Uncut sheets

[toppcat]

Originally Posted by jmoran19

As far as I know, no short prints or dp's. A true uncut sheet is 264 cards. For the 80/81 set they were print in sections of 44 cards each (3x44 = 132).

The sheet you posted shows that the cards in rows 1 thru 4 were printed again in rows 9 thru 12. FYI this looks like the right half of a 264 card sheet. The left half would then have rows 5 thru 8 printed twice (top 1/3 and bottom 1/3 of the sheet). Rows 1 thru 4 would only be printed once in the middle of the sheet, therefore this makes a total of 88 unique cards printed 3 times each.

Then Topps rearranged the layout for some reason, can't remember why off the top of my head, maybe a different printer? Anyway, the print layout was the same as mentioned above. 88 + 88 = 176.

John

They may have reconfigured the three card layouts from 89-176, maybe to give a little more variety in the packs, or maybe to create a gap in the sequence to entice more purchases, who knows but there is another alternative. This set and the one from the following year were oddities as Topps was trying to save the line and began focusing on a regional approach for BKB. The 81/82's had a mainline national group off 66 cards and three regional subsets off 44 cards each. I wonder in the reconfiguration of the 80/81 trios was some type of regional realignment to test the process? It may not even have required grouping by regions but just to see how sheets could be cut and packed according to certain criteria. It's a stretch and I have no way to compare all the trios but I seem to recall reading about that somewhere, a long time ago. The 81/82 configuration could have been done with one 264 card master sheet, or up to three, depending how they co-mingled the national and regional cards.