1967 Topps 6th Series
 

So, when I began to work on a 1967 set earlier this year, I knew the 7th series was going to kick my butt (and my wallet), but the 6th series?

I get that cards generally get increasingly harder to find as you move up series to series, culminating in the high series.

But, looking on line so many 6th series commons (not exactly in MT condition, either) are priced more than many 7th series common DPs.

What's odd is that the stars (Palmer, Marichal, Killebrew etc) don't seem to carry proportionate premiums...in other words if commons are often listed between 10-20, the stars can be had for 30-50 in nice shape. With the pricing on the commons, I would have expected the stars to be around 80-100, especially a 2nd year Palmer.

So the question I have is this - is this just more silliness in this season of vintage silliness, or does the 6th series carry genuine production/distribution/scarcity issues like the 7th?

Off memory, series 6 is 458-533. Adding the checklist DP, 77 cards, 7 unique rows. So there should be SP'd rows to fit the Topps sheet size. Tony Perez and Tony Perez alone used to be listed in the Standard Catalogs (mine is the Vintage only, 5th edition) as a SP; he may or may not be but he is obviously not the only one; unless a card was pulled from production there should always be at least 10 others just as tough.

Tolan and Helms seem to be more popular than I had expected in set building. I too found the HOF's in this series pretty easy and cheap. McCovey, Palmer, Killebrew, Marichal, all were pretty easy.

I would imagine the 6th series is tougher than the 1st, but I know of no accepted explanation of it being anywhere on par with the difficulty of the 7th series.

What bugs me is sellers who don't know the numbers and just generally list cards with 500 or up on the back as a "high number." Uh, no, high numbers start at #534.

I assume there are no known images of 6th series sheets out there? I checked my small but growing uncut sheet folder and I have sample images from 1-5 and 7 (some grabbed from these boards).

I checked my archive and do not have an image of the sheet either. Not that that means much :D

I'm telling ya Mark, just take a deep breath and go on and buy that Shaw.

https://www.deanscards.com/search?s=1967+470

I like that the grade 6 Shaw is half the price of his grade 5 Shaw.

And the "grade" 4 and 4.5 are more than the 6 as well!

I actually found a half dozen 6th series commons - including Shaw - last night at Mantlerulz on eBay for decent prices. Grabbed them for $40 shipped, which tells you they were priced a lot nicer than most.

Also -- these cards were interestingly released around the country. The first sale I made at the 1984 NSCC was to a St. Louis dealer who was always short on those cards. Apparently they were not released in St. Louis but the 7th series was so there were always a lot of the high series in St. Louis back in the day. Makes sense as the Cardinals would win the WS that season.

So I would wager the production of the 6th series was not as high as you might think for a semi-high series. At one point I also heard that Tim McCarver #475 was always an instant sell-out

I remember the 6th series cards were always popular in St Louis because of low distribution there. These were all shipped to Southern California. I was surprised to find out that these carried any premium at all. We had more 6th series cards in 1967 (and no 7th) than any other series. I think the issue was more irregular distribution than lack of production.

1967 Topps 6th series
 

I am not aware of any uncut 6th series material, and the dearth of miscut and wrong back material has made me leery of attempting to reconstruct the sheet. The series does indeed have 77 cards, so the likelihood is that there are 33 cards printed 4x each and 33 cards printed 3x each (i.e., the SPs).

I know that Peterson, 495, is above Fisher, 533 at one point on the sheet, and that Shaw, 470 has a WB of Dodgers team (503).

The image I have seen for the 5th series sheet suggests that the no ear version of the checklist 6 was issued in series 5 while the ear version was probably issued in series 6 printing.

I collect sheets but have not seen a 6th series sheet

Nothing to add to the discussion on 6th series pricing, but here's a card I sold a few months ago.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...7d3f0ec5_c.jpg[/url]

There are two series sheets from the 60’s that Kevvyg1026 and I can’t even commence to reconstruct, 1966 Topps 6th Series and 1967 Topps 6th Series because of the lack of partial sheets, wrong backs, and miscuts. 1966 Topps 4th Series, 1969 Topps 3rd Series, and 1969 Topps 7th Series aren’t far behind.

