Strange Green Tint Tidbit...

[ALR-bishop]

This is off topic, but Darren what do you think this seller is referring to in this and his other listings by "gray curl" variation. You think it means he is pointing out the shades of gray on the curl in the bottom right front can be lighter or darker ? I sent him a Q

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1962-Topps-B...sAAOSwepZXS1ID

[JollyElm]

Originally Posted by ALR-bishop

This is off topic, but Darren what do you think this seller is referring to in this and his other listings by "gray curl" variation. You think it means he is pointing out the shades of gray on the curl in the bottom right front can be lighter or darker ? I sent him a Q

I've seen 'gray curl' variations come up from time to time, usually involving card #304, Dick Farrell. I am not a fan, as it just seems to involve a slight variation in the amount of black ink on the decorative paper curl. Maybe this is what that seller is talking about?

Check these cards out:

Dick-Farrell.jpg Dick-Farrell-2.jpg

If you look at the area of the curl where the black emerges from the white, the card at left has a grayish squared area there, while the card at right sorta doesn't. It's there, but more drowned out by the black. Some people consider these two separate variations.

[RayBShotz]

Fascinating thread.

[JollyElm]

A bit more evidence for the theory that a lot of these GT's came directly out of the factory cut too thin. I have a picture of a 'normal' 1962 series 2 uncut sheet. On it, the card directly above Sisler is #117 Gary Geiger. My assumption is the green tint printers most likely followed the same basic sheet layout. With that said, after a quick look-see around ebay and COMC, I found a number of Geiger's GT cards to be much thinner than they should be.

The top card is what a standard sized GT Geiger looks like. The ones below it have much thinner woodgrain borders on the sides. For full disclosure, most of these pictures/scans came from different sources, so the sizing, etc., wasn't exactly the same. I had to enlarge or decrease the cards a bit to make them relatively consistent with each other. But you can readily look at the combined thickness of the woodgrained sides to see how truly off they are. Of course, there is no way to know whether or not the people who owned these cards actually trimmed them themselves, but I'm guessing that's probably not the case. And one of the Geiger GT's I have here in my doubles box is gravely thin, too.

1962Geiger117GTtrim.jpg

As a weird side note, Sisler is #171 and Geiger is #117. Seems perhaps the GT printers had a real problem with numerical combinations containing two 1's and a 7. Too bad the set had no card #711. I would've like to have seen what that one looked like.

[JollyElm]

I wanted to give this thread a bump, because while gathering cards to send off to Bobby for his bulk submission to PSA, I found that a few of my green tints were short side to side. When I checked the scan I have of an uncut 1962 Topps sheet (non GT version), I found the three cards I wanted to include were situated in the same column on the printing sheet as the Sisler and Geiger cards already discussed here. The cards I'm referring to are Dick Stuart, Julian Javier and Dean Chance. I also checked a couple of my lower grade Dallas Green cards (that also reside in said column) that I had on hand, and they, too, were short side to side.

This isn't definitive by any means, but if I were Columbo, I'd say whoever did the green tints printing for Topps that year is guilty of producing an overwhelming number of 'trimmed' cards. I guess it's important to note that the column I'm referring to was on the far right edge of the sheet. A contrarian would say that these cards were all trimmed after market, but that just seems ridiculous at this point. Such a huge concentration of specific, non-star, 'meaningless' cards shortened by a wide variety of different people all across the country?? What the heck would be the reason for that?? That dog don't hunt. I think in the mass production rush at the print shop, a huge number of cuts to the rightmost column were short, producing the results we see today.

Like the Zodiac's 340-character cipher, the green tint puzzle remains unsolved.

[JollyElm]

Did a quick #117 Geiger check and found a bunch of 'trimmed' cards on ebay. The top one looks to be the correct size, while the ones below it look like the 'after' pictures from a Jenny Craig ad:

1962Geiger117GTtrim2.jpg

If you're thinking of buying a GT off of ebay, take my advice. Make sure you ask the seller to measure it out for you.

[toppcat]

The thing is, Topps would have the uncut sheets shipped to Brooklyn from the printer, where they were cut and then the gum inserted during packaging. Perhaps they also did this elsewhere? Does anyone know if the Green Tints only (or also) came in cello's and vending? If so, that could mean they were cut elsewhere since no gum had to be put into the packs for those. Even the stamps had to be inserted in the cellos so that could impact where they were cut and packed as well.