For some bizarre reason, I've never really put together the fact that the two 110 card first series slits are known for 1955 Topps Baseball. Topps had some interesting things occurring on their press sheets from the inaugural 1952 Baseball set on and things just got weirder each year.
1952 saw three double-printed high numbers, presumably due to Topps running out of viable players. By the time 1953 rolled around, Topps had already been in court several times with Bowman (and possibly other companies) and they hedged their bets a little, leaving a five number "punctuated equlibrium" gap as each series went on, backfilling subjects once their contract status was deemed airtight enough, although they got tripped up in the end, with a total of six numbers never being issued.
1954 saw some interesting gaps and a move to 110 card half sheets (which, forgetting Ferris Bueller's sage advice, I only realized about a month ago, thinking they were 100 card arrays per side for a very long and embarrasing time). The problem with 1954 is I do not know more than one slit, which had a gap where cards #151-175 did not make the slit. Although I based that on the idea the known slit was arrayed 10x10 and not 11x 10 I think that gap still holds up. I think Topps did this because the set size went down to 250 cards and, while a plan to keep gaps makes sense, they seemingly had a good enough grip on their players that year it wasn't required. So the trend was downward on set counts: 407, 274, 250.
Then we hit the planned 210 card 1955 set, a nadir for sure as Topps went below the Bowman set count for the first time since their direct competition started in '52. Bowman went big of course, issuing 320 cards and going out, on the baseball front at least, in a blaze of glory before their president, John Connelly, decided he wanted nicer things to play with.
As well all know, the 1955 Topps set lost four subjects in the high numbers, possibly printed but either way pulled and never to be identified, landing at a final count of 206 and making me think Mr. Connelly was still contemplating his next moves, which I don't think even he fully knew until the 1955 Bowman Football set got bum rushed by Topps. Here are the two "first series" slits and you will soon realize why I used quotation marks.
Here is the first slit, I think it's the "A" slit but but am not positive as there are no markings:
At least one other sheet with this array is known. The other slit, let's call it "B" but also the "double Spahn" for what will be obvious reasons:
That was posted over at
Net54 not too long ago. It looks so clean I thought it could be a digital recereation (and it very well may be) but this extremely old REA lot shows what I believe is the same sheet, as you can clearly see two Spahns stacked up in the lower right, even with the grainy shot (it was their June 25, 1993 auction). While it's likely enhanced by whoever shot the original, the Aaron to the right of Spahn and Ted William in the lower right corner of the REA sheet nicely confirms this sheet array is legit:
Also of interest, the backs on the LOTG sheet are misligned! At a guess, knowing that Topps printed the backs first, the Love of the Game sheet was likely a test for the obverse colors. Ordinarily, I'd say there's a chance the double Spahn sheet array was altered prior to final printing but a miscut card of ol' Warren, as noted in the Net54 thread, proves otherwise:
The proof is on the reverse, as the miscut stat line is clearly Spahn's:
In the thread on Net54, it's also noted a "double" miscut Hodges exists! He's #187 in the set as a high number, so Topps was clearly doing it on purpose (more below on this). Now, let's count together, from most to least:
FIVE IMPRESSIONS (1)
70 ROSEN
FOUR IMPRESSIONS (15)
14 FINIGAN
23 PARKS
29 WEHMEIER
31 SPAHN
58 RIVERA
59 ALLIE
61 JACOBS
62 KIPPER
67 MOON
80 GRIM
81 CONLEY
84 PASCUAL
86 WILSON
THREE IMPRESSIONS (30)
2 WILLIAMS
3 FOWLER
7 HEGAN
8 SMITH
10 KEEGAN
16 SIEVERS
18 KEMMERER
19 HERMAN
24 NEWHOUSER
26 GROAT
30 POWER
32 McGHEE
33 QUALTERS
34 TERWILLIGER
36 KIELY
39 GLYNN
45 SAUER
49 PORTER
57 O'DELL
63 COLLINS
64 TRIANDOS
66 JACKSON
72 OLSON
77 PORTOCARRERO
78 JONES
82 HARMON
83 BREWER
89 FRAZIER
100 IRVIN
106 SULLIVAN
TWO IMPRESSIONS (15)
5 GILLIAM
11 FAIN
13 MARSH
20 CAREY
25 PODRES
40 HOAK
41 STOBBS
47 AARON
50 ROBINSON
54 LIMMER
55 REPULSKI
74 BORKOWSKI
90 SPOONER
103 WHITE
105 DIERING
ONE IMPRESSION (35)
1 RHODES
4 KALINE
6 HACK
9 MILLER
12 THEIS
17 HOFMAN
21 GRAMMAS
22 SKOWRON
27 GRADNER
28 BANKS
37 CUNNINGHAM
38 TURLEY
42 McCALL
43 HADDIX
44 VALENTINE
46 KAZANSKI
48 KENENDY
52 TREMEL
53 TAYLOR
56 JABLONSKI
60 STONE
65 BOONE
68 DAVIS
69 BAILEY
71 GOMEZ
73 SHEPARD
76 POLLET
79 SCHELL
85 MOSSI
87 HOUSE
88 SKINNER
102 WESTLAKE
104 HARSHMAN
107 ROBERTS
108 WALKER
ZERO IMPRESSIONS (14)
15 PENDLETON
35 JOLLY
51 HUGHES
75 AMOROS
91 BOLLING
92 ZIMMER
93 BILKO
94 BERTOIA
95 WARD
96 BISHOP
97 PAULA
98 RIDDLE
99 LEJA
110 ZERNIAL
It looks like Topps plugged in both the puncuated equilibrium and consecutive number gap processes at the same time in 1955! Nos. 15, 35, 51, 75 and 110 from the former method and nos. 90-99 using the latter, with 14 "no prints' resulting. There's a lot of single prints and even a 5x player in Al Rosen, so clearly whatever the next "series" was should have included these, perhaps leaving some gaps they hoped to fill in, until the last series came and they were bereft of any further subjects, leaving 175, 186, 203 and 209 to never see the light of day. Presumably some of the 2x prints were trued up a bit as well but that's not a guarantee. Given the "divide by 5" look to the tranches (and Rosen plus the zeroes add to 15) it looks pretty well planned out to me, even though the arrays are all over the place. Just look how parts of a couple columns repeat elsewhere, the random placements like Spahn and the plethora of single prints.
APOLOGIES: There is some kind of weird formatting problem going on with this post. Please see the continuation of it here.
