Monday, October 13, 2008

Between The Buttons

I have had, for the longest time, a scan in GIF format, of a 60 "button" uncut proof sheet (missing 4) of the 1956 Topps Pin Set.




I believe this was from a Topps Vault auction, as was the detail below:



The GIF was always hard to read but I finally deciphered the uncut sheet and found out something surprising; my assumption that three of the missing proofs were the short printed Diering, Lopez and Stobbs pins was wrong. All three of those actually reside in the bottom row. I created a schematic of the sheet to make things easier. Leftmost five columns first, then rightmost five.

Leftmost:

KALINE WEHMEIER AARON BOYER RIVERA
GOMEZ POWER SAUER LONG KENNEDY
BOONE FINIGAN SULLIVAN PAULA BANKS
MOSSI (MISSING) A. SMITH O'BRIEN HATTON
(MISSING) (MISSING) (MISSING) DONOVAN HADDIX
MOON STOBBS TURLEY HEGAN MIRANDA

---------------------------------------------------------------
Rightmost:

COLLINS HOUSE FOWLER TRIANDOS SIEVERS
ROSEN AMOROS CONLEY GROAT MATHEWS
ROBINSON SPAHN HARSHMAN TREMEL BLACK
SPOONER ZERNIAL JENSEN BERRA M. SMITH
SNIDER H. SMITH McMILLAN ARROYO HODGES
LOPEZ MAYS RIZZUTO NEGRAY DIERING

I have to wonder if the three short printed pins were damaged in the production process, maybe they were at the points the sheet was "grabbed" during cutting and printing. The fact they are all in the bottom row is pretty interesting.

The four missing pins are: Hofman, Kluszewski, Skowron and Williams.

Here is a closeup of a proofed Zernial from a different sheet:




Here is the only thing on this page that is mine, from my subset of Dodgers, which shows how they look as issued:




Such a great set-too bad only 60 of the 90 planned pins were issued. The pack graphics feature Ted Williams; sadly I had a great scan of a pack that was lost when my hard drive crashed last year. I'll post it here if I find it again.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

For Cardinals fans - I had to learn the hard way that the Hal Smith in this set is not the Cardinals Hal Smith, but the Orioles Hal Smith. I spend several dollars on the Hal Smith and didn't know it until I got it in the mail. Should've looked closer.

Shane