Presenting the concluding part six of an ongoing series examining the use of short prints and double prints by Topps in their vintage era; part one can be found HERE, part two HERE, part three HERE, part four HERE and part five HERE. Today Mark Pekrul is taking a long look at the 1973 to 1993 press sheets for the annual Topps Baseball sets, a time when more cards were added in each successive year and also brought Topps just about to the end of issuing sports cards in series. Mark, who posts as “deweyinthehall” on Net54 Baseball has dug into these along with a couple of other stalwarts over there and worked to reconstruct most of the print arrays for all Topps Baseball series from roughly 1955 to 1970 (1971 and 1972 are mostly known but will be covered here nonetheless). This work has essentially been compiled independently of anything I’ve posted previously. Mark maintains a website that covers Topps Baseball sets from 1965 to 1994 in some commendable depth as well, CLICK HERE to be transported.
As a reminder, from 1957 through 1995, all Topps standard-sized (i.e. 2.5 x 3.5 inches) sets, sports and non-sports alike, were printed on sheets containing two large blocks of cards, 11 columns by 12 cards each. This created discrete groups of 132 cards, in many cases giving us complete set counts which are very recognizable today – 132, 264, 396, 528, 660 and 792. Some early hockey and football sets, as well as many non-sports sets, had only 66 cards – exactly half of 132.
Therefore, when we hear the term “uncut sheet” today, we typically think of a roughly 2' x 4' array of 132 cards. However, a full standard-sized uncut sheet was twice as large, and had 2 groupings of 132 cards (as above). The outside margins were white (even for sets with colored borders, such as 1971 or 1962) and contained various notations including positioning and cutting guides and other errata. They eventually even featured commodity codes, just like Topps used for cases, boxes and packs.
Down the middle ran a thick white space called the “gutter” – full sheets were sliced down the gutter before each half-sheet, or ‘slit’, was then fed into a cutter.
Each slit contained 12 rows of 11 cards. For ease of reference, we can label the rows A-L and columns 1-11. Any card position can then be designated as A-1 (far upper left), L-11 (bottom right), and so forth, as shown below.
Here is the final, big burst:
1973 Topps Baseball – 660 Total Cards in Set
Series 1: 1-132, 132 different cards
Series 2: 133-264, 132 different cards
Series 3: 265-396, 132 different cards
Series 4: 397-528, 132 different cards
Series 5: 529-660, 132 different cards
In addition to a card count reduction of more than 100, 1973
marked the first year Topps’ baseball card set was not issued exclusively by
series. Depending upon where you lived
in the country, you may have still waded through the set series-by-series as
the year went along, or you may have received both card #1 and card #660 in the
same pack in March. Further, 1973 was
the first year where, even if you received cards by series, the checklists were
not reprinted in successive series, allowing each series to include exactly 132
different cards. Thus, a nice round 660
(132x5) cards in the set.
Probably because of these differing packaging and distribution
processes, most series were printed in two different ways.
We know that series 1-4 were each printed in blocks of 66
cards across a full sheet:
Slit A: A, B, C, D, E, F, A, B, C, D, E, F
Slit B: G, H, I, J, K, L, G, H, I, J, K, L
We also know each was printed such that a single slit
contained all 12 different rows, A-L top to bottom.
These images from series 3 illustrate this:
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For series 5, all we have are the two 66-card block
slits. There is no evidence that series
5 was ever printed in a full 132-card fashion.
What may explain this is that the 66-card block sheets were
used for series-by-series distribution, while the 132-card slits were used for
all-at-once distribution. If this is so,
each 132-card slit might have been paired with a 132-card slit from another
series on a full sheet. We don’t have
any full-sheet images so this is speculative.
In such a scenario, series 1&2 and 3&4 would be
captured on two different full sheets.
When series 5 hit the presses, there was no need to pair with another
series (or manner to do so without creating print volume disparities from
series to series). Hence, all we have
for series 5 is the 66-card block formulation from which both types of
distribution were drawn.
1974-1977 Topps Baseball – 660 Total Cards in Each Set
Gone were series.
All 660 cards appeared on one of five 132-card slits. With exception of slits containing Traded cards in 1974 and 1976, it is believed that each full sheet featured two identical slits, with one having indicia containing a single * on back and the other **.
What bears mentioning is how Topps managed the Traded set in
1976.
In 1974, evidence suggests that the 44-card Traded sets were
printed separately from the main set, with three full sets per slit (four
11-card rows repeated in blocks, three times per slit).
In 1976, however, Topps took a different route. One of
the regular full sheets (with two slits formatted A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J,
K, L) was reformatted such that each slit appeared (T=Traded Card Row):
Slit A: TA, TB, A, B, C, TA, TB, D, E, F, TA, TB
Slit B: TC, TD, G, H, I, TC, TD, J, K, L, TC, TD
This is illustrated in the images below. Topps likely reduced the print run of the normal version of this full sheet in order to avoid over-prints.
1978-1981 Topps Baseball – 726 Total Cards in Each Set
Remember that just a few years after MLB expanded from 20 to
24 clubs, Topps shrunk its sets from nearly 800 cards down to 660. In 1978, the year after the Mariners and Blue
Jays were introduced, Topps finally felt it was time to expand their set sizes
again, but for whatever reason didn’t expand by a full slit of 132 additional
cards. Instead, they only went with 66
more cards, for a total of merely 726 cards per set.
Adding just 66 cards created a challenge when formatting
slits and sheets – do they print a 6th slit with all 66 new cards
printed in blocks, two per slit? Do they
over-print six rows from the other five slits on a new 6th slit, and
add the new 66 cards below or above them?
Nope.
What Topps actually did was expand to six slits, and feature
a single double-printed row on each.
This would give each of the six slits 121 total cards, and, doing the
math, this gets us to 726 cards in the set.
So, from 1978-1981, each set features 66 cards which are
double printed. All 24 slits from these
sets feature a row pattern of:
A, B, C, D, E, E, F, G, H, I, J, K:
The 24 double-printed E rows are:
1978:
1979:
1980:
1981:
So, if you recall getting an excess of certain cards as you
were busting packs in these years (and I sure do), you now have a good idea
why.
Also, 1978 was when Topps began affixing a lettered code
near the copyright data on each card’s reverse.
Letters A-F were used and they corresponded to which slit from which the
card was cut. In the example from 1978
earlier in this section, this is the F slit from that year, and each card it
contains features a little “F” on the reverse.
This system held through 1992, after which Topps began mixing and
matching blocks of cards with different letter codes on the same slit.
Beyond
From 1982-1992, Topps sets featured 792 cards. Each set was cut from six different slits,
lettered A-F, which each featured 132 different cards, as in this example from
1983:
In 1993, Topps began issuing its base sets in two separate
series, and started using slits which featured cards with more than a single
print code letter on the reverse.
Finally, in 1996, Topps changed things up completely and for
the first time since 1956 did not utilize 132-card slits at all.
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This concludes Mark's look at a multitude of Topps sheet arrays. We'll have a wrap-up/update post next time out.
