1952 Topps Baseball - Perspectives
 

Hi everyone! First post here on the forums, so please go easy on me. Over the past few months I've done a lot of research on the 1952 Topps baseball card set with the intent to provide something new, perhaps unexplored.

I would attach a pdf, but it's 100x the file size limit. Instead, there is a link to my free Substack for both parts. (This is not an advertisement for my Substack... it's free!) Please comment with insights and discussion. If I made any errors in my analysis, I'd like to know that as well, but not with flaming troll comments... those are so hurtful (LMAO).

Enjoy the read!

1952 Topps Baseball Cards - Perspectives (part 1) (part 2)

Saw it posted over on CU/PSA boards, figured you might end up here.

Since you asked, I think the big problem here is the repeated assumption that all cards are likely to be graded the same, which the entire rest is based on before you get to the uncut panels, leading to false conclusions.

Series 1 is heavily graded because it is littered with superstars. If one goes over the checklist for series 2 and series 3, there are a couple big name but mostly a dearth of anything but commons. Series 1 is stuffed with superstars and many of the other subjects are not commons, cards that are more popular for being minor stars or carrying a value more related to sequencing or picture (like Pafko and Zernial). It costs money to grade; the entire point of grading is to make money off the end result. The incentive to grade commons is much, much lower.

This is the same reason that series 6 doesn't look that rare in the grading analysis - high numbers are valuable cards, fairly expensive even in low grade and thus worth grading whereas they are not in previous series. The conclusion that "that there is no real scarcity that warrants their current market value" is not true. They exist in far lower quantity as anyone who has handled tons of these cards knows; but they are graded much more often precisely because they are tougher. You can see this in every set; look at the PSA population for Demmitt NY vs. Demitt St. Louis and you won't think Demmitt is all that tough. Is the easier card only twice as common? Not, not even remotely close. It's just expensive and thus worth grading more. The population of graded cards is an inherently biased sample towards $$$, not an unbiased count as you treat it.

"I don't believe there is a a significantly sized raw card pool to move the market, let alone affect the overall proportions of the graded population" is not true, for the same reasons. The comparison between Mantle and Mays to show that the highs are not really any tougher is heavily misleading - Mantle is a DP with 2x the quantity printed of all but 2 other of the highs and, again, while Mays is likely to be graded Mantle is even more likely to be graded as the biggest card in the post-war hobby and the most famous cash in.

"Total: 6220 raw cards readily available on the open market... maybe add 1000 from eBay and you can see there aren't very many remaining, let alone pristine examples that still need to be graded". I'm sorry, but there are a ton of ungraded 1952 Topps. The majority of 1952 Topps cards are not graded. The majority of pristine cards are graded, because that's where the cash is at, but you have gone far beyond the evidence to assert that the graded population is close enough to complete for all of the cards to use it as you have used it.

In terms of analysis, there are a lot of untrue assumptions, I agree. Same type of thing for the 131-190 gray backs. Much higher percentage of those are graded for the same reasons. Each one is worth about 40x the value of the white backs. Graded commons in mid-grade sell for $500. So there is more incentive to grade them and verify that they are gray backs (because sometimes it's not so easy to determine on the internet based on a scan/photo).

Are you really a data analyst? We should find something to collaborate on. I am a professional photographer. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...7f792bba7c.jpg

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk

I'd agree with Greg's sentiment regarding the grading of low grade gray backs and high series. You'd have to have you head examined if you don't belive high series are available in the same quantities. If you prerouse a local you are likely to find none, at the national you are likely to find 3 or 4 dealers with them one being 707 sportscard museum.

As far as the gray backs, yes they were printed first, but I'm not sold on the leftover stock idea. They key to grays being printed first is the Frank House yellow tiger variation and error. However they sometimes have a muddled or grayish front which previous series did not have.

Awesome responses folks! I expected to arouse some very strong comments and I was not disappointed!

So, here's my take. We have in this particular Topps distribution a lot of assumption and predisposition to observations that were made long ago (most specifically The Find by Al Rosen). When he tallied up the contents of the case, the COUNT(1) of distribution was interesting...some had double the numbers!

But my friends, ONLY one case? And we base the entire "rarity" on this! I submit that PSA/SGC numbers are more representative and concrete.

Here's a question: what if the case contents varied by region? Perhaps Mr. Rosen was only looking at part of the puzzle. As good analysts, we should strive to eliminate region as an independent variable.

Another Q: If the first three series 6 cards were "double printed", wouldn't it be fair to accept that besides 311, 312, 313, there might have been others? Say 314, 315 that would complete the "double printed" row, just like in Series 1? I daresay that the printing sheets are detrimental to this analysis.

But alas, I was only able to find two examples for Series 6 online. Perhaps if someone in this community had additional - I postulate there were 8 different sheets for Series 6. Also, if you have pictures of any Series 3 and 4 better analyses could be conducted.

I completely agree with sentiment though, finding Series 6 cards is difficult. Same with Series 5 - in my collection (sample size one lol) I have 25 Series 5 and ... 26 Series 6.

