1968 Topps Baseball Design

[savedfrommyspokes]

Carlton, Have you seen or do you know of a full uncut sheet of these 67-68 MB cards?

[goheels]

I have never seen a half sheet of 132, or a proof sheet for that matter, of the Topps Milton Bradley 1968 set.

There isn't one at Milton Bradley. I have spent some time many years ago in their archives. Some of the old hands there involved in the game are long gone. Ralph Shea (MB president during the 1960s) and his son are both deceased. I asked his son before he died about a sheet and he wasn't aware of one. Mr. Shea was a baseball nut, his son not quite as much.

I am not aware of one at Topps either. When they had their massive Topps archive fire sale they didn't have any MB items. Remember that this game was very short lived with a limited print run. Also, after this collaboration flopped, Topps wasn't too happy about the other black and white Milton Bradley cards produced in 1969, 1970, and 1972. Milton Bradley put out a cheapo set in 1984 just before their merger with Hasbro, who killed any further baseball projects and began steering toys towards electronics.

No one has really written much about this set. I never saw any articles in the old stuff like The Trader Speaks, The Sport Hobbyist, and amazingly the set was left out of the first modern guide--Bert Sugar's Sports Collectibles Bible (1975).
It was ignored until Lemke put it in his book about 5 years ago.

I am 95% done with putting a virtual sheet together. I hope to publish that in a blog or an article for a hobby journal in the coming months.