1974 Topps Deckle Edge Article

[Baseballcrazy62]

Al: do you believe Lifson in that there may be no more than 20 sets? And was it exclusively limited to the Boston area and available for only 2 weeks or so?

[moeson]

FWIW - the first five 1974 Deckle cards I purchased towards my set were from a Trader Speaks ad placed that year by a Boston area collector.

[ALR-bishop]

The set was produced on two sheets. I have to think a lot more than 20 of each sheet were produced. I am not a graded collector but it looks like there are 8 or so completed sets on the Registry. I have 4 sets. And, I bet if someone has access to the PSA population reports it will show a lot more than 20 for different players. I do think the white backs are much scarcer. See Dave Hornish's blog about why that might be

https://toppsarchives.blogspot.com/s...Topps%20Deckle

Couple of articles

https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=Awr4...IOa4b8GeYIo.E-



https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0ge...kEj0zC.Gx8_j4-

[ALR-bishop]

The Gibson below is a fake

[ALR-bishop]

Packs with and without gum

[toppcat]

I keep a database of when test and scarce Topps issues first appeared in The Trader Speaks. The Deckles started showing up in earnest around the Spring of 1977. Here's five articles and ads from TTS all in 1977 (July, 3 Octobers and a December ad from that year. The two George Lyons ads and Lifson article were all in the October issue. Interesting to see them emerge along with the 74 Puzzles (first mentioned in the November 77 issue) three years after the fact.

George Lyons may have been responsible for cutting up all the "proof sheets" and if he wasn't, he sure knew who did. This is a typical Topps MO for dumping oddball sets and overstock into the hobby. Another method was having Bill Haber sell them at some of the bigger NYC shows of the day.

[moeson]

I'm sure they turned up earlier in the classified section but would have to go through the back issues to confirm.