Reconstructing 1957 Topps Football uncut sheets

[stevepoland]

I'm down a rabbits hole trying to figure this puzzle out. There's a fantastic resource of partial sheets here: https://www.footballcardgallery.com/...et/1957_Topps/

The set is 154 cards total. People discuss it as being 1-88 low number cards and 89-154 as high number cards. There's speculation this was released as two series', but the author of the above article disagrees with that.

It seems this year they used 264-card sheet, cut in half, thus 132 card sheet [12x11].

I've read some posts about earlier Topps Baseball sheets, and I've seen '77' talked about, which would be 7 rows [I call them rows, the author above calls them columns] -- and then 5 rows. Ironically, the big partial sheet we have is 7 rows [77] cards.

Given the author's partials, I have determined that card 43 is printed 3x somehow on the sheets. The same can be told for others, but this card for sure. Each row [looks like a column in the author's post] are the same, but then duplicated in various spots.

I'm trying to determine how these 154 cards would have been arranged on the sheets, and whether it's just two 132 card sheets, or if there were more.

I'm hoping someone might be aware of an earlier Topps (1957+) baseball set/series in which I might be able to see some madness to how they placed these rows on the sheet. It seems that there's always 2 rows of low-numbers or 2 rows of high-numbers next to each other.

I also wonder if things are broken up as 88 and 66. I'm kind of with the opinion that the sheets/cards were all released at the same time, but I'm having a hard time determining how some cards are printed 3 different times (given the partials we have) -- and my only explainer would be that: if 2 132-card sheets, then maybe the row with 43 is printed twice on one sheet (next to different rows) and printed once on the second sheet? Otherwise, there are four total 132-card sheets if there were indeed two series released? [Maybe the 7-row partial sheet we have, which has 4-rows of high-numbers, then has one row of low numbers missing and then the same 4-rows of high numbers are reprinted on the same sheet? And maybe the second sheet has the remaining high numbers printed on it, with low number rows as fillers too?]

Any help or reference to other 1957+ Topps series/sets/uncuts are appreciated for trying to determine how these 1-88 and 89-154 cards were printed on these sheets.

[Cliff Bowman]

I'm guessing the 1st Series is 88 cards in which all 88 cards are printed three times on a 264 card super sheet (two 132 card slits printed together) and the 2nd Series is 66 cards in which all 66 cards are printed four times on a 264 card super sheet (two 132 card slits printed together). The other aternative is two Series of 77 cards which would create 33 4x cards and 44 3x cards in each Series. I would be surprised if they took that route. ETA after looking at that link you posted I am obviously wrong, there must be SP's or DP's the way they printed that set.

[stevepoland]

Cliff, thanks for the reply. That math makes a lot of sense. Only issue is there are high numbers mixed with low numbers on the sheets. But maybe the overall answer is that there are two super sheets, and the low number rows are printed 3x and high numbers are printed 4x.

Have you ever seen anything where 2 rows are always printed together and so on a 12-row sheet there’s really 6 sections? (Or alternate view is- “there’s 2 sections of 6 rows”— that sounds more normal right? (I’m so used to seeing 4,4,4)

[Cliff Bowman]

I think the person from that site is probably correct, one slit has 132 different cards and the other slit has 110 of those same cards and 22 different cards that aren’t on the other slit, which creates a total of 110 2x cards and 44 1x cards. I would have to look at eBay, COMC, and Dean’s Cards to try get an idea of which cards are twice as available as the SP cards.

[Cliff Bowman]

I will post everything I found that isn't on that site. First I will do three 9 card panels I found on WorthPoint. I will post identifiable miscuts next.

[Cliff Bowman]

Here are the miscut combos I have, Bassett to the right of Womble, Carson to the left of Ferguson, Gedman above Brito, Hirsch above Johnson, Hirsch is likely a right edge card, Hornung is likely a left edge (header) card, Dibble is to the left of Root, Spinney is to the left of Putnam, Berry is above Vessels, Retzlaff is above Watkins.