The Magnificent Eleven

Yonks ago, I posted a combined checklist for the 1967 & 1968 Topps Baseball Discs, which also included the lesser known '67 San Francisco Giants Discs.  The two '67 sets (spoiler alert-go to the end of this post for "connected-ness")  have 24 subjects each, while the 1968 set has 28.  None of these were actually ever issued, they were all just proofs and internal materials runs for what was almost certainly an aborted set of Baseball Buttons.

There were 11 players who appeared in both the 1967 and 1968 all star sets, including Willie Mays who also was featured in the SF Giants set in addition to the two "regular" ones.  Willie in fact has more appearances in vintage Topps "oddball" sets than any other player of the time, but I digress. Other than those 11, (and Juan Marichal -- a yellow background in the SF Giants set and who was not a '68 subject) everybody else appeared in only one of the three sets, making the determination of the year of issue for the majority of subjects fairly easy.  As it turns out, there are enough differences between the 1967 and '68 common subjects to allow a further parsing of who and when.

First, let's look at this 1968 uncut sheet of 28 1968 Discs offered by Huggins & Scott some time ago-a thing of beauty it is:

Here is the rundown of differences, showing the 1967 disc for each against the '68 sheet above for comparison. Some are hard to differentiate while others are quite easy, as you will see below.

Hank Aaron 1967-No Cap; 1968-Cap:

Orlando Cepeda 1967-No Cap; 1968-Cap:

Roberto Clemente 1967-A small bit of white shows through the "O" in "Bob" and the middle and bottom bars of the last "E" in his name do not extend into the blue background, leaving a small bit of white uniform showing; 1968-No white shows in the "O" and the middle and bottom bars of the last "E" touch the extreme edge of his uniform, leaving no white before the blue background picks up. I will show a '68 (Howard Chasser's I believe) below the '67 as the difference is slight. Ignore the color differences, those are just scan-related I'd say:

Frank Howard 1967-last letter of last name "D" extends into the red background; 1968-"D" is on the uniform shoulder:

Mickey Mantle: 1967-OF; 1968-1B:

Willie Mays 1967: San Fran. Giants set (shown): bust looks straight at you on yellow background, 1967 Regular Looks Left "F" in OF is on uniform shoulder with blue background; 1968 Looks Left (same pose as '67), "F" is into blue background:

Brooks Robinson 1967-faces left; 1968-faces right:

Frank Robinson "1967-the"OF" "O" is all on the white uniform shoulder ; 1968-half of the "O" is in the red background

Ron Santo 1967-"C" in Cubs is touching his hat; 1968-"C" is clear of the hat:

Joe Torre 1967-"O" in "Joe" intersects with uniform trim; 1968-"O" is above trim

Carl Yastrzemski 1967- the "R" in "Red Sox" bleeds into the hat; 1968-the"R" is clear of the hat with red showing:

The Clemente, Frank Robinson, Santo and Torre are particularly hard to tell apart. Howard and especially Yaz are a little easier.

As for 1967, we know the Giants set is from that year (or at least the proof run) as it shares shiny space with the regular set:

Neat, huh?!

I Am Curious Yellow

All sorts of oddities pop up when it comes to Topps proofs.  There are rare proofs that are valuable, such as the 1977 Reggie Jackson-Orioles variation or 1967 Roger Maris-Yankees team version but many of them do not curry favor with collectors.  Another type of proof is the color progression proof, where Topps would print a subject in each discrete color in the proof stage and then sometimes combine two or more colors as they neared final printing.  One good example of this is this 1962 Baseball Stamp grouping:

I'm not sure where that came from-I've had this scan for ten years and cannot recall. That looks like a green/yellow progression.  There should be six colors in all I believe, for products of this era.  One piece I do have provenance for (because it's mine), is this 1967 San Francisco Giants Baseball Disc of Herman Franks:

It too is missing some color but has the black process, unlike the stamp proofs.  The Giants Discs were a distinct issue from the other 1967 Baseball Discs, which depicted Major League All Stars. Both Disc sets were only issued in proof form and the thinking is they were going to be turned into pins. I think a post on them is overdue and will have something in short order.

Happy New Year folks! 2013 will be a banner year around here, so stay tuned,