1963 Topps Football with "Purple Skies"

[G1911]

I am building this set both ways and having a blast with it.

A number of the cards, beyond the checklists and teams, do not exist with purple sky variants and didn't have the red ink adjusted during production. So I think you can cross off a number of them on your list because they do not exist.

Cards I believe that do not exist with a purple sky are: 12, 14 (Brown), 18, 19, 24, 25, 36, 38, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 58, 59, 60, 68, 72, 74, 75 (Meredith), 79, 80, 83, 84, 85, 90, 97, 103, 109, 117, 121, 123, 125, 129, 130, 133, 140, 145, 146, 147, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 160, 161, 162, 166, 169, 170. Purple skies are not rare, similar to 1962 baseball series 2 green tints. If one hasn't appeared by now, the odds it exists are miniscule.


Don Bishop I have a very hard time telling apart, but that might be just my eyes. Unfortunately I need both Lilly's still .

[LuckyLarry]

Thanks for the reply Greg. Your list compares with the images on my friend Toms page except he shows "purple sky" examples of card #79 Sam Baker and also #83 Jerry Norton

I texted Tom who designed the "purple sky" page linked in my post maybe he will check in.

Larry

[obctom]

Hi fellas,
The Don Bishop was, for me, by FAR the toughest to differentiate. I had multiple copies of the card & kept scanning them at super-high resolution in order to see if there were any red print dots in the sky, until I finally found one. It's almost impossible to see with the naked eye.

The jumping-off point for my quest to complete these was the RB Wooden Puzzles site. Unfortunately it hasn't been updated for many years, and in fact the owner indicated he couldn't say for certain if any of the other Cowboys had variations, other than what he listed, since he had seen so few of them.

After some serious card-hunting and research, I discovered that the #79 Sam Baker card does have a purple variation, and so does #83 Jerry Norton; those two weren't listed as having PS versions on the RB Wooden Puzzles site. The Baker variation is hard to see, but the one for Norton is clear once you realize there's what appears to be a red/purple shadow on the grass between his legs; the one with the "shadow" does have red print dots in the sky.

Please check my side-by-side scans, complete with descriptions, on my Flickr page at https://flickr.com/photos/obctom/alb...57719927518051

I'd like to think all of the purple variations have been discovered now, but based on the super-subtle differences in some of them, there still might be more out there. Hopefully not the Jim Brown though!

Having to acquire two Lilly RCs was almost as hard as trying to acquire two Nolan Ryan rookies, in order to have the regular and Milton Bradley versions of the 1968 Topps baseball!

Tom

[G1911]

Thank you for correcting, guys. I have both copies of Norton but it looks like my textual notes are from the original site. That dude did an amazing job going over the how and why when he was putting it together. Looks like my bookmarked link to it has been taken over by a Japanese language site and it's gone now. Shame.

Baker is like Bishop I guess; I cannot discern the difference in a scan without having in hand to examine the print dots. My eyes are !@#$'ed and I have glaucoma so that doesn't mean much, but I have only one of each and am at a loss as to how to proceed for my master set; I am building the master set but it's hard to know which ones to buy off eBay or similar to fill in my set when I just can't tell the difference, though I don't doubt at all the difference is real. Paying for 2 Bob Lilly's isn't the hardest part of this set apparently!

I need regular copies of
14 Jim Brown, 22 Don Fleming and 82 Bob Lilly

and Purple's of
13 Frank Ryan, 44 Deacon Jones, 56 Rosey Grier, 62 Mike Ditka, 78 Andy Cvercko, 82 Bob Lilly, 86 Bart Starr, 107 Jim Marshall, 126 Preston Carpenter, 131 Clendon Thomas

The good news is the stars are pretty cheap in 1963 for lower grade raw, and only Lilly really costs anything more than a lunch. It's not even his rookie!

[G1911]

My regular copy of Norton, and my solitary Bishop.

Tom's Flickr album is awesome and the Norton is made easier by the red grass blob on it, but to my eyes both Norton's are purple skies - there just wasn't a fully corrected copy. I've never seen a Norton that looks to me like a fully corrected blue sky card.

Bishop I am not certain which on I have here and identifying off eBay or at shows which is which I've never succeeded at. Do I need a card for a master set if I can't tell the difference? The answer is yes, I need it anyways .

This has become my favorite football set of the 60's.