How hard would this be? 1987 Topps wrong back set

[bbcard1]

I pick up odd ball prints whenever I find them inexpensively and along life's road, I have picked up close to 300 wrong backs/blank backs and blank front of the 1987 Topps set, mostly for a nickel or so each. I am missing most of the stars and key rookies. How expensive/difficult would it be to build the full set? I see them all the time on Ebay, but spending $3 or more per card is more than I would be interested in. Any thoughts/ideas?

[JustinD]

Originally Posted by bbcard1

I pick up odd ball prints whenever I find them inexpensively and along life's road, I have picked up close to 300 wrong backs/blank backs and blank front of the 1987 Topps set, mostly for a nickel or so each. I am missing most of the stars and key rookies. How expensive/difficult would it be to build the full set? I see them all the time on Ebay, but spending $3 or more per card is more than I would be interested in. Any thoughts/ideas?

I honestly would think it would be fairly easy. The issue would be just looking for big lots of these as the shipping would far exceed the cost during the assembly. These should not be more than a dollar and a half unless it's one of maybe 5-7 stars like Canseco or Big Mac who might push a fiver.

I have seen lots of 50-100+ fairly regularly.

For example, I would consider this a tad high but look for these types of auctions - https://www.ebay.com/itm/38480621184...Y&LH_Auction=1

I have done stuff like this before and as a hint and to avoid frustration as all your backs are worthless, penny sleeve them all and sticker or marker the card number on each so you can keep track of progress and organize.

[bnorth]

Most collect them by the player on the front. You can fairly easily put a set together that way. The thing is if you want to get serious there are multiple backs for each front. It depends on the error the printers assistant made when loading the sheets who is on the back.

Picking up full sheets of them used to be easy but I haven't looked in years. I know I have one and another member used to have some also. EDIT: Looked and must have sold the 87 Topps wrongback sheet, still have a 87 Topps blank front sheet.

[JustinD]

As most of them are printers errors by simply sliding the front sheet in first and backwards per layout the error will be most often consistent. The same backs will be in position for an upside down sheet prints this way every time.

If you are a real minutia collector, you can look for the harder error which is not the print reverse of the same sheet, but however the reverse of a completely different sheet run. These are much rarer.

In any way, I would track the collection using front numbers...makes more sense to strangers and displays in a one sided sheet binder much, much better.

[Zach Wheat]

Cool idea. Regarding blank backs, it would probably be best to look for blank back sheets and go from there. I am sure they are out there

[JustinD]

Ben, I just noticed that I didn’t refresh my page for hours and we basically said the same thing, lol.

I guess when we have the same error collector tendencies we are are bound to repeat some stuff. Sorry I said basically the same as you.