Mystery 1978 Carlton

[Crossfire]

I was going through my 78 Topps cards and my eye caught something odd about this graded Carlton card. It has larger white borders compared to other 78s. Seems like the pic is slightly smaller with the borders larger. All the rest looks normal (looked at print and pic with magnifier).I am puzzled and have considered this was sheet cut but I don't think that explains it. Looking for comments.

[deweyinthehall]

Weird - the image looks identical from your graded sample to this image from the Card Cyber Museum - in other words no cropping differences. What this means (considering those borders ARE too wide) is that the image (including the artistic elements) was either printed smaller on this sample, or the card in the slab is larger than the standard size in both dimensions. Neither one seems plausible - I've never seen any other example of uniform image shrinking (though others here have far more experience than I), and if the card were that much bigger there would have been slabbing issues, to say nothing of the fact it would be a major miscut.

So the only thing I can conclude is that this is a reprint card and someone at BVG was really asleep at the switch. I have seen other Topps reprints over the years (1997 Willie Mays reprints in particular) that have a smaller image than the original.

Be interesting to see the reverse.

[deweyinthehall]

On further inspection - the Carlton in the slab looks loose, like it doesn't make it to the frame edges. A smaller sample? Still would mean it's a reprint. Again the back image would be helpful.

[swarmee]

Beckett is well-known for grading sheet cut cards with number grades. It's the most likely answer IMO, since if it was packed out, it would have been larger than the other cards in the pack and therefore much more likely to get corner and edge wear. Occam's Razor.

[swarmee]

I don't think it's counterfeit or the image is smaller. You can see easily that the are two versions of the slab being used on those two cards having much different space available for the card, like they had to increase to a 1952 Topps sized internal area to hold the card.

[Crossfire]

Dimensions are (hard to measure through case) appear to be 2 9/16 by 3 9/16. Don't be fooled by comparing the cases, Becketts cases and space have varied over the years. Does not appear to be a reprint.

[Crossfire]

Side by Side Psa 9 vs the Bvg 9.5

[Crossfire]

Image on Both Carltons appear to be the same size. I am leaning towards a sheet cut card with a extra 1/16 on each side.