I agree
Ted,
I absolutely agree with your comments. This sheet gives us real insight into the printing for series 2. I've also heard that in the 1980s(?) someone brought in 3/4th of the high numbers on 3 sheets. And while I've never seen these sheets (anyone out there have a picture?), I've seen two different sources show the lay out of the cards and what that tells us is the the high numbers were all double printed (on a full sheet) ... except for the Mantle, Jackie and Thomson which were all quadruaple printed. (Hard to imagine how expensive those three cards would be if they weren't!). This also mirrors Al Rosen's find. The scarcity in this series really does seem to relate to what got distributed versus what got printed.
The other series are still a bit of a mystery though as they do not evenly divide into 100 as they are 80 cards to a series and 60 cards to a series.
The Stanky/Law sheet (which has a red back) that I showed in my earlier pictures does give us some additional insight here though ... as that combines print series 1 and 2. This proves (?) Topps printed some cards for a later series on the earlier series sheet if they had the extra room. Another sheet or two crossing series would be useful to further prove this for the later series (so please show them if you got them!).
The black backs for series 1 is also still a mystery. We know they didn't print later series with black backs, so presumably they just kept printing Series 1 cards until they fill the sheets ... but how did they ensure equal distribution?
Also another mystery still ... if this is the printing practice ... why is #20 Loes a short print when nothing else from that run is? Why is #295 Cavaretta a shorter print than the others around it?
Actually I can still come up with other questions (like why does the Roe sheet I pictured have two rows of Roe ... in both ascending and descending order ... when all of the other sheets we see don't have any repeats and are either ascending or descending?).
In any event, thanks to John for showing a very important sheet! This provides one more clue that I didn't have before.
Cheers,
Patrick
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