[con40]

The stock Topps used from 1952 through 1991 is called C1S clay-coated chipboard. It's cheap cardboard stock made from unbleached "chips" of wood pulp (the garbage screened away from higher quality stock). This chipboard is then skinned with a thin clay-coated (giving it good ink holdout) white stock. The two stocks are adhered to make the final sheet.

If this Elster card truly has a chipboard back, chipboard border, and white clay coat under the printed area, the only way it could have been made was by removing the white stock in the border area.

There is a chemical process to achieve this look. Kevin Saucier knew how to do it. What I don't know is if it can be done in such a precise manner.

On the other hand, if this is a gold or tan color in the border area, then it would indicate that the card was printed with a fifth color (a solid tan ink) to fill in the border areas. If so, it's possible that Tops could have masked up a 132-card full sheet (or 66-card half sheet) and printed all the borders on each card. When trimmed, this is what the final cards would look like. If that's the case, there should be more of these out there. Even on a test basis, Topps would have printed at least 100-200 sheets.