1961 Topps SP Research

[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.

[Rich Klein]

Jim

That is a very accurate description of what occured. I just took all the knowledge we had about cards being short and the uncut sheet clinched it.

So yes, I was the final decider on that issue but only because of empirical evidence created over the previous decade

Rich

[parkerj33]

Hi Rich. Its Jim Parker from NY, not Craig Parker from OK (no relation).....but thanks for the confirmation!

[parkerj33]

Dave, you just snuck in another curveball quite slyly. So technically the first series in some years was really 110 (or 109) cards, not 88 as might be listed? or do the lists of series take this into account? I suppose we can never really know the ratio of cards produced in series 1 vs. series 2 or series N. That would only be known by the factory. All we can decipher from the A/B full sheet of a particular series is what the ratio of printing of one subject to another would be.

[Kevvyg1026]

The one full slit shown in this thread has a pattern of: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D, G where A is the row headed by Coot Veal, B headed by F Thomas, C by Turk Lown, D by Bauer, E by Aaron, etc.

The other partial panel shown in a post in this thread has Del Crandall (390) in the bottom row of a slit. Crandall is in the row headed by Bauer, so rows B, C, & D are at the bottom of slit 2.

There are also a few other miscuts that suggest that there are four rows (A, B, C, & D) printed 4x each across the two slits, with two rows (E, G) printed 3x each, and one row (F) printed 2x each. This gives 7 distinct rows and 24 rows of 11 cards each (total = 264 cards).

So, the SPs would be the cards in row F, headed by Barker. These are: 428, 423, 408, 421, 430, 417, 361, 371, 446, 402, and 436.

Of course, 361 is the checklist which was printed in series 4 as well, so it might not be classified as a SP. However, there is a variation of card #361 (yellow vs black printing, ad vs no ad), so perhaps the yellow print/ad version is a SP.

[skil55voy]

Originally Posted by 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.

Dave, this is spot on. I distinctly remember a dozen cards from the next series being released along with the next checklist to give you a preview of what was coming. I also think that the "pre-released" series cards a little tougher to get if you didn't get them mixed in with the first series release.