The Curious Case of 1972 Harmon Killebrew...

[Mark17]

I don't want to pursue this further so this will be my last on this topic.

If the card was correctly aligned on the sheet, and if the final card was perfectly rectangular, but tilted due to miscut, it would mean:

Whichever cut was made first, vertically down the whole sheet or horizontally across the whole sheet, the problem you initially described would result in quite a lot of significant miscuts. The second cut, likewise, would create the same tilting on every other card on the sheet.

If the initial cut was clean, so as not to negatively impact the other cards, but the other cut created the tilt, then the card would not be square.

Think of it this way. Impose a grid over an uncut sheet, make the Killebrew tilted, and, as your diagram shows, every other card on the sheet gets goofed up too, many resulting in bad miscuts. There is no way Topps would've cut that much scrap (waste) without correcting the problem, and quickly.

Best explanation is that the cutting equipment worked properly, every card on the sheet was cut square and the Killebrew image, at least one of them, was a little off.

[steve B]

Mark is correct.

The most likely thing is that the Killebrew in at least one position was laid out with a bit of tilt in relation to the other cards.
As bad as Topps QC was at the time, nobody wants to make loads of really bad cards. They had no problem shipping them once they were made, but a few thousand non- square cards would have been a problem.

[JollyElm]

The problem with the 'evidence' in this thread, even mine, is that it is all anecdotal, not actually factual. So like in political arguments, it gets laughably frustrating watching as the 'proof' moves in different directions to fit certain narratives. It's not a sleight against anybody, but here are quite a few angled Billy Martin IA cards (coupled with the well known multitude of angled Cleon Jones IA cards) that sorta 'disproves' certain points...

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[Mark17]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

The problem with the 'evidence' in this thread, even mine, is that it is all anecdotal, not actually factual. So like in political arguments, it gets laughably frustrating watching as the 'proof' moves in different directions to fit certain narratives. It's not a sleight against anybody, but here are quite a few angled Billy Martin IA cards (coupled with the well known multitude of angled Cleon Jones IA cards) that sorta 'disproves' certain points...

The proof has not moved. All of the examples you have provided, and for that matter all of the 1972 Topps cards I have ever seen, were cut square. If you can find a bunch of examples of cards that are cut out of square, then that would be evidence of an alternate scenario. Absent that evidence, I contend the problem was not in the cutting process.

All of your examples are easily explained by Steve's initial observation, that some cards could easily be slightly tilted when printed on the sheets. Just as variations are created, and errors are corrected, the sheets can easily be altered at any time throughout the print run. For that matter, considering the volume of cards being printed, and the fact that in 1972 Topps was still printing cards a series at a time (meaning, a large number of cards from a single sheet needed to be manufactured in a tight time frame,) it is very possible there was more than one printing plate being used.

Any conversation, even political ones, can result in agreement when all participants fundamentally rely on logic and evidence. If a large percentage of Killebrew cards have the tilt you have observed, while a miniscule percentage of 1972 Topps cards are not cut square, then, again, it is not a problem created by the cutting process.

That leaves only one explanation: some cards were not aligned straight on the sheets, on some printing plates, during at least part of their print runs.

[steve B]

One of the non- card items I collect was laid out by hand, and in a rush Out of a sheet of 100 of the same object every instance was put on the plate tilted. Every single one. Outside of the rare bit of sloppy cutting (where yes, they had some awful miscuts) there are none that are centered properly.


While the exact details of the entire process were probably treated as trade secrets by Topps, they wouldn't vary all that much from industry standards.


The masks (Large sheet sized composite negatives) used to make the plates were assembled by hand. I don't recall the shop I worked for making any mistakes in that department that made it to the pressroom. But we did high quality lower production work and Topps printed millions of cards regularly.

Getting one card, or even a group of cards crooked compared to the rest of the sheet wouldn't be all that hard, especially with a design that has a rounded upper border.


If we had a decent scan of that part of the sheet, maybe the lower few rows, we could probably measure the tilt.


Looking at uncut sheets, another thing I notice is that in 72 the dashed lines along the sides and bottom of the sheet appear. Earlier sheets don't have them.

