And Then A Step To The Right

More REA goodness this week kids!

I love uncut sheets and there was a doozy in the April Robert Edward Auctions offering, namely a 1956 Topps Flags Of The World half sheet:

Uncut sheets often tell a story about production methods and this one is no exception. Topps used 110 card press half sheets in 1955-56, increasing from 100 card arrays in 1952-54 without changing their main card size, which at the time was referred to as Giant Size (2 5/8" x 3 3/4").  You would think then that a 100 or 110 card series or set would make a lot of sense but generally things didn't work that way.

If this was the annual Baseball issue, Topps would have another half sheet for each series, usually with a slightly different array. They most likely did these due to the sheer volume of Baseball sold each year vs other series like Flags and had a need to print things a certain way.  Some of the print arrays were influenced by packaging patterns as well.

Here, if you count columns from left to right, you can see 5, 6 &7 repeat as 9, 10, 11 and this corresponds with the 30 known double prints in the 80 card set.  But why leave a one-column gap (at #8) between the trio of repeats?   Compare with a sheet from an 80 card 1956 Baseball series 3 sheet:

Here it's a repeat of the 2, 3 & 4 columns in 9, 10 & 11 so the extras off to the one side seem to be something of a Topps Giant Size hallmark. Even on the first series of 1956 Baseball, which had 100 subjects, the one repeated column is the rightmost one on the known half sheet:

If we could find the other half sheets for 1956, I'd bet all the repeats are in the rightmost columns. Now, the question is, what did this allow Topps to do? I mean, every kid must have wanted an extra card of Warren Giles, right?!

Short Sheeted

Well campers, I was all set to compose a stultifying post on the intricacies of Topps legal entanglements with the American Chicle Company but that will have to wait for another day as something wondrous has happened.  Two 110 card half sheets of 1956 Topps Baseball have shown up in the current Clean Sweep Auction.  This is quite a development as mid 50's sheets are truly difficult pieces to obtain.

What has shown up are sheets from the 3rd and 4th series.  Here is the 3rd series one:

The sheets look odd because they are displaying horizontal cards but reading across, the columns (rows, really) are patterned A B C D E F G H B C D.  That's 30 subjects double printed and 50 single printed for a total series of 80.  The companion half sheet would have had a different array since there are no known short prints.  Instead, I think there is a good possibility the other half would have double printed the A E F G and H columns and then a random 3rd column.  Other arrays are also possible but I think the result would be 20 Short Prints no matter how you sliced it. There's so many 56's out there the short prints in this scenario (20 of them)  probably have not be noticed  Series 2, 3 and 4 in 1956 had 80 cards.  Series 1 had 100 cards to it so would have had 20 extra Prints.

Two checklists were issued in 1956, a Topps first now that Bowman had been vanquished and there were no gaping holes in the sets to worry about, nor stars, Stan Musial excepted, signed elsewhere.  With Bowman outpacing Topps by 1955, checklists could have had a negative effect by showing what was NOT going to be in the packs.  The checklists were "pushed" into the nickel and (presumably) dime cello packs) as they were not printed with the regular cards and show Topps had not yet developed the idea of lagging the series count against the sheet count, thereby allowing a preview of almost two dozen cards from the next series to be seen by the intrepid youths of the day.  That was a few years off still.  Here, see for yourself:

 

 

Here is the back of the 3rd series sheet:

The 4th series sheet exhibits the same pattern as the 3rd:

For the sake of completeness, here's the back of that one:

Topps also cut up some 1st series sheets to make very nice story displays promoting the 56's.. This scan is taken from the Spring 1982 issue of Baseball Cards magazine:

Thanks to all the Archivists out there who alerted me to this auction.