A truly rare piece of Topps history was recently hammered down at Heritage Auctions and it was a real doozy. Yup, an uncut sheet of the 1968 Basketball set popped up out of nowhere and went for just over an eye-popping $128,000, or a cool $2,900 per subject!
The sheet has the set printed twice:
Nuts, right? I believe it's a final production piece as the only markings are centering lines that appear smackdab in the middle of the sheet, top and bottom:
On the back, we get two complete puzzle images of the Big Dipper himself, Wilt Chamberlain:
The 44 card array is intriguing but certainly within the "11 X arrays Topps used at the time for their standard sized sets. I'm trying to match with some other B&W sets of the era to see if it may have been printed along with another test but I don't think that was the case as nothing else really matches up. I think then this is just how Topps printed them up for the test.
This is a really great piece of Topps history and while it's partially wrecked, I'm hoping the winner doesn't decide to chop it up but it certainly could happen.
1 comment:
I had always wished that Topps would have reprinted (knowing that I would never be able to own the original) this set at some point. There are is a dearth of 1960s basketball cards available - they only had to track down releases for 22 players and or their estates to get this done.
I always found it strange that the design was exactly like 1960 Leaf, and then in 1977 Renata Galasso would use the same design on her glossy greats (TCMA).
I always thought 2 things were possible 1) Topps did not actually design these cards and/or 2) there was a one person involved in the production of these sets.
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