1964T Mantle "no period." Variation or not?
 

The following is a copy of a new blog posting. Thus, there's no need to click below to get further details.

Attachment 24978

A reader -- whose name and contact information I am embarrassed to admit I lost in my jumble of email accounts -- has inquired about a possible variation on the regular-issue (#50) 1964 Topps Mickey Mantle card.

On his card, authenticated by PSA (though not as a variation), there is no period after the "Y" in the team name at the upper-right on back. Typically, of course, a period appears there.

To try to get a feel for this anomaly, I contacted a major dealer in vintage cards, who has since asked that remove his name and findings, which were pretty much in line with my personal opinion of the status of the card in question. I believe the period disappeared as a result of over-inking of the red-orange background and/or deterioration of the printing plate. It is likely that many cards exist with not only this period, but also other punctuation is differing stages of being all there or not there at all. This result is typical of reverse (white on color) printing in that era.

For the present, I'm not going to add this to the checklist for 1964 Topps in the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, but I'm certainly willing to listen to pro-inclusion arguments, and will revisit the subject if it ever appears like the "no period" card is finding acceptance in the marketplace.

I just spent some time looking through eBay and I didn't find a single one. Kit Young has 17 different 1964 Topps Mantles in his eBay store and most of them didn't have back scans so you might want to check with him too and see if he can help.

Personally I almost buy this one. If it was overinked or bleeding ink I'd expect to see more in the way of blured edges or other small punctuation missing. It would be weird for it to be so localized to only affect one tiny area. Not impossible, just weird.

I would like to see more of them to be sure. Mantles are so comonly collected and scrutinized something like that should have turned up before now. If it was a common I wouldn't be surprised.

Steve B

Maybe it's just the scan or my laptop screen, but on the zoomed in area it almost seems like there is an orange print dot right where the other period would be. Again I could just be seeing things, but I guess it's possible that a stray bit of orange got printed over the period.