Those lines to me indicate they switched to an automated cutting system, one that probably cut the cards essentially as they came off the press. Similar dotted lines were used on other things as a guide for the "electric eye" that guided the sheet through the cutter. A system like that may have cut vertical strips. The 79s with 78 backs I got when they were originally found came as a vertical strip. (It's also totally possible the people who found them found intact sheets and cut them as strips themselves, although strips instead of panels is an odd choice. )


That system may have drifted a bit, making the tilt worse. - In other words, a card slightly tilted on a sheet was then cut even more tilted, but still with all corners at 90 degrees by an automated system the factory wasn't quite used to.

[JollyElm]

Sorry, I just don't buy that the cards were improperly laid out causing them to be tilted on the sheets. Every time you see an old Topps uncut sheet, it is mathematically perfect. The one in this thread with the Killebrew card is such. A perfectly symmetrical layout in every sense. Someone could claim it looks like that because it was 'corrected,' but come on, that's a reach. I have never in my life even heard someone posit that theory until this thread.

At some point logic and simple common sense have to come into play when talking about miscut cards. What is the one thing we absolutely know about Topps? Their centering sucked!!! An outsider would say they didn't care what the cards looked like, they just wanted to get them out of the factory, into packs and shipped to the stores that sold them. There weren't problems with the alignment and lay out of the sheets, no, the problems came from the actual cutting process. Anyone can do a search on ebay for "1972 Topps" and see what an absolute joke that year was for quality control. Ignore the sellers who are only auctioning off nicely centered cards, and what you are left with is a very wide spectrum of off-centered and tilted cards. Choose whatever silly trope you want, Occam's Razor or "Think horses not zebras" and you reach the simple conclusion that the tilted and off centered cards are solely the result of the poor cutting processes Topps utilized. It couldn't possibly be any clearer.

[steve B]

Ok, don't listen to some one who has worked making things since the 70's. including time in print and machine shops. And who studies the process, since in my other hobbies it matters a LOT. Plus fixing machinery of many types was my job for 11 years. Guess I don't know anything.


Lets go with the simple thing.
If the sheet is cut into vertical strips at an angle, then into singles, the angle of that second cutting has to be just right for the card to end up square and not diamond cut. If they cut the sheet into horizontal strips at an angle, then the vertical cuts would have to be at just the right angle to have the card come out square and not diamond cut. The same is true whether they worked from full sheets or cut the sheet down to panels like 1/4 sheets first.

I can agree that Topps centering sucked.

So to have it being as you think, we have to believe some things.
1)That Topps cut a huge proportion of that series of 72s crooked on the first pass.
2) That the same people who couldn't cut straight all of a sudden discovered how, and cut the next cuts just right to have the cards end up square.
3) That the cards were laid out perfectly using a manual process, when they had issues getting the team names all colored the same.


Not buying that.

1) Ok they certainly could have cut all or most of an entire print run crooked. But that crookedness would show up to a similar degree on every other card in the print run. It does not.
2) Given the overall quality of Topps cutting at the time, I don't see this happening. Lots of tilt, but very few diamond cuts. * An automated cutter like the one I mentioned would produce square cards, but again, it would cut the rest of the sheet crooked as well. So the entire series would be crooked to some degree. They are not
3) Ok, getting the cards laid out perfectly straight is possible. The stripping room at the place I worked did that sort of stuff all the time. But in addition to messing up stuff like team names pretty regularly, Topps also got the markings in the sheet margins too close to the card image a few times. I'll call this one a coin toss, since Topps did also get the cards lined up right almost all the time.

The picture of the sheet doesn't show it close enough to make any conclusions about spacing or tilt. It's just too small of an image.

The degree of tilt is I believe close to the limit of what would be regularly possible with an automatic cutter, and the evidence points towards such a system. A bit of tilt to the image on the sheet plus some tilt from the automated system probably gets there easily. I will say that that's just an opinion based on other equipment and other printed goods that are known to be cut automatically, not on any personal experience with an automatic cutter.

So are we to believe that Topps miscut only one or a few cards from each sheet, as described above? It's possible if they cut the sheet into panels, but that would still mean that that degree of miscut would be equally common for all the cards from that corner of the sheet.

Or the simpler explanation that Topps got one card on one sheet crooked?