IIRC correctly (and I may not be) some of the distro issues may have been related to Southland Corp. I believe Buck Barker also mentions somewhere the St. Louis distro issues but I cannot find my SCD tearsheets that mention this presently.

As a lifelong St. Louisan who collected cards back in '67 and continues collecting to this day, I can absolutely verify the scarcity of '67T series 6 and the abundance of series 7 in St. Louis. We were buying 7th series packs like crazy at the time hoping to find those elusive cards from the penultimate series. Ended up with plenty of Brooks Robinsons and those two rookie cards people seem to like, but never even saw a McCarver until I bought the entire 6th series from Bruce Yeko at Wholesale Cards in the mid-70's. Set me back a whopping $5.95 (same price by the way as the Fleer Ted Williams set w/o #68, from the same order).

I have been advertising in local papers for decades, and purchased many collections, but have never once come across any series 6 cards. I still find series 7 cards occasionally, which certainly makes the situation a lot more tolerable.

Was doing some shopping at Dean's Cards tonight - Yes; it is very possible to find nice conditioned singles at reasonable (compared to eBay and elsewhere) prices. But I digress.

Anyway - I noticed he listed #476, Tony Perez, as an SP, but that he didn't show any other cards from the 6th series as an SP (obviously, for there to have been 1 SP, there would need to be at least 10 others).

I sent a note asking the basis for listing the Perez as an SP and whether they have seen any 6th series sheets.

Will let everyone know what I hear back.

Don't hold your breath, they still have these listed as SP's when we proved they aren't from the 1966 7th Series thread, Jerry Adair, Willie Davis, Willie McCovey, Jim Northrup, Dave Roberts, and Billy Williams.

Dean's Cards has 42 cards from the 1967 Topps 5th Series listed as Double Prints from #373 to #457. The 1967 Topps 5th Series has 88 cards, there are no SP's or DP's from an 88 card Series, they are each printed three times over two Slits. I wouldn't put much stock in their knowledge of SP's and DP's.

Perez has been listed as an SP practically since the day the set was issued. Not sure of the origin or if its even a tough card relative to the rest of the series.

It’s difficult to tell whether star cards are SP’s from 77 card Series based on quantities, if a couple of commons were known that are on the same row as the 1967 Tony Perez we could get an idea but there are so few miscuts and no known partial sheets of the 1967 Topps 6th Series that it’s about impossible to tell.

The POP report suggests which of the commons might be the SP's. I don't trust it either for evaluating stars here like Perez. Palmer/Killebrew/McCovey have more. Marichal has about the same, Mazeroski significantly less.

Evidence that Perez is a SP seems to be non-existent at this point in time.

The Battersbox has the #476 Perez listed as SP, too.

With 77 cards, there are 33 cards printed 4 times and 44 cards printed 3 times. There were plenty of 6th series cards printed where it doesn't make a difference if a card is in the shorter run. For set collectors, these cards are available. Only when the series is in short supply like in 1966 and 1967 7th series, does being shorter supply make a difference. Mickey Mantle is a DP in 1966 Topps, it doesn't make that card cheap.

There are definitely price differences on some 6th series 1967 cards that are a bit unusual. It’s not super tough but it’s not like series 1 of 1966. Nobody ever implied a DP Mantle will be cheap at all. Some of us like to figure out the actual print patterns for historical knowledge, it’s not all about pricing.

And it's not even the most famous Mantle DP!

Well, I received my Dean's shipment from the other night - still no answer to my question, though. I won't hold my breath.

I noticed that Dean’s Cards and Trading Card Data Base (TCDB) share many of the same SP’s and DP’s, for example they both have 1967 Topps 1 The Champs, 30 Al Kaline, 100 Frank Robinson as DP’s (which may be correct, I don’t know), 42 cards in the 1967 5th Series as DP’s (wrong!), and 473 Tony Perez as a SP (who knows?). I would guess that Dean’s ‘borrowed’ the information from TCDB. I deleted all of the wrong denotations of DP from the 1967 Topps 5th Series on TCDB and I got a message from Administration asking why I did that, I explained to them that 88 card Series don’t have any SP’s or DP’s and that each card is printed three times over a 264 card sheet consisting of two 132 card Slits. They haven’t replied back to me or changed the cards back to DP’s, as of yet anyway.

