Mystery Dating

Every once in a while, as I'm looking through my supply of older hobby publications and various saved scans, I find something that makes me scratch my head, either in wonder and/or dismay that I'd never stumbled across a specific piece before. The two I'm focusing on today all pertain to 1952 Topps Baseball, with each falling into the "wonder" category.

Kicking off, we have this partial from an uncut sheet offered by Robert Edward Auctions in the Fall of 2017, which does not seem to have been addressed in any kind of detail anywhere since it popped up eight years ago. Everybody collecting or following this set knows that the first 80 cards that year can be found with wither red or black backs, then series two, which ran from numbers 81-130, made the switch to red permanent. The thought has always been that those first 80 cards were a discrete printing, which I'd imagine is due to the black/red flip-flop. What then to make of this bad boy:

If you have not fully memorized the checklist, the fuzzed out reverse will reveal why I'm showing this particular piece:

The top row (bottom row on the flipped front) has cards running from 81-85 above a second row with numbers 76-80; those sneaky so-and-so's at Topps were subbing in rows from series two at some point! Hopefully additional partials are out there that might show how far they took this.

Next, an old 1998 auction from Ron Oser was posted by the user "postwarcards" over on Net54 a little while back:

Those are the graphics from the 1951 Baseball Candy set:

Then, if you click through to the link to Net54 above then click on another link in that thread, you come to this:

Several of the listed players were not in the 1951 sets but all of them were in the landmark 1952 release.  Couple that with the fact the 1951 cellos held 16 cards...

 ...these examples sure seem like 1952 Trading Card Guild Baseball cello boxes with 15 cards offered for a dime, sans bubble gum, which is how the Guild rolled.

It's pretty cool that, despite the mountains of information in the hobby concerning the 1952 Baseball set, there's still some surprises to be found.