1971 Topps 5th Series Double Prints?

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Posted By: Bob Collet

The short printed cards in the '71 Topps high number 6th series (644-752) are widely known and catalogued. T there appear to be (21 or 22) cards in the 5th series run (524-643) printed more than the others but I haven't seen them identified.

It appears the series (120 cards) was printed on two 132-card sheets (264 cards) as was fairly common in the era. I've seen a picture of one sheet with 6 rows of 11 cards, each printed twice for a total of 66 different cards (132 total). One of the cards is a checklist and my guess is it's the 6th series checklist (#619). The photo I have is a little fuzzy so I can't be sure. The 5th series checklist, actually numbered and probably printed on the 4th series sheets (#499), may have also been printed on one of the 5th series sheets.

The second sheet would include the remaining 54 cards in the series and one of the (5th or 6th series) checklists. That would be 5 rows of 11 cards. If each of those rows were printed on the sheet twice, there would be two remaining rows of 11 cards. My guess is that two of the rows on the second sheet are printed three times, resulting in 22 double (actually 1 1/2 ?) prints.

Can anybody confirm this? Which numbers are printed three times on the sheet?Thanks.

Bob C

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

Not sure I can confirm it but it makes sense. I have to check if I have a scan of these sheets. Anything short or extra printed would indeed be in multiples of 11.

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Posted By: Anthony N.

Don't know if this helps, but there were definitely printed on 132 card sheets, and it seems each series of 132 cards consisted of 2 sheets, with 66 cards striped up twice on each sheet.
Here's a 6th series sheet I picked up a few years ago

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Posted By: John Moran

ah, 1971 topps, my favorite subject. I think I can help out here. IMO 12 cards are double printed in the 5th series (the 5th series CL was printed on the 4th series sheet so it's a dp too). They include Willie Mays, Tony Perez, Willie Davis and Norm Cash.



As you mentioned, a true uncut sheet is 264 cards. Here is the left half of the series 5 sheet, 66 different cards printed twice:







Here is a partial sheet of the right half before the black ink was applied, it's the only one I've ever seen:







I also have a copy of the OPC 5th series sheet.







Excluding the expos that were moved up into the earlier series, the cards were printed in the same row/column as the Topps version. The bottom 6 rows on the OPC sheet match the middle 6 rows on the left half of the Topps sheet (first picture), therefore the top 6 rows in theory would match up to the Topps right half. As you can see, this would make the row with Perez and Willie Mays the dp's.

John

P.S. I made a mockup of the partial sheet, LMK is you want me to post it as well.

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

Deleted to make things (hopefully) less confusing.

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

As for the checklists, they throw off counts as Topps would indeed preview an upcoming series and either number such a checklist as part of a prior series and/or include a extra printed list from a later series on a prior series sheet.

You can tell because in '71 there should be multiples of 132 ending the first 4 series, i.e. 132, 264, 396, 528 but they actually end 132, 263, 393, 523.

Once Topps started printing checklists as separate cards in 1961, for the next nine years the first series would always be 1-109 when it should have gone to 110. This is because they would wedge in a preview checklist from a later series, reducing the count to 109. This is a major source of 1960's and eraly 70's checklist variations, by the way. I believe this is one of the 1963 first series sheets, it looks like 3 different checklist cards are on it:



The checklists are the only thing breaking up the unity of 11 card rows in Topps baseball sets from this era (57 through the UV cards). Some of their non-sport and test sets would not follow the 11 card rows arrays but in their standard baseball sets it seems they never strayed from it.

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Posted By: John Moran

here's the other half (left side) of the high numbers

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

Editing some more.... For SIXTH series sheets, we would have:


Row Times
A 2
B 2
C 3
D 3
E 2
F 2
G 2
H 3
I 3
J 2

And our third 6th series checklist variation would be from its inclusion on a 5th series sheet.

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Posted By: John Moran

Dave, the original post was asking about why there are only 120 cards in the 5th series and which cards were DP, not the high series, John

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

Hah, quite right John--a couple of us fell for that.... The theory is still the same though, just need the scans but you likely have cracked it. If this thread could be retitled 5th and 6th Series DP's, I would probably have confused far less people......gotta get me some new glasses.....oy

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Posted By: John Moran

Here's the mock up I made based off the sheet w/o the black ink, that's all I have related to the 5th series

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Posted By: John Moran

The psa pop. report doesn't help much, as you would think there would be more Willie Mays submitted than any other star card from the 5th series but there are roughly 250 more Clementes graded than Willie's. Then again, border cards are more likely to be off center. Oh well, that's all my hungover brain can do today, now I need to find a comfortable place on the couch for the next 7 hours.

