1952 Topps High Number Complete Sheet

[tedzan]

Originally Posted by Cliff Bowman

On another thread someone posted a scan of a partial 1952 Topps 25 card high number sheet, Ted Z commented that it is the bottom right corner of the full sheet. That got me wondering if I could reconstruct the whole sheet if I could find more partial sheets. I was able to find two more partial 25 card sheets so I figured that would be enough to give it a try. After sleuthing through the three sheets it dawned on me that the cards were all numbered sequentially, so I was able to piece them together in the correct order. The sheet with Davey Williams as the first card is the upper right corner of the full sheet, the sheet with Mickey Mantle as the first card is the bottom left corner of the full sheet, and the sheet with Dick Rozek as the first card is the bottom right corner. I couldn't find the upper left corner partial that also starts with a Mickey Mantle double print. I will post everything I could find in the next few posts. First, here is what I believe the complete sheet is.

Hi Cliff Bowman....interesting coincidence, since I'm about to talk of the BOWMAN cards. I applaud your research on this. As I said in another thread on this subject:
in 1982 I was fortunate to see a complete 100-card sheet of 1952 TOPPS Hi #s. My recollection is in agreement with your simulated 1952 sheet arrangement.

Here is an illustration of my simulated BOWMAN uncut 6th series sheet. This is not guess-work. I visited with the BOWMAN's design Executive, George Moll, in 1982.
He showed me many of BOWMAN's uncut sheets. And he talked about the printing process. Zabel Brothers, Inc. was BOWMAN's printer in Philadelphia. They printed
the 1948 - 1952 cards using a 4-color process with a 38-inch (track width) press. To compete with TOPPS in 1953, they switched to a larger press (43-inch track).

TOPPS printed their 1952 cards using a similar process, but on a wider press (53-inch), which accommodated 2 adjacent 100-card sheets (as my BOWMAN example
illustrates).




l<--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 38-inches -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->l



TED Z

T206 Reference
.