Triple Your Pleasure, Triple Your Fun - The Theory of Checklist Relativity Part 2 (Now With Bonus Series Preview Theory!)

In our last adventure, I left you all hanging a bit on the 58's but with good reason. There is another facet of the Theory of Checklist Relativity to be touched on, namely variations on the cards proper.

Part 1 showed us four team cards in the 1958 semi high, or fifth series with two different types of checklists on their backs. Thanks to Friend o'the Archive Doug Goodman, here is a complete run of the four checklists that give you the players in alphabetical order (well, 439 cards since #145 Ed Bouchee was pulled due to an arrest and never appeared in the set):









You will notice that those cards are out of sequence; the highest shows the low part of the alphabet and vice versa! Now I am looking at a 66 card semi high series but there is a germane question I cannot answer. Were all five first series cards printed in 88 card runs or did the first run have 110 cards in it, thereby previewing 22 cards from the next series until everything comes back together at the end of the (66 card) fifth series? Don't forget all the major price guides show a 110 card first series so the next series preview theory may be viable.

Why is this germane, you may ask? Well the four team card checklists above obviously have numerical counterparts which have a 7 or 8 times price kicker when compared to the alphabetical versions. That indicates a definite and deliberate short print pattern on the numerical backs.

If they were printed in a single series, locked in run of 88 cards (i.e. the series and the run match up excatly from one through five) then there would be three of each team card front on a 264 card master uncut sheet. Then, in a scenario where the A/B/A B/A/B pattern is at work, one 44 card batch of cards could contain the four team cards with numerical reverses. Conversely, a 66 card series run on 264 card master sheets would yield identical A/B patterns of 66 card substrate. However, a third choice presents itself.

What if Topps only planned a set of 440 cards in 1958 and then they managed to sign Stan Musial with just enough time to rush a card of him out? The alphabetical lists stop at 440, indicating finality to the planned set. Topps obviously made a big deal about signing Musial out of the regional card wilderness in 1958 (he had not appeared in a nationally distributed set since 1953 Bowman) since they advertised this fact on the four numerical team card backs from the 66 card semi high series. Finally, the '58 high numbers are readily available and do not command any significant premium, indicating a full run of cards was printed after the first 440.

If that's the case, then it seems clear they had no time nor the stable of players (there were only around 400 active roster major leaguers in 1958) to compose a full 55 card series so the braintrust at Topps came up with the Sport Magazine All Star cards so they could get Stan into the set at the last minute and also fill out the high numbers. The timing of this indicates Musial's signing had to come after the All Star selections were made in 1958. They also added 34 no-names (at the time) to the 21 All Stars to give us a 55 card high number series, most of whom had limited playing time prior and therefore required minimal stats on their cards. I admittedly have not researched the service time of each of these 34 players and don't own any '58 highs but the names don't seem to include too many veterans.

This brings us back around again to the short printed numerical backs. I think it likely that once the final 55 card series was green-lighted that the final run of semi highs resulted in a change from the alphabetical checklists to the numerical ones with the Stan Musial announcement and then maybe just one side of the full master sheet at that.

There is more to the Musial All Star card and I'll get to that in a minute but first, since the mighty Punk Rock Paint blog gave us a shout out on the checklists and I'm riffing on them while cranking out some Leatherface in homage, which always puts me in a good mood, I'll show all four numerical counterparts, even though I had one scanned last time:









Those are all courtesy of Mr. Goodman by the way.

We also know the Musial AS card was triple printed and so was the Mantle AS. How Topps did this was a bit odd and violates the 11 card row theory (boy, I gotta lotta theories, huh?) but they pulled four regular player cards and subbed in the extra prints of the Mantle and Musial All Stars. I first encountered this in the February 23, 1996 issue of Sports Collectors Digest:



Here, see for yourself:



Those three rightmost cards are the Mantle All Star:



And thanks to the miscut I believe Stan the Man resides directly below the Mick in all three columns:



That Red for AL, Blue for NL background is consistent although since the Yankees lost the '57 World Series I find it curious that the All Star Managers card has a red (AL) background but so it goes. Topps had to create slots for the triple prints so they pulled four cards. #443:



#446:



#450:



and #462:



By the way, the array of the Mantle and Musial cards seems to indicate Topps cut and packaged cards based upon the vertical columns and not the rows. Had they been horizontally focused, the triple prints would seemingly yield to poor distribution in the packs. Intriguing.