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Posted By: Robert Collet

I was having a little trouble following the bouncing ball for a bit bit I think I'm up to speed now.

The sheet posted above as the OPC sheet appears to be the second 5th series Topps sheet. I say this because some of the Expos were pictured in different poses in the OPC set. The poses of Claude Raymond (#536) and Rusty Staub (#560) are the Topps poses.

If that is the second Topps sheet, then I think the mystery can be solved.

Here are the first sheet rows and the card in the far left column:

1 A 536 Claude Raymond
2 B 608 Mike Wegener
3 C 551 Frank Linzy
4 Repeat Row A
5 Repeat Row B
6 Repeat Row C
7 D 580 Tony Perez
8 E 557 Tom Satriano
9 F 537 Tom Egan
10 Repeat Row D
11 Repeat Row E
12 Repeat Row F

And the second sheet:

1 Repeat Row D
2 G 624 Athletics Team
3 H 546 John Matias
4 I 533 Mike Ryan
5 J 610 Amos Otis
6 K 559 AL Rookie Stars
7 Repeat Row A
8 Repeat Row B
9 Repeat Row C
10 Repeat Row D
11 Repeat Row E
12 Repeat Row F

So, the cards in rows G, H, I J & K appear to be single-printed (with the exception of the checklist). There are no double prints. The cards in rows A, B, C, E & F appear to be triple-printed. The cards in row D appeear to be quadruple-printed.

This is a quite different from my initial assumptions. Thanks everyone for your help.

Bob C

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Posted By: John Moran

Bob, I hate to shoot down your theory but the sheet your referring to is an actual OPC sheet.



Rusty Staub has 2 cards in the 1971 OPC set, card #289 (different pose) and card #560. Also if you notice in row 4, column 10 this is Eddie Kasko, he is card #31 in the Topps set, card #578 in the OPC set, therefore IMO the only dp cards (actually tripled printed) is the row that includes Tony Perez and Willie Mays. John

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Posted By: Bob Collet

The more I look into this the more I agree with you, John. I wonder, though, if the DPs in the Perez row are the same for Topps as OPC. There must be a second Topps sheet. I thought the appearance of the Kasko card in this series was odd...

Thanks again.

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Posted By: Rob deLorimier

1971 Topps- my favorite set!

I may have something worthwhile to add to this discussion-

About 10 years ago I obtained, and subsequently opened, a vending box with primarily 5th series cards. The box contained 533 cards (yes- 33 more than the advertised 500!) Of the 533 cards, 357 were from the 5th series. Of the remainder, 138 were from the 4th series and 37 were from the 3rd series. I kept a list of the cards from the box, so I can tell you exactly how many of each card were in the vending box. This may not absolutely tell you which cards might be short printed or double printed, but then again it might. Of course there were many cards with multiple examples, including 6 each of #547 (P. Dobson) and 593 (Aker), and 5 each of #'s 526 (Jarvis), 534 (Walker), 542 (B. Miller), 584 (Indians Team), 610 (Otis), 620 (F. Howard) and 622 (Lahoud). On the other hand, there were only 1 each of #540 (Dierker), 551 (Linzy) 573 (Kranepool), 582 (D Cash) , 590 (A. Johnson), 592 (Hundley), 608 (Wegener), 612 (Indians RC) , 631 (Fisher) and 635 (Murcer). For all the other cards in the 5th series, there were 2 to 4 examples each. Interesting, but I don't know if it tells you anything or not!

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Posted By: Rob deLorimier

In comparing my vending box count to the 5th series sheet above, I noticed that 6 of the cards that only had one example are on the same row- Dierker, Hundley, Linzy, Murcer, A. Johnson and D. Cash. However, also on that row is Jarvis for which there were 5 examples! Again, not sure what it means, and it might not mean anything, but I do find it interesting.

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Posted By: Rob deLorimier

I also noticed that 8 of the cards that had 5 or 6 examples were also on the same row on the sheet- Otis, Aker, Dobson, Howard, Indians Team, Walker, Lahoud and Miller.

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Posted By: Rob deLorimier

Edit to delete double post