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1967-Leaf(now Donruss)

72 cards in the set

The originals were put out for a brief period of time in 1967. Rumors abound that they were pulled due to a licensing problem and I have never seen an 'official answer.' They would seem to have had a limited release and a regional one also, mainly in the midwest. The cards are black and white and captions, pictures and backs are not just sometimes incorrect, but downright funny. I would love to hear how they came about with some of the things they wrote. 

I've heard a lot of different ways on how to tell the difference between the reprints. The best way (correct me if I am wrong) is the originals have a sandwich look...if you look at them from the side, they are layered white, gray, white. They are also, according to an article in CCPC, slightly smaller....measuring 2 3/8 by 3 7/16 inches. Now, we got into reprints...a touchy issue at best! There are two basic kinds.... 

• The European set...this set is not 'marked' as a reprint. 
• A set with a copyright of 1981 that identifies itself as a reprint.

8/10 UPDATE!!! Better late then never I always say. I was recently approached by RIchard Arnold, who while working cloesely with Gene Roddenberry years and the merchandising division for many, had a front seat for the Euro set *find*.
Dan Kremmar and his wife approached him in the mid-90's with the cards he reported to have found in a warehouse.   According to him, these are also from 1967, but were never released in the European market as planned.

According to Richard, "He sent me a sample set to examine, which he told me I could keep, saying they were worth something like $1500 to $2000. I immediately shot off a letter to him, on my Star Trek stationery, telling him that the cards were NOT an heretofore unknown version of the original set, but were in fact a modern reprint, and not one that had been authorized by the studio (I worked closely with Paramount's Merchandising and Licensing Division at the time). There was no doubt in my mind that someone was trying to pass these off as originals, when they so obviously weren't (I had a couple of original sets myself).

A few weeks later I got a call from someone in the M & L offices, asking me where I got off writing a letter of authenticity for Dan and his wife. I asked what they were talking about, and went over to their offices to see. Sure enough, Dan had taken my letterhead, my signature and some of the wording of my original letter to him and had fabricated a letter of authenticity from me, stating that his cards were, indeed, a rare, heretofore unknown European edition of the 1967 Leaf cards! It was Dan and his wife who were printing up the cards (it turned out that her family in Holland owned a printing company), and that they were hoping to enrich themselves passing these sets off as real and selling them for a bundle.

Paramount's attorneys then sent him a Cease and Desist and demanded that he immediately stop printing up any more sets, and to get rid of the sets that they'd already printed, but that it had to be made clear that these were reprints and not original 1960s sets. Dan continued to dance around the edge of legality and eventually he and his wife moved back to Holland to get away from Paramount's lawyers." 

(Side note: an ad from Kremmer states the Europen sets are  the only 'legal' set as it is controlled by Paramount, which is an interesting way of avoiding the real issues noted by Richard above. Paramount basically gave their permission to let him sell the sets to 'liquidate his stock and go out of business with this particular item. The spokesman further stated 'the material is not official Star Trek stock, but was done in an effort to make him go away.'" Richard Arnold reports that the only official set is the original 1967 set and that it was distributed in the US and Canada.


This is the text that came with the Euro set (Thanks, Jim): 

Differences between the three sets: (anybody have any to add??) 

• Original has a layered look: white/gray/white when viewed from the side.
• The US reprint set has the back printed in B&W and now a second set which has a light pink tone to the back.
• The European set and the US set have a red border around the text and the picture on the back has a red, almost maroon tint to it. 
• The US reprint has a 1981 copyright and says reprint.
• The Leaf and the Reprint are the same size. The European cards are slightly smaller.
• The image on the European cards are cropped, slightly less of the image (around the edges) is present.
• The images and text are much clearer on the US Leaf set than the others. 
• The Leaf set has more of a gloss finish compared to the European set that has a satin type finish and the Reprint set that is like the European set. 

88 cards and 22 stickers.
It has been noted that the ratios of cards to stickers is such that there is not an equal number of card sets to sticker sets, with the sticker set being the lesser of the two. This set occasionally gets called the Captains log set, due to the fact that that is the title of the back side of the card.  Some of the cards even carry a form of free advertising: "Be sure to watch for the new full-length motion picture." Since these were packed with bubble gum and in wax packs, there  are many cards with stains. I also had one collector tell me:. "I've also seen many stickers with front damage that looks like someone ran a perforating machine lightly across the face, diagonally. Sorta looks like a packaging machine process would have done that, rather than the actual manufacturing process, itself. " (Thanks, Vince) 

One reader noticed that cards had either one * or two ** on the back of the card like this: * c 1976 TOPPS CHEWING GUM. INC PRTD. IN USA. He discovered this possible explanation:

One * represented sheet "A" and two ** represented sheet "B". Both were printed at the same time and later separated. It is possible to put together a complete set of either although one is no more valuable or difficult to obtain than the other given enough singles to search through. (Thanks, Gary!)

sell sheet?!

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