We get into some weird short print/over print scenarios with 55 cards. You could have 44 cards appearing five times and another 11 appearing four times on a 264 card master sheet, or you could have two identical sheets with 22 extra printed rows per 132 card half sheet, a possibility here given how the triple prints play out. The triple printed rows may just be the orphaned 22 card rows on each half sheet

I would also offer that, given the low price kicker on the short printed cards (only about a third more in value than a regular high number common) one half sheet may not have lost the rows with the four players shown above.

There was also some type of mail in premium in 1958 where Topps (or someone) sent out partial sheets. I wish I had better scans but I don't:





There are also variations in the low numbered cards involving team and player names being white or yellow but that is definitely fodder for another day. And don't forget the Pancho Herrera "error" card, which I think is merely the result of a printing mishap and will also have to wait for another post.

Check All Of The Above - The Theory of Checklist Relativity Part 1

Back to the subject of Checklists today campers, specifically from 1958, the year major league baseball became bi-coastal and the Topps cards really started to show their colors. It also marks the beginning of what I call the Theory of Checklist Relativity, or TCR for short.

As we know, Topps started printing cards on 132 card half sheets in 1957. These were always arrayed in 12 rows of 11 cards each. You would think this would lead to nice, even 132 card series but it never, ever did in the baseball sets. Without looking at an uncut sheet it would be hard, if not impossible to see which cards were printed with each other. However, thanks to the way Topps printed their checklists we have a window to peer through.

I managed to track down my tearsheet from the January 22, 1999 issue of Sports Collectors Digest which detailed Mr.Mint's October 1998 "Philly" find of about 200 uncut sheets (mostly partials but some 132 card half sheets were found) from the second series of 1957 baseball cards. If you remember or saved that issue, just beware that the sheets shown on the cover were reconstructed as virtually all sheets from the find were damaged, some quite heavily.

We can see how both halves of the full 264 card sheet when reconstructed yield three copies of each card, in what I call an A B A / B A B pattern, with each letter representing a distinct group of 4 rows of 11 cards. This is one half sheet (Mantle is rightmost in the second and tenth rows, so he appears in the A grouping):



So the pattern is A B A. Here is the other half sheet sheet with Mantle rightmost in the sixth row, with a B A B array. You can see how the A B A / B A B pattern works when comparing the two:



There was a closeup detail or description of about a dozen cards which show they ran from numbers 90 to 170 so I feel safe in saying the 88 cards from the second series were all printed together and that the first four series in 1957 were 88 cards each, which exactly matches the checklists. The fifth and final series of 55 therefore also checks out using this reasoning.

I am not certain if Topps co-mingled series in 1957. I suspect they may have but don't have access to unopened pack runs. It does seem certain that they were seeing if the checklists would be a good way to advertise the next upcoming series.

In 1958 they did something different and started a trend that would continue through 1972, occasionally refined, where the series runs didn't match what was on the uncut sheets. In addition, the team card backs became home to player checklists which continued through 1960.

The information on the 1958 checklists in the major price guides gives us the following series runs and totals:

Series 1: 1-110 (110 cards)
Series 2: 111-198 (88 cards-#145 Bouchee pulled so an extra print of someone added)
Series 3: 199-286 (88 cards)
Series 4: 287-374 (88 cards)
Series 5: 375-440 (66 cards)
Series 6: 441-495 (55 cards)

The checklists tell a different story though, revealing five 88 card series on the backs of the team cards:





Those show numbers 177-264 belonging to series three and a look at all five confirm that the first five checklists had 88 cards listed on them. This is why I call it the Theory of Checklist Relativity; they are showing series that are different relative to the uncut sheets or what is shown in the major price guides.

What does it all mean? Well, I'm going to be a tease and put that part of the discussion off until my next post, which will delve into the '58 uncut sheets and their assorted mysteries. Not gonna leave you totally hanging though, let's look at series "6" before we go.

The four team cards that appear after #440 (Redlegs, Orioles, Braves, Tigers) come two ways as you can find a numerical checklist or an innovative alphabetical one:

The alphabetical cards that showed the numbers of your favorite players spread out over four cards so you could track them down:



They only go up to #440 though, or exactly five runs of 88 cards each. As you can see on this numerical checklist back, something was afoot in the sixth series:



So, where oh where is the checklist for the Sport Magazine All Stars? Why on the back of the All Star Managers card,of course!





That is from checkoutmycards.com kids, the only site I could find with a back scan.

Those all star cards are one of the reasons I am holding off the rest of this discussion until next time. See you soon!