6th series Topps Sp's 1961-63
 

I've been trying to figure something out for a while. In the beckett guide there is listed sp next to selected cards in the 5th series of 1961 and the 6th series of 1963. Also 1 card, 476 perez in 1967. So here's my question: If the size of the series is a standard 77 and there 's 11 cards per row, doesn't it stand to reason that there are more sp's that want is listed?
Let's take 1963 as an example: There are 5 cards listed as SP in the 6th series. 500 killebrew, 485 long are 2and from the bidding prices 496 (rookies) has to be a short print even though it's not listed. So has anyone seen a 6th series uncut sheet.
My point here is that I think that in the 60's, maybe up until 68, there was uneven production numbers within series.
Again take card 476 perez in 67. How does only 1 card get sp'd ? Only thing I can come with is that there are 2 sheets A and B and the perez in this case was pulled in favor of an added checklist? don't know.
Feedback welcome. Thx BillP

You are correct-for 1957 to sometime in the 90's or much later SP's should generally be in groups of 11 for Topps Baseball. Topps would probably occasionally pull obviously damaged cards on edges and corners in a bad batch but one SP in a series doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Excluding the checklist 77 card series usually had 44 cards printed 3 times (these are the SP’s) and 33 cards printed four times on the 264 card sheet.

John

short prints
 

Short prints should exist for any print run of 77 cards. However, if the print quantity is high, then the short prints may not be that evident unless the print pattern was unusual. Normally series 6 and 7 print runs had fairly low production numbers, which is why these might be noted.

Typical patterns for a 77 card run across a 264 card (24 total rows, 11 columns of cards) sheet:

A) four rows 3x & three rows 4x (so 44 SPs. However, typically the checklist was in one of the four rows, and it had been printed in a prior series, so this leads to 43 SPs). This appears to be done in the Series 5 & 7 of 1965, and perhaps in Series 7 of 1966.

B) four rows 4x each, two rows 3x each, 1 row 2x each (so 11 true SPs). This was done in 1961 series 5 (Skowron, etc.) and perhaps in Series 7 of 1967.

C) five rows 4x each, two rows 2x each (22 SPs). Not sure if Topps ever used this pattern but it would have been easy to use. Print seven rows of unique cards, then five more rows. Repeat for 2nd half sheet.

As I posted in the other thread, dealers from the 1960s know the SP cards. They were selling sets by the series. If you are breaking vending cases which have good distribution, it will be clear if cards are short printed.

Does anyone have visual proof of this format on a 264 card uncut sheet? I’ve never seen it?

1967 highs second sheet array is unconfirmed, 9 rows are unknown still. I've been looking through a lot of old hobby pubs back to the 60's for the origins of the 1966 and 1967 high number SP's and haven't found much going into the 1978-79 publishing era. A lot of series and SP info was developed after the first Beckett-Eckes guide came out in 1979 (after two years of Beckett surveys on set pricing had been published in The Trader Speaks in 1977 and then a year later) and also when Lew Lipset started tracking individual card values around late 1976. It's not always correct either.

The idea that the 4th series in 1952 ended at #252 persisted for years, as did the 1967 Brooks Robinson SP. The idea of the 1967 6th series Perez SP has been around for a while, I think that series is also 77 cards like the highs that years.In addition to Beckett's surveys and Lipset's star card pricing, Card Collectors Co. was selling 5,000 count lots of high numbers too in 1977 (the September TTS had the last big blowout ---see attached ad--but smaller lots of 1,000 persisted into March of 1978.) They had 67's but never 66's in this kind of quantity. A number of these cases and large lots were bought by other dealers. I suspect a lot of SP info came about as these were dispersed into the hobby as they had cases upon cases of low numbers too. The birth of star and high number pricing, etc. was only a couple of years in the past for the most part an the hobby was on a major upswing during 1977-78 (three other non-Beckett guides had also come out by then) so a lot of stuff got looked at more closely around that time but it took several years to somewhat sort it all out.