[Kevvyg1026]

DPs occur certainly in Series 1 for every year through 1969, whether or not they are listed in price guides. This is because Series 1 had 110 cards printed in the sheet (checklist 1 was printed twice, so cards 1-109), with 42 of those cards printed 3x in the sheet, 66 cards printed twice within the sheet, and the checklist 1 printed 6 x in the sheet. The cards printed 3x in this series are the ones sometimes labeled DPs in the current price guides (e.g., 66 Rose, Hunter, or Mantle).

In 1967, the series 534 - 609 has DPs labeled in current price guides. This has not yet been completely explained, but I suspect that the DPs are because there were 44 cards printed 4x, 22 cards printed 3x, and 11 cards printed twice within the 264 card sheet. The cards printed 4x are the DPs.

Although in earlier years (i.e., 50s), Topps might insert a second copy of a card in a different row, no uncut material that I have seen from 1961-1969 exhibits this procedure. In other words, a row of 11 cards maintains the same 11 cards every time that row shows up in the sheet.

To answer your second question, if the printing for 1963 was done as series 6 (447 - 522) and series 7 (523 - 576), then series 6 would need to have an extra 22 cards printed (6R, 9Y, and 7B) in order to match border colors or, alternatively, there would have to be 11 cards short printed (5 fewer cards with red border, 2 less yellow border, and 4 less blue border). Those 22 cards would be DPs or the 11 cards would be SP.

Similarly, series 7 would require an additional 11 cards printed, with a border color of 4R, 3Y, and 4B to be DPs in order to have the border colors match up.

As I mentioned earlier, there is a conflict between price guide information, vendor cases & other anecdotal information, and the print pattern requirements since the border colors must occur in multiples of 11 for the print series.

Hopefully, someone will come forward with some uncut material that can help resolve the conflict. But I also find it interesting that if the printing really was as 447-511 and 512 - 576, then all borders and insets colors occur in multiples of 11, as they should, and no SPs or DPs exist.