UPDATE 6/13-I am re-running my survey. The 6/9 results from eBay look like they were all FUBAR and I have no idea why and I have deleted them.

Go here for the corrected count: https://www.net54baseball.com/showpo...3&postcount=59

Interesting.

All of the 15 cards I still need from the 6th series and can either not find or can't find at a decent price are on the lower half of this list, as are some of the cards I gave up and paid more than I wanted for.

Clemens was a surprising pain for me when I was building this series.

I pulled out my 1967 6th series checklist which has the cards I got from buying packs at the corner store as a 10 year old. I was missing 19 cards and they are all over the list from Dave, some top, some bottom and some middle.

Mike

Attachment 520487

Attachment 520488

I haven't matched to PSA pops, maybe someone who has more time can take a peek.

1967 topps 6th series
 

As was observed for the 1966 highs, sometimes a high demand card like Perez is misidentified as an SP, even though it is not an SP.

Since the series has 77 cards, there is no doubt that there are SPs in this series. But as Cliff pointed out in an earlier post, reconstructing the 6th series sheet is just about impossible unless more miscut or uncut material pops up. Here are a couple of interesting cards I've seen.

Attachment 520529

Attachment 520530

I can add this one:

This onw sold on Ebay a few days ago.

Mike

Attachment 520543


Attachment 520542

I found these on eBay, a Perez miscut with an unknown Rookies or Team card under it AND with a wrong back(!) of Jim Palmer, a miscut Jim Palmer with 473 Jose Santiago to his left, 518 Menke with 532 Hicks to his right, 486 Twins Rookies with 490 Cloninger to it's right, 507 Orioles Rookies with 467 O'Toole to it's right, 478 Humphreys with 512 Schoendienst to his right, 464 Coombs with 494 Rigney to his right, 523 Merritt with 473 Santiago to his right, 508 Hall with 528 Petrocelli to his right, 521 Bird Bombers with 533 Jack Fisher to it's right, 504 Martinez with 510 Mazeroski to his right.

Interesting. We now know 3 cards in one of the rows because of Cliff's images - MERRITT/SANTIAGO/PALMER.

For what it's worth:

In Dave's eBay count, Palmer is far and away #1 with 53. Santiago and Merritt are barely in the upper half with 16 and 15 respectively (not accounting for ties).

I checked the PSA Pop Report, and Palmer leads the pack with more than 1300 for clear reasons. Merritt is in the upper 1/4 with 307, and Santiago is in the lower half with 239.

I did a quick check of COMC, and all 3 are in the upper third with between 8 and 15 of each.

For the most part, the other pairs Cliff posted are all fairly close in counts on the eBay list.

Has the time come to start trying to put print sheets together, like you guys did with the 1966 high numbers?

I wish, we’re nowhere close on this one to start reconstructing the sheet yet.

I found a few more at Dean's Cards, 461 Bob Miller is above 521 Bird Bombers, 478 Bob Humphreys is above 523 Jim Merritt, 512 Red Schoendienst is above 473 Jose Santiago, 527 Dennis Ribant is above a Checklist on the right edge, 497 Ron Campbell is above a Checklist on the right edge.

1967 Series 6
 

Found this

Attachment 520625

1967 series 6
 

And a thought: In 1967, at least for series 1 through 5, the current series checklist and the upcoming checklist were on opposite sides of the slit.

Based upon the 1 7th series sheet we have and the reconstruction of what the other slit probably looked like which was done in another thread, series 7 probably has a row count of 4x4x4x4x3x3x2.

Since the 6th series has the same number of unique rows, is it reasonable to presume that the row count would be the same, or is even that far too much to hope for?

