fiberglass 54 Topps card?

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Posted By: Mac Wubben

I have an interesting 54 Topps card...it seems to be made out of plastic/fiberglass stock...much stronger and heavier than a regular card. Print looks almost identical, but maybe slightly larger? It doesn't strike me that it's a fake...wonder if anybody else knows anything about these.

Thanks,

Mac
obcmac@hotmail.com

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Posted By: dennis

it is probably a collector issue from the last 20 years. they are lincensed issues but have little collector value. post a scan and someone will be able to ID i'm sure.

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Posted By: Mac Wubben

Here is a scan. The printing is identical, except for slightly elongated on the fiberglass version. Anybody ever seen one like this?

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Posted By: dennis

definitely not what i expected from the original post, looks like it was laminated or painted over with lacquer.

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Posted By: Mac Wubben

But the proportions are off too...if you line up the blue on the sleeve, the letters on the standard card barely come up the the bottom of the letters on the strange one. The material is different, it doesn't have anything applied...simply printed on a differt material.

Still welcome thoughts/ideas/suggestions.

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Posted By: Red

With a 15-20 power magnifying glass look at the printing in the white area of the Orioles logo top right. The white needs to be solid white with no faint yellow and red dots, and the Orioles text needs to be a solid black and not made up of colored dots. Under magnification it needs to look just like the card beside it does and this will be the easiest place to spot if it's just a modern copied image printed out on another surface.

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Posted By: Anonymous

I have examine the printing closely...under a loupe...not 20x power. It really would be an astounding fake...the print cross lines match up perfectly. I find it hard to imagine that someone would take a common 54, duplicate it perfectly, except make it 3% longer than a standard card (same width). Anybody have a theory other than it being a fake? Anybody know of any material testing done by Topps or salesman samples?

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Posted By: Red

The fact that it is larger isn't a positive as that would mean Topps took the means to print a standard card and enlarged it slightly to print on a piece of fiberglass. Could it have happened, sure. But it's far more likely that somebody messing around recently scanned the card into a computer and printed it out. If this occurred then close examination of the printing will determine if it's likely to be a real Topps test piece or just somebody today messing around. The black text needs to be solid. White areas have to be solid white with no tiny yellow and red dots under magnification. Lines lining up don't mean anything, it's what kind of printing was used to make those lines. Anybody collecting this sort of thing would very much like to see it be the real thing.

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

Mac,

I am not aware of Topps doing any type of materials test involving fiberglass in the 50's. Anything is possible but was it possible to print 4 color process on fiberglass in '54? I can't say after searching the web if it was technically feasible in '54; I know one color was possible (see any '54 Corvette) but unsure about multiple passes. I'm also not sure why Topps would do such a thing at that point in time unless it was promotional in nature.

Do you know here the card is from? Some 54's were printed in Maryland.