1973 Topps variations

[robsbessette]

Does anyone have any insight on the manager variations? Some are obvious with the natural background and orange backgrounds. Or the weird crops without ears. But there are others that just say pale vs orange.

With so many color printing inconsistencies in the set I find it quite difficult to tell the difference on some.

[JollyElm]

Some of the 'pale' variations are very similar to the 'natural' backgrounds except they don't have trees, etc., appearing. Case in point, card #252 (ebay pic grabs), orange (top) vs. pale…

1973252.jpg

[robsbessette]

Yeah, I see what you mean. They're kind of like 62 green tints. Hard to tell unless they're against each other. I know they're recognized variations, but they seem like a bit of a stretch to me in some cases. This set has so many cards that take on different tints from how they were printed. Like look at this Red, the photo of him is as differently tinted as the orange manager backgrounds. I feel like whenever I work on upgrading this set I find tons of cards with different tints.

[parkerj33]

Topps started by printing these inset pictures with natural backgrounds. on many of them you can see trees, and sky behind the mini photos....then after a few printings they realized that they didn't look too clear with the extra noise in the background, so they doctored the photos to be a solid orange/pinkish color. That way, the coach picture would show up better. They made mistakes on a few of them with skimming off ears, etc when they placed the orange mask on the photo...so a handful have a third variation with the cropping fixed.

These are all mostly easy to find, and are quite easy to decipher when holding in hand

here's one nicked from ebay where poor lew burdette lost his right ear to the cropper.

.

[parkerj33]

here's the precrop with ear = aka brown and first version:

[parkerj33]

here's a better discussion from Bob...RIP.

http://boblemke.blogspot.com/2010/01...2-1973-as.html