1960 Post Grape Nut Flakes “Sports Star” Full Box Complete Set of 9

Several generations of young Americans have spent much of their childhood in preoccupation with the backs of cereal boxes. The box-back surface has been employed extensively by manufacturers for decades, as a means to delight and captivate young audiences with pictures, offers, and premiums. The 1960 debut of Post Grape-Nuts Flakes was the means for the introduction of one of the concept's standards, the glorious Post "Sports Stars." This supremely rare complete set of 9 Post Grape-Nuts Flakes "Sports Stars” is in complete box form. When this set was first sold publicly in 1991 by Sotheby's as part of the famed Copeland Collection it was billed as the only known complete set of full boxes. To date we are still unaware of another. Each box features a spectacular card covering a 7" by 8-3/4" area of its back featuring one of the era's cream of the crop athletes, including Mickey Mantle, Don Drysdale, Harmon Killebrew, Al Kaline, Eddie Mathews, Bob Pettit, Bob Cousy, Johnny Unitas and Frank Gifford. These fantastic survivors, every one of which has traveled the full circuit from production to distribution to the consumer, are dramatic and unique examples of the creativity and beauty that could be expressed on the back of an otherwise simple cereal box. Considering their nature, and the paths they must have traveled since departing the grocery store shelves, one has to marvel at their mere existence, and certainly their extraordinary NM-MT condition. Boxes measure 11 1/2" by 9 1/2".