1968 Topps Baseball Design

[onlyvintage62]

I know we are speculating but what do you think drove Topps to change the 1968 Baeball Design after thr first series. I mean there had to be some reason. Was it sales, feedback.

Just curious as to your opinions.

[Harliduck]

I'm just about done with that set now, and never noticed that. I obviously have no idea, although I like the stronger "burlappy" look of the first series better than the toned down rest of the set. Maybe I am in the minority.

Thanks for posting this, again, I had no idea and didn't notice it...

[Sean]

I don't know what changed in the '68 Topps set, and in this forum I'll bet I'm not the only one.
Can you show us an example?

[Chris Counts]

I like the second design better than the first, but how about putting this in the post-war section?

[bobsbbcards]

I like the wider-meshed burlap of the 1st series as well.

[toppcat]

I've always wondered if they had issues with the brown color in the first series. Brown seems to have caused Topps some issues over the years and juts a WAG but it does seem odd. They also changed the look of Football in '69 between series 1 and 2 from full bleed to white borders for some reason, so someone at Topps (Ben Solomon most likely) must not have liked the original look of each set.

[ALR-bishop]

In 1968 Topps also produced a special run of some of it's baseball, football and hot rod cards for a Milton Bradley Win A Card board game. There were 76 cards in the baseball subset which had the same fronts as their regular set counterparts, except for 49 Brinkman and 66 Cox, which have yellow team names. They are often treated as variations to the regular 68 set, but in fact are just MB cards

The chief way to tell the difference between the MB cards and their regular counterparts are the backs. MB card backs have light yellow as opposed to orange/gold backs. However, this phenomena is sometimes repeated in higher series regular cards which occasionally are offered, incorrectly, as MB cards. The game cards go no higher than card 195.

Back to topic. There is one variation to the MB baseball set. Card 107, the second checklist can be found with either wide or fine mesh as in the different series examples above. Meaning you really need 77 cards to have a full MB set...and you may not get it by buying a complete game.

I owe knowing about this variation and getting one, to MB master collector Carlton Miller: