[drcy]

It may have been a practice 'Mickey Mantle' they didn't use.

"Rare unissued text." A burgeoning market.

I assume the sketches and texts were done on larger sheets and Topps cut them down, either during production of the cards or for public sale. Commercial artists rarely do their work on card-sized sheets of paper, thought cutting and pasting was a normal part of production and original artworks. And I've seen larger sheets with multiple baseball card cartoons. Though the single cartoon such as this is the way you usually see them on the market.

The single card color progression proofs were cut down after the fact for public sale.