasn’t until after World War II that Topps realized the incredible potential and widespread appeal of trading and collecting baseball cards.
In 1948, Kip Young joined Topps with big plans to expand beyond just including baseball cards as prizes and instead make them the focal point and main collectible item inside gum packs. Young helped pioneer the modern concept of specialized baseball cards designed specifically for young collectors to swap, trade, and build complete sets. This differed from earlier baseball cards included loosely inside gum that were more promotional in nature for the players and teams.
Under Young’s guidance, Topps debuted its first true dedicated baseball card set in 1951 with 524 individual cards featuring that year’s major leaguers. Each card boasted colorful artwork and vital statistics on the front with biographical factoids on the reverse side, giving kids appealing new information to pore over about their favorite ballplayers. The cards were now the primary incentive to buy Topps gum, not just random prizes inside, a business strategy shift largely credited to Kip Young.
The 1951 Topps set was a massive success, igniting a wave of new young collectors and setting the standard blueprint for baseball cards that remains to this day. In the following years, Topps issued brand new multi-hundred card sets annually that included the latest rookie stars as well as memorable oddball cards highlighting unique events and achievements. Thanks largely to Young’s foresight and marketing innovations, Topps became completely synonymous with baseball cards for a new generation of children.
Kip Young’s crowning achievement at Topps was masterminding the company’s legendary 1969 set featuring rookie cards of future Hall of Famers Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, Bud Harrelson, and Johnny Bench. Sporting flashy new action photography and a novel die-cut design, the ’69 set further cemented Topps as the preeminent name in baseball cards. Several of the rookie cards from this coveted set such as Seaver and Ryan would go on to become among the most valuable ever produced.
Young remained with Topps through the 1960s, helping expand their brand globally and secure licenses with other professional sports leagues like football, basketball, and hockey. He introduced several pioneering printing techniques to Topps cards over the years as well, such as the famous “bubblegum back” seen on many 1970s issues that added extra visual aesthetic and protected fragile cardboard. Young also negotiated myriad television and advertising partnerships that spread awareness of Topps cards even further.
By the 1970s, Kip Young had taken on more of an advisory role with Topps after nearly 25 years of service. During his tenure, he played an indelible part in shaping the baseball card collecting culture enjoyed today by millions. Young’s foresight to make cards the focal point of packs helped turn Topps into a multi-million dollar publicly traded corporation. Many regard him as the individual most responsible for popularizing baseball cards on a mass level and introducing innovating marketing ideas far ahead of any competitors.
Nowadays, vintage Kip Young-era Topps cards remain iconic collector’s items highly sought after, especially rookie cards of all-time greats from the 1950s and 1960s. Prices for top graded examples of cards like the iconic Mickey Mantle continue climbing into the six-figure range. While Topps still reigns as the most recognizable brand, several other manufacturers have entered the lucrative baseball card market as well over the decades. The company’s DNA remains defined by the groundbreaking concepts and strategies introduced under Young’s pioneering leadership in the post-war boom years. The founding father of the modern baseball card industry left an indelible impact that ensured their future as a beloved American pop culture tradition.
In summary, Kip Young was the visionary Topps executive who took the company’s baseball cards from loose prize incentives to become the primary collectible item eagerly chased after by millions of new young fans. Under his tenure from the late 1940s through the 1960s, Topps dominated the card industry and set blueprint standards still followed today through innovative marketing, iconic card designs, and partnerships. Young played a monumental role in popularizing baseball cards on a mass scale, helping turn Topps into a pop culture institution and ensuring the long-term viability of the collectible card market. The iconic Kip Young era cards remain highly prized by collectors and embody the post-war Golden Age he helped pioneer.
