Has anyone seen this before? (1962 Topps Print Error)

[kemdawg]

Hello all,

I picked up these two, 1962 Topps cards that are missing the wood border around both of them. The Carl Willey is also missing the background and his uniform. The backs are perfectly fine. Has anyone seen this before? Is there any type of premium on cards like this?

[toppcat]

No but those are super cool, especially the Willey!

[swarmee]

My first thoughts would be sun fading or altered with a cleaning solution...

[JollyElm]

Yeah, what info can you give us at home about these cards? Do the white areas have any sign of ink being there at some point? And get your nose in there and tell us if there are any signs/odors of chemicals at play, yes?

[ALR-bishop]

Whatever they are they are neat. Willey is spooky enough on his regular card but he is downright terrifying on that one

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by swarmee

My first thoughts would be sun fading or altered with a cleaning solution...

I agree on being altered. Pretty easy to see when you know what to look for. There is a reason that the color is fuzzy looking around the edges.

Here is the picture of a Maddux I removed the ink off the bottom of. Depending on the chemical on whether it leaves a smell or not.

EDIT: There is no price premium, they are garbage.

[kemdawg]

I ran the smell test and they smell just like any other card from the 1960's - nothing unusual there. I also looked at them closely under a loupe. The Willey shows the print dots on his head but there is no evidence of any other printing around the card. The interesting thing to note is that the face and hair of Willey are completely intact. I actually don't think this is a chemical thing as the level of detail someone would have had to put in to make this as clean is it is would have been daunting. For example, I can literally see some of the wisps of his hair and then empty white space in between under the loupe. The Brosnan card is a bit different as you can see as it does have more coloring and background on it. Lastly, the surface is relatively clean, meaning it looks like any other surface from a 1962 issue (in GD to VG condition granted). My instinct is that this is simply a printing defect but I've just never seen this before on any issue ever.

[kemdawg]

One more thing...these cards came from a collection I purchased where the owner collected when he was a kid. They were mixed in with many other '62's but these were the only two that had this defect. The overall collection was from the 50's and 60's and I came across no other altered cards.

[irv]

Originally Posted by kemdawg

I ran the smell test and they smell just like any other card from the 1960's - nothing unusual there. I also looked at them closely under a loupe. The Willey shows the print dots on his head but there is no evidence of any other printing around the card. The interesting thing to note is that the face and hair of Willey are completely intact. I actually don't think this is a chemical thing as the level of detail someone would have had to put in to make this as clean is it is would have been daunting. For example, I can literally see some of the wisps of his hair and then empty white space in between under the loupe. The Brosnan card is a bit different as you can see as it does have more coloring and background on it. Lastly, the surface is relatively clean, meaning it looks like any other surface from a 1962 issue (in GD to VG condition granted). My instinct is that this is simply a printing defect but I've just never seen this before on any issue ever.

I agree, that would be near impossible to accomplish using a chemical.