You stole my thunder on that one. Last night I went through the other 76 cards and I am 99% sure it is the Braves Team card under McCovey. I also found one of those severe back miscuts on COMC, 520 Max Alvis is to the right of 524 Felix Mantilla. On a side note, Mantilla never did play a game for the Cubs, he blew out an Achilles tendon in spring training in 1967 and then tried to make the team again in spring training in 1968 but was cut.

521 Bird Bombers is above 479 Gary Bell.

488 Gerry Arrigo is to the right of 481 Leo Durocher, definitely a SP row.

And last but not least, 513 Marcelino Lopez is above 469 Len Gabrielson.

I can't contribute what Cliff has but here's the one I have in my set. #529 Wagner is above #518 Menke.

Fantastic! I can add Wagner to one of the four mini blocks I have going on for the 1967 6th Series Sheet. This is the biggest one so far.

These are the other combos I currently have consisting of three or more cards. I will have to do them one at a time to avoid confusion.

The third one.

The fourth one.

Here is the first one again since this thread flipped to page 2.

I'm re-running the survey, something was not right with eBay on 6/9 and I'm getting vastly different results today. Will post when complete.

I found three new ones to add, 471 Rene Lachemann is to the left of 516 Giants Team card (only two cards in Series 6 have a five year stat line, Lachemann and Fritz Peterson, the lines match up with Lachemann), 532 Jim Hicks is to the left of 517 Fred Talbot (six cards in the Series have a 12 year stat line, the lines match up with Hicks and not the other five), and 458 Lee Thomas is to the right of 525 Ron Hunt (I matched the out of register photo on the right edge of the Ron Hunt card to the left edge of a Lee Thomas card).

Nice work on Lachemann. I’m digging and trying to find some more that might help.

Every series of Topps cards still unknown should be doable to map via this method and some patience.

1967 Topps series 6
 

I suppose you are right. However, Cliff & I have been working for over a year on 1966 Series 5 and there are 4-5 card placements yet to be identified and this is with a bunch of uncut and miscut material available.

For 1966 series 3, a supposedly easy series because there are no SPs, we still have several cards that require adjacent cards to be located. And both the 7th series from 1969 and the 6th series from 1965 are proving extremely problematic to reconstruct because there is so little uncut or miscut material.

Here's a corrected card count from yesterday off eBay. No idea what was going on there last week but the results were completely off. This may be more helpful: H=HOF, C=Cardinals, R=Red Sox, Y=Yankees. At a guess, one row may be "super printed". 76 subjects plus a 6th series checklist (not counted) on there.

CARD COUNT PLAYER DES
475 195 PALMER H
464 106 COOMBS
496 105 McFARLANE
503 101 DODGERS TEAM
494 94 RIGNEY
500 92 MARICHAL H
480 91 McCOVEY H
532 91 HICKS
504 89 MARTINEZ
476 84 PEREZ H
459 80 SENATORS ROOKIES
483 80 LANDIS
491 72 BOWENS
510 70 MAZEROSKI H
511 70 WERT
519 61 DAVIDSON
499 60 INDIANS ROOKIES
517 60 TALBOT Y
527 60 RIBANT
525 58 HUNT
530 57 F. ALOU
458 55 THOMAS
524 54 MANTILLA
523 52 MERRITT
533 52 FISHER
460 50 KILLEBREW H
518 50 MENKE
520 48 ALVIS
479 46 BELL
509 45 KING
526 43 TIGERS ROOKIES
507 42 ORIOLES ROOKIES
487 41 REYNOLDS
465 39 HORTON
506 39 BURGESS
469 38 GABRIELSON
528 38 PETROCELLI R
521 37 BIRD BOMBERS
473 36 SANTIAGO R
485 34 McCARVER C
501 34 ZIMMERMAN
516 34 GIANTS TEAM
513 31 LOPEZ
466 30 WINE
512 30 SCHOENDIENST C H
514 30 WERHAS
515 30 CAMPANERIS
492 29 PIRATES TEAM
498 29 DIERKER
531 28 7TH CHECKLIST
463 27 HILL ACES
467 26 O'TOOLE
481 26 DUROCHER H
495 26 PETERSON Y
529 26 WAGNER
470 25 SHAW
482 25 MONBOUQUETTE
505 25 HELMS
461 24 MILLER
474 24 TOLAN C
493 24 ORTEGA
502 24 GRIFFITH
484 23 ADAIR
508 23 HALL
462 22 BARTON
468 22 HOUK Y
472 22 PIRATES ROOKIES
477 22 BRAVES TEAM
497 22 CAMPBELL
471 21 LACHEMANN
478 21 HUMPHREYS
489 19 CLEMENS
490 18 CLONINGER
522 17 STEPHENSON
488 16 ARRIGO
486 15 TWINS ROOKIES
TOTAL 3,505

