The Curious Case of 1972 Harmon Killebrew...

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

Personally, it's tough for me to imagine that Topps laid out the sheets and somehow misaligned the Killebrew card. Certainly something to consider, but I would think the chances of that being the case must be pretty remote.

Only 2 possibilities.

If the Killebrew card is on the sheet straight, then the cut is wrong and the card won't be in square. Easiest way to tell is take a stack of cards, put a "tilted" Killebrew in the middle, and feel with your fingers if it is perfectly aligned with all the other cards. If it is, the cut was square and the "tilt" would by necessity be attributed to its positioning angle on the sheet.

If the card is not cut with 4 square 90 degree angles, then cards adjacent on the sheet must have been impacted by the common miscut edges. In this case, if the cutting process involved cutting sheets into rows first, the impact to other cards would be greatly lessened, only affecting the cards to the immediate left and right.

My guess is that they are cut square, with 4 90-degree corners, and the card image is slightly tilted on the sheets. Maybe at some point they realigned it to account for the better examples you've found, or, since it was a double print, maybe one was aligned better than the other.