1952 Topps Baseball - Perspectives

[Republicaninmass]

Originally Posted by Zach Wheat

This could be but there are general trends within the presumed single and double prints. I have been searching for cards between 171-190 for quite a while. Five of these cards appear to show up frequently, while the others do not. The same general trend appears in cards #131-170. Some gray backs like Judson, Dubiel and Rojek are found frequently, while others are not seen as often. This makes me think there is something else affecting the pop counts as well.

It's weird because 189 gray is tough. But 190 is more plentiful. I know the 177 and 181 are also some of the lowest graded among the gray backs. I assume they didn't change the sheet set up.

Maybe it's 171-179 and 181-189?

[Zach Wheat]

Originally Posted by Republicaninmass

It's weird because 189 gray is tough. But 190 is more plentiful. I know the 177 and 181 are also some of the lowest graded among the gray backs. I assume they didn't change the sheet set up.

Maybe it's 171-179 and 181-189?

And if you look at some of the known variations in the non-gray back mid-series, you don't find them in the gray backs. #181 Swift PP is but one example. So this implies there were several times they stopped and corrected imperfections.

Maybe they also changed the single & double prints.....

[Republicaninmass]

Originally Posted by Zach Wheat

And if you look at some of the known variations in the non-gray back mid-series, you don't find them in the gray backs. #181 Swift PP is but one example. So this implies there were several times they stopped and corrected imperfections.



Maybe they also changed the single & double prints.....

Steveb could elaborate, but I think just fixing the small errors would be easier than retaking the whole sheet (photo?). That being said, I think they may have had to change the whole sheet to add the yellow on the pale yellow (no green throat) house card.

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[Zach Wheat]

Originally Posted by Republicaninmass

Steveb could elaborate, but I think just fixing the small errors would be easier than retaking the whole sheet (photo?). That being said, I think they may have had to change the whole sheet to add the yellow on the pale yellow (no green throat) house card.

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That seems to make sense. However, if each mid-series gray back were double and single printed in equal quantities, how do we explain the rarity of certain cards like the Reiser gray back? There are several others that are quite scarce as well.

[Republicaninmass]

Originally Posted by Zach Wheat

That seems to make sense. However, if each mid-series gray back were double and single printed in equal quantities, how do we explain the rarity of certain cards like the Reiser gray back? There are several others that are quite scarce as well.

OK OK..
From memory tough ones
131
140
171
180
181
189


I can't make heads or tails out of it!


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[skelly423]

I think you can draw some interesting conclusions from pop reports about card scarcity within the same series (eg. 171-190 having a shorter print run than the rest of the 3rd series, or the same for 281-300 in the 5th series). Pop reports are unquestionably the best tool available to judge surviving populations (and by extension scarcity). That said, pretending they are gospel truth is foolish.

If every card were submitted at the same rate, you could make some really meaningful conclusions, but that's not the reality. Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays are more valuable, and as such, are submitted far more often than Ray Scarborough or Eddie Yost. If I own a low grade Mantle, I'm going to grade it every time. I'm not doing that with a Yost.

The OP on some level recognizes this fact, but doesn't seem to grasp that that incentive doesn't just exist for Mantle and Mays, it exists for ALL of the 6th series in a way that it doesn't for any other series. A Sam White #345 in a PSA 2 is a ~$120 card. A Pat Mullin #275 (the apparent rarest card in the set) in a PSA 2 is a $20 card. Plenty of people are grading that White, while you're losing money by grading the Mullin in that condition.

It's a simple matter of dollars and cents, people don't like losing money.
There isn't enough return in low grades to justify grading a Mullin, so collectors aren't doing it. High series cards are valuable, and collectors spend the money to protect them and to try to lock in the value. The end result is the graded population of 5th series is disproportionately low, while the graded population of the 6th series is disproportionately high. It has nothing to do with actual scarcity.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Republicaninmass

Steveb could elaborate, but I think just fixing the small errors would be easier than retaking the whole sheet (photo?). That being said, I think they may have had to change the whole sheet to add the yellow on the pale yellow (no green throat) house card.

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It would depend on the error, and where in the process it hapened.

Errors on the original art would require reshooting at least one color to make a corrected mask.

Errors on the mask might be easily fixed, might not. Most are, but would require making a new plate for that color.

Errors that happened in platemaking would just require making a new plate. Or if it was super simple like a random spot it could just be stoned off the plate.


Most of the 1952 varieties seem like small stuff that slipped in while the plates were being made. It's fairly well known that they were done on 100 card sheets. What's not really known is if for say the first series 1-80 they did multiple sheets with different layouts, or if it was 80 plus 20 double prints.
The errors in that series are major, and probably from the mask being wrong, so they at least had to redo that for all four colors.

The gray backs are a 60 card series, so the simplest layout would be 60 plus 40 double prints, leaving 20 more difficult ones.
Unless they had a reason to play around with which ones were tougher, I can't see a reason to make new masks. That would be a fairly substantial expense.
Depending on timing, they probably made new plates, and errors that happen in that process would be different.

[Zach Wheat]

Originally Posted by steve B

It would depend on the error, and where in the process it hapened.

Errors on the original art would require reshooting at least one color to make a corrected mask.

Errors on the mask might be easily fixed, might not. Most are, but would require making a new plate for that color.

Errors that happened in platemaking would just require making a new plate. Or if it was super simple like a random spot it could just be stoned off the plate.


Most of the 1952 varieties seem like small stuff that slipped in while the plates were being made. It's fairly well known that they were done on 100 card sheets. What's not really known is if for say the first series 1-80 they did multiple sheets with different layouts, or if it was 80 plus 20 double prints.
The errors in that series are major, and probably from the mask being wrong, so they at least had to redo that for all four colors.

The gray backs are a 60 card series, so the simplest layout would be 60 plus 40 double prints, leaving 20 more difficult ones.
Unless they had a reason to play around with which ones were tougher, I can't see a reason to make new masks. That would be a fairly substantial expense.
Depending on timing, they probably made new plates, and errors that happen in that process would be different.

Steve,

Do you have any insight into whether a job like pre-production salesmen's samples would be shopped out to a smaller printer or whether Topps would print these in-house? The reason I ask is that the '52 Topps salesmen samples appear to be printed on the same gray paper stock and appear to have the most common type of fronts as most gray backs (dull grayish/brown hue).

I have always thought that the reason for different paper types i.e gray backs was due to contracting out a portion of the printing to another source, due to higher than anticipated demand.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Zach Wheat

Steve,

Do you have any insight into whether a job like pre-production salesmen's samples would be shopped out to a smaller printer or whether Topps would print these in-house? The reason I ask is that the '52 Topps salesmen samples appear to be printed on the same gray paper stock and appear to have the most common type of fronts as most gray backs (dull grayish/brown hue).

I have always thought that contracting out a portion of the printing to another source, due to higher than anticipated demand was the reason for the different paper types.

It's possible. We can be fairly sure they did it a decade later because of the green tints, But by then they probably farmed out a portion of the production.
Some random pros/cons

If it wasn't so early, I'd think it was. But promotional stuff should have been done early to generate pre sales for series 1. So promos should be pre-demand. And doing them on cheaper stock makes some financial sense. Not much need to farm them out.

If I recall it right, the 51s come on two different stocks. That would be from two different runs, which seems backed up by the variations in the redbacks.
Different places? Or just different times?

I'm not sure what proofing Topps did early, but they were doing all sorts of proofing by the mid 60's. If their capacity was essentially the same, they would have had plenty of time to do promo stuff alongside the other sets and products they were printing for.