1961 Topps SP Research

[ALR-bishop]

Great stuff as usual Carlton, even if most of it is over my head. Good thread

[JollyElm]

I thought I'd pull a Lazarus and raise this thread from the dead. Recently, I ran across this picture of a guy holding uncut 1961 sheets from the lower series (2 & 3 perhaps?) and wanted to post it here. Willie Mays (#150), Ed Mathews (#120), Whitey Ford (#160) and Bobby Richardson (#180) are included on them.

1961ToppsUncutSheets.jpg

The cards I slashed out with red lines appear twice on this sheet, whilst (I always wanted to use that word) the 4 rows of 11 cards outlined in bright green appear only once.

Now, would the other 'half' of this sheet contain these same cards (in different amounts) to make the totals of each card the same in the end? Logically, that would require the 'green' rows to appear at both the top and the bottom of the unseen sheet with the 'red' cards only appearing in a single instance in the middle?

Anyone know if this is the case?

[Rich Klein]

the 1961 5th Series SP's was verified from a sheet I saw at a Nassau Coliseum show in 1993.

We already knew from experience that cards such as Jim Maloney RC and Bill Skowron were short and seeing them all in the same row AND those being the ONLY cards not double printed on the sheet cofirmed what we already knew from when Al Rosen bought a major find of those 1961 cards. The Skowron card was found in half the quantity of the other cards in that find and the other SP's were also short.

I'm very comfortable with what are listed as SP's in that series but if there is another full sheet, there may be another difficult row

Rich

[jmoran19]

Yes any series that is 87/88 cards (Current series CL is usually a DP) and shows this type of layout would have rows 5 thru 8 on the sheet your showing as rows 1 thru 4 and rows 9 thru 12 on the other half and then the rows you crossed out as 5 thru 8.

88 cards printed 3 times = 264 cards

John

Originally Posted by JollyElm

I thought I'd pull a Lazarus and raise this thread from the dead. Recently, I ran across this picture of a guy holding uncut 1961 sheets from the lower series (2 & 3 perhaps?) and wanted to post it here. Willie Mays (#150), Ed Mathews (#120), Whitey Ford (#160) and Bobby Richardson (#180) are included on them.

Attachment 165886

The cards I slashed out with red lines appear twice on this sheet, whilst (I always wanted to use that word) the 4 rows of 11 cards outlined in bright green appear only once.

Now, would the other 'half' of this sheet contain these same cards (in different amounts) to make the totals of each card the same in the end? Logically, that would require the 'green' rows to appear at both the top and the bottom of the unseen sheet with the 'red' cards only appearing in a single instance in the middle?

Anyone know if this is the case?

[jmoran19]

Visual proof of the 88 card x 3 layout mentionEd in post above, full 264 card sheet from 1966, also have seen a 1964 sheet just like this, will find pic and post.

John

[JollyElm]

Originally Posted by jmoran19

Visual proof of the 88 card x 3 layout mentionEd in post above, full 264 card sheet from 1966, also have seen a 1964 sheet just like this, will find pic and post.

John

Excellent, John!! Thanks!!

[parkerj33]

There is no way to know the ratios until you see the other half-sheet. The sheet shown in first post you can label the rows and they are shown from top to bottom as row 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,2,3,4,7. Note rows 5/6 are only printed once.

What we don't know is the layout of the second half sheet. If Dave Hornish has taught me anything over the years its that it won't be obvious and clean!

I would bet that on the second half sheet, which is the one rich klein has seen, row 6 will be printed only once. I say that Rich has seen the OTHER half sheet because if he had only seen THIS half sheet they would have determined that rows 5 AND 6 (minus checklist) would be the sp's.

So if we say original post is sheet "A", and Rich saw sheet "B", i would suggest that sheet "B" has some sort of ordering like this: rows 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,2,3,4,5.

Rich probably looked at sheet "B" and initially thought 6 AND 7 were sp's, but checking against Rosen's find, he would have correctly noticed that row 7 was in just as much abundance as every other row, thus correctly discounting row 7 as sps.

Now given Rich liked row 6 as sp's, there are 11 cards there, why wouldn't they list all 11 as sp's? well one is the checklist and that is printed in another series's sheets so that would be known to be printed extra. But what about the 10th card in that row that is not on the official list? The card on that row missing from the list is #446 Bob "Hawk" Taylor. For sure, I think we can deem him of equal rarity as any other in row 6.

Following through on this then the ratios would be:
rows 1-4: 4x
row 5: 3x
row 6: 2x
row 7: 3x

I could be wrong on others, but i am convinced row 6 is the shortest printed row based on above sheet and the sheet Rich saw....which yields the 10 true shortest print cards.

(By the way i am assigning Rich as the decider, but of course there were others involved).

[toppcat]

Yup to much of the above. From 1957-68 it's usually the high number sheets that were mucked around with the most but sometimes things happened in lower series. Topps would print past the lower series by having say 109 cards (plus next checklist) on the first print run but only having the first series run from 1-88 on the checklist. They could then print 88 card runs after that and still stay ahead by 22 cards but sometimes they would drop 11 cards in a mid series. It would all get trued up in the last series/print run. Those sneaky bastards would have you receive cards from the next series and entice you to fill that series in as well.

You have to be careful with finds, especially vending as they sometimes seem to just come from one of the half-sheets and can skew the SP's.