AVERAGE 46

I had to update the list, the 6/9 count on eBay was not correct. I used the same search term yesterday and got 3.5x more hits overall. The difference is drastic for some cards.

Palmer is far and away the most numerous card in the Series but the two cards next to it in the same row are Merritt and Santiago, Merritt is roughly in the DP 4x range but Santiago is almost in the SP 3x range, going by quantities.

As noted, a few days ago PSA pops were 307 for Merritt and 239 for Santiago. There must be some other factor at work, such as centering or sheet position in general that plays out in this as the ratio is pretty similar; maybe the fuglier Santiago's, as an example, don't get listed as they are really bad.

It seems like the Coombs and Rigney should be in a "super print" row, while Palmer as a HOF skews some numbers in the Merritt/Santiago row but that Palmer is really popular to grade for some reason and I don't think there is a true super-print row in the semi's based on the numbers I show below. I still suspect the 67 highs had a production issue that really changed the planned row counts (which ended up issued as: 1x5, 1x4, 3x5) but the semi's were not similarly affected.

If you take the HOF'ers out for a minute, the top 11 counts are (with eBay to the left, PSA pops to the right):

Coombs 106 - 199
McFarlane 105 - 295
Dodgers Team 101 - 523
Rigney 94 - 230
Hicks 91 - 245
Martinez 89 - 276
Senators Rookies 80 - 260
Landis 80 - 303
Bowens 72 - 259
Wert 70 - 253
Davidson 61 - 237

The Dodgers Team probably skews due to Koufax being in the team picture. But Hicks (91) is in a row with Menke (60) and Talbot (50), whose PSA pops are: 245, 253 and 279 respectively. That is a major eBay disparity on Hicks, like Palmer's. Maybe there's commons that are so lowly literally nobody buys them?

Conversely, the bottom 11 counts are:

Twins Rookies 15 - 235
Arrigo 16 - 227
Stephenson 17 - 265
Cloninger 18-235
Clemens 19 - 227
Humphreys 21 - 225
Lachemann 21 - 194
Campbell 22 - 194
Braves Team 22 -251
Pirates Rookies 22 - 196
Houk 22-317


33 x 4 and 44 x 3 is probably the row setup for the semi's then.

590. Slit-Talker
Someone who is well-schooled in the ways that vintage card print sheets were organized, laid out with SP’s and DP’s, and ultimately cut.

See also: Chompromised - cards that due to the detrimental positions they occupied on the print sheets, are much more susceptible to being found very off-centered, short side-to-side, or generally miscut due to the sheet cutting proces

Who among us has not chompromised a slit?!

So here's where I get confused - once we know a card to the right or left of another card, it's set in stone...no matter where the row is or how many times it appears on either slit, it's the same arrangement.

With the arrangement of multiple rows, which we know differs from slit to slit, can we be certain that, in this case, Menke was ever under Wagner and over Coombs on the same slit? It could have been, but all we know for sure is that at least on one slit he was under Wagner, and at least on one he was over Coombs, no?

Know what I mean?

You’re right, 77 card Series have rows in different spots and a couple will have different rows above or below them. I have found two different cards above Checklists in this Series, Dennis Ribant and Ron Campbell, KevvyG1026 and I have come to the conclusion that both are above the Marichal 6th Series card and are both on the right edge. That means two different rows are above the row with the Marichal 6th Series Checklist over the two Slits. 88 and 66 card Series are very simple, 77 and 110 card Series are more complicated with some rows in different places.

