1963 Topps Bomber's Best with Mickey Mantle

[bnorth]

I am sure we have had a thread on this but couldn't find it.

Isn't there different variations of this card with the bat knob in Mantles crotch?

[Cliff Bowman]

Might not be exactly the one you're thinking of but it's talked about on this page. https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...=187722&page=6

[ALR-bishop]

[bnorth]

Thanks guys. I am auctioning(BST) mine with a print offset and couldn't remember the difference.

[brad31]

A couple of questions for the experts:

Which is rarer the one with or without the clearly visible bat? Or are they relatively 50/50?

Is it an actual correction or is it just that one card on the sheet shows a clear bat and the other is cropped differently like the one on the left above?

I have a raw card my dad gave me as a Christmas present in the late 80s. It has the clearly visible bat.

Thanks for the info. Always amazed at the knowledge on this board and always enjoy learning about Topps cards from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.

[JollyElm]

FYI: The disappearing bat is the rarer one.
There is a theory regarding it. If you look at the one clearly showing a bat, the magenta in the skin tones is clearly richer and more heavily saturated. Those hues are also evident in the bat, so if there wasn't enough magenta ('red') when the sheets were printed, the bat would fade into the sunset, so to speak, as it does on the 'no bat' card.

[GoldenAge50s]

Here is my example, w/ the bat clearly visable. Did not know of the other version!