The Curious Case of 1972 Harmon Killebrew...

[steve B]

Ok, don't listen to some one who has worked making things since the 70's. including time in print and machine shops. And who studies the process, since in my other hobbies it matters a LOT. Plus fixing machinery of many types was my job for 11 years. Guess I don't know anything.


Lets go with the simple thing.
If the sheet is cut into vertical strips at an angle, then into singles, the angle of that second cutting has to be just right for the card to end up square and not diamond cut. If they cut the sheet into horizontal strips at an angle, then the vertical cuts would have to be at just the right angle to have the card come out square and not diamond cut. The same is true whether they worked from full sheets or cut the sheet down to panels like 1/4 sheets first.

I can agree that Topps centering sucked.

So to have it being as you think, we have to believe some things.
1)That Topps cut a huge proportion of that series of 72s crooked on the first pass.
2) That the same people who couldn't cut straight all of a sudden discovered how, and cut the next cuts just right to have the cards end up square.
3) That the cards were laid out perfectly using a manual process, when they had issues getting the team names all colored the same.


Not buying that.

1) Ok they certainly could have cut all or most of an entire print run crooked. But that crookedness would show up to a similar degree on every other card in the print run. It does not.
2) Given the overall quality of Topps cutting at the time, I don't see this happening. Lots of tilt, but very few diamond cuts. * An automated cutter like the one I mentioned would produce square cards, but again, it would cut the rest of the sheet crooked as well. So the entire series would be crooked to some degree. They are not
3) Ok, getting the cards laid out perfectly straight is possible. The stripping room at the place I worked did that sort of stuff all the time. But in addition to messing up stuff like team names pretty regularly, Topps also got the markings in the sheet margins too close to the card image a few times. I'll call this one a coin toss, since Topps did also get the cards lined up right almost all the time.

The picture of the sheet doesn't show it close enough to make any conclusions about spacing or tilt. It's just too small of an image.

The degree of tilt is I believe close to the limit of what would be regularly possible with an automatic cutter, and the evidence points towards such a system. A bit of tilt to the image on the sheet plus some tilt from the automated system probably gets there easily. I will say that that's just an opinion based on other equipment and other printed goods that are known to be cut automatically, not on any personal experience with an automatic cutter.

So are we to believe that Topps miscut only one or a few cards from each sheet, as described above? It's possible if they cut the sheet into panels, but that would still mean that that degree of miscut would be equally common for all the cards from that corner of the sheet.

Or the simpler explanation that Topps got one card on one sheet crooked?