To establish the 11 card rows, we need pretty much every card miscut.

To establish the vertical order of the rows on top of each other, if we know the 11 card rows, we only need a few miscuts to show which rows appeared over which other rows, because the rows never change, even though it won't be the same on both half sheets.

We'll probably never know which half sheet is which without a sheet discovery, but this should be doable like the 66 highs with enough patience.

Unfortunately this series appears to have been well-cut by Topps standards. I am striking out finding more. I have not been able to turn up even a 2 card panel from this series digging through auction archives. I sent this link to the Topps collectors I know who don't post online and got nothing there either. Still digging...

It would be really cool to be able to correctly ID the relative print quantities of every vintage Topps card eventually.

Here are the two cards known in the Series to be above a Checklist, the Ribant is no doubt above the Marichal 6th Series Checklist and the Campbell appears to also be above the Marichal 6th Series Checklist.

Mark, this is all I have for you. I have had these since '67, so I could have pulled these two from the same pack. I checked all my backs but they are no help.

497 Campbell
523 Merritt

This is the last one I have until new miscuts show up, the card beside Ron Campbell has only one line around the career stat line, Ortega is the only card in the Series missing one of the two lines around the career stat line.

Hmmm, if there wasn't a back miscut with proof that Santiago is to the right of Merritt I would have taken these as proof Campbell is to the right of Merritt. Apparently the Merritt and the Campbell were cut from the same exact sheet and were cut identically but are not side by side on the sheet. I think the Campbell miscut does proves that it is on the right edge of a SP row.

Kevvyg1026 found this one, a Menke miscut with a 12 year stat line card to his left. There are five cards with 12 year stat lines left after Hicks is eliminated, Wine, McCarver, and McFarlane don't work because the lines don't match up, Clemens is eliminated because he is in a SP row, so it is Jack Fisher who is a perfect match. That means these two blocks can be connected, and Kevvyg1026 also figured out that Miller, Bird Bombers, and Gary Bell are leading header cards in those rows because there are wavy edge cuts found on the left side of all three cards.

Kevvyg1026 and I have figured out the lead cards (headers) for each of the seven rows in the 1967 6th Series, in other words the first card in each row. They are Bob Miller, Bird Bombers, Gary Bell, 7th Series Checklist, Tony Perez, Pirates Rookie Stars (Gelnar-Spriggs), Felix Mantilla. That is #472 Pirates Rookie Stars under Perez in the miscut and the name of Tony Perez is barely visible in the miscut of the #531 Checklist. As far as the exact order and which four rows are SP's (3x) and which three rows are DP's (4x) is still to be determined.

Kevvy1026 and I have figured out four of the seven right edge cards of the 1967 6th Series, in other words the last card on each row. The first miscut proves Jim Palmer is a right edge card, the other Palmer miscut barely has DENNIS from Dennis Ribant visible. The four known right edge cards are Jim Palmer, Dennis Ribant, Ron Campbell, 6th Series Checklist (Marichal), the other three are still to be determined.

Good stuff!

I ran the 67 highs through the PSA pop database and got an interesting result. At one point it seemed like the series had a 5x row, a 4x row with the other five being 3x but I'm about 90% certain it's just the same 4x3,3x4 array as the semi's, although the Pinson row does seem a bit high in overall pops vs the others.

I'm working on a blog post about it but thought I'd mention it here. I'm thinking eBay pops are not robust enough to use for most series in the standard card size era.

Personally, I would not use eBay pops. The quantity of cards currently sitting unsold doesn’t mean a whole lot and tends to be all over the map. PSA pops of commons tend to be much closer to reality. I’ve had much better luck predicting SP’s there.

After these latest forays, I would agree.

Tribe aces below Durocher

Nice find.

I found a better example of the Braves Team card under McCovey, I wasn't 100% sure on the first one.