seeking knowledge re: 1955 Topps baseball sheets

[G1911]

179 Bolger with what looks to be a red card to the right of it (below, in picture orientation) and a rounded black top team logo. From an expired eBay listing.

[G1911]

166 Bauer next to 171 Brodowski, from LuckyLarry in a different thread

[G1911]

And 192 Delsing again, showing a card to the right. Looks like a Red Sox player, with enough of the cartoon showing to probably make it identifiable. I can pull out my 1955 set tonight to find the match.

[G1911]

A 191 Stanky (one of the DP's) showing a sliver of a blue name box to left (above card image)

[Cliff Bowman]

Awesome! I'm pretty sure that's Jim Delsing beside Bolger and Billy Consolo beside Delsing. Keep them coming!

[Cliff Bowman]

Originally Posted by G1911

A 191 Stanky (one of the DP's) showing a sliver of a blue name box to left (above card image)

I have a better example of the Stanky but I still can't tell who it is next to him. Throneberry, Zauchin, Sain, Jensen, Lollar, and Daley are still available. I am curious why you described Stanky as a DP, though. He isn't one of the four well known DP's, Baumholtz, Pearce, Perkowski, or Silvera. Is it thought that he is on a row that was printed more than the other rows? I have miscuts showing Stanky above Snider AND under Snider so it would make sense for the row Stanky is on to be a DP row. I also have a scan of a miscut 55 Clemente beside Stanky so that would also make Clemente a DP.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Cliff Bowman

I have a better example of the Stanky but I still can't tell who it is next to him. Throneberry, Zauchin, Silvera, Sain, Jensen, Lollar, and Daley are still available. I am curious why you described Stanky as a DP, though. He isn't one of the four well known DP's, Baumholtz, Pearce, Perkowski, or Silvera. Is it thought that he is on a row that was printed more than the other rows? I have miscuts showing Stanky above Snider AND under Snider so it would make sense for the row Stanky is on to be a DP row. I also have a scan of a miscut 55 Clemente beside Stanky so that would also make Clemente a DP.

I should have said it differently or left out. I think Stanky is one of the extra prints - I don't think, based on population samples I've had in the past, that all 50 cards (counting the 4 replacement cards twice as they clearly are true DP's) were produced in an equal number of slots. The third series does not seem to exist in equal or close to equal quantity. Rows may have changed and cycled like Bowman did, or some rows were produced more than others as a constant on the two slits, inconsistent rows, or something else, but I will be surprised if it is found to be a straightforward 46 single print + the 4 extra slots for the double prints to replace the missing numbers.

I would not be surprised if Clemente is an extra print of some kind at all, just really hard to compare populations for a superstar rookie that gets all the attention.

[Cliff Bowman]

You are correct about there having to be “DP” rows in the 1955 Topps 3rd Series, each slit has 11 rows which would come out to 22 rows over two slits. There are five unique rows in the 1955 3rd Series so if each row is printed 4 times that comes out to 20 rows, that means there would be two more rows printed again for a total of 5x for each of those rows. The 1955 Topps 2nd Series was the opposite, there were six unique rows in that series so that meant that two of the six rows had to be printed 3x rather than 4x in order to fill out the 22 rows over the two slits. There ended up being two “SP” rows in the 1955 2nd Series.