So, with theories that have persisted for so long, I expect that there will be mass resistance to any other theory (even if backed by data) that calls them into question, and perhaps worthy of a re-look.

And to my fellow collector who doubts my data analysis skills/experience, I doubt them as well. I've been in the business several years in determining ROI for online marketing and have lots to learn still, but this is (honestly) a very simple distribution analysis and I didn't get into crazy detail.

The bottom line is this: Is our long-held theory backed by actual numbers like my discussion? An honest answer may be difficult...

You leave completely unaddressed the actual issue raised - your obviously false assumption that the PSA pop report is an unbiased and nearly complete sample. Instead you choose to argue people won’t listen to a new theory, presumably because that’s a lot easier than dealing with the actual glaring logic problem. I have debunked hobby lore numerous times, what the hobby says is often wrong. You prove this via actual research however, not pretending all cards are graded equally. Data analysis that ignores the ignores the nature of the dataset is not useful data analysis, it’s fiction. The issue isn’t ‘mass resistance’ to your genius groundbreaking work, it’s that it’s built on a series of blatantly obvious false assumptions.

There were 8 different sheet layouts for series 6? Based on what? It would be a lot of extra work to accomplish absolutely nothing. It does not make sense that 314-315 are DP’d like 311-313, how are you going to fit 102 cards on a Topps sheet? This is ridiculous and groundless, to put it lightly. You can believe whatever you want, but nobody else is going to buy into this fantasy when you’ve just completely made it up.

Remember the instruction in post 1, Greg....go easy

That was easy :D

One of the other reasons we know what the double prints are is due to minor discrepancies in the image/printing plate from the first card on a sheet to the second. With how studied the 1952 set has been, we would know of many more copies with laces going different directions, missing pixels, etc if there were more.

Data analysis in a vacuum will not be accepted unless it is backed up with primary and secondary sources.

Good job Perry, interesting post and ensuing discussion.

The pop count for certain cards are slightly skewed by a number of factors. One collector recently put back into circulation, a number of cards that were hand cut in the 1980s from sheets. About 30 cards were graded as hand cut but several hundred cards that appeared to be NrMnt were sold raw by a popular seller on eBay. I was told by the original source of the cards that he had several hundred cards that were sold.

This makes me wonder if the same thing happened to the mid-series gray backs (#131-190) where you frequently see some cards, but rarely see others. You would think they were all printed in equal quantity - but that does not appear to be the case.

The black and red bavknwere printed separately, just just throw one black series out the window!

For high numbers, you couldn't subtract the low grade ones people have submitted since they are valueble in grades 1-3, as the Rosen find skewed the pop to have more higher grade high series.


No easy way to do it

Per a previous thread, Post 42 makes the suggestion that the 3rd series sheet was 10x10 layout with #131-170 double-printed on the sheet, while #171-190 rows were single-printed.
https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=128228

Looking at the 1952 Topps Pop Report, you would likely see lower average numbers of the cards graded in 171-190 (excepting the HOF/star cards). I would also expect to see a lower average grade for those cards, because people need any condition to complete the set, but will only send better conditioned cards for those are plentiful.

https://www.psacard.com/pop/baseball...52/topps/49722

What's with the #180 Charley Maxwell card? 940 or so graded, in nearly any condition. Just because he's a Red Sox player? Or was this considered a SP somewhere down the line which led to some mystique about the card?

Here's my counts by theoretical single-prints and double-prints.
<pre>
131-170 Count 660.2 Grade 5.924067314 Stars: House
171-190 Count 604.55 Grade 5.798411596 Stars: Reiser B Martin Maxwell</pre>

Seems to be backed up by the numbers. Lower average count, lower average grade (although I left the stars in the averages). Billy Martin has 2 times the number of cards graded otherwise in the 171-190 range.

Even though if that sheet layout is correct, the cards in the middle rows of the sheet are the double-prints, giving them a better shot at being centered.

I have no idea why Maxwell is popular, he was the last card I got building the white series because he carries a premium. He does not appear to be any scarcer.

This could be but there are general trends within the presumed single and double prints. I have been searching for cards between 171-190 for quite a while. Five of these cards appear to show up frequently, while the others do not. The same general trend appears in cards #131-170. Some gray backs like Judson, Dubiel and Rojek are found frequently, while others are not seen as often. This makes me think there is something else affecting the pop counts as well.

It's weird because 189 gray is tough. But 190 is more plentiful. I know the 177 and 181 are also some of the lowest graded among the gray backs. I assume they didn't change the sheet set up.

Maybe it's 171-179 and 181-189?

And if you look at some of the known variations in the non-gray back mid-series, you don't find them in the gray backs. #181 Swift PP is but one example. So this implies there were several times they stopped and corrected imperfections.

Maybe they also changed the single & double prints.....

Steveb could elaborate, but I think just fixing the small errors would be easier than retaking the whole sheet (photo?). That being said, I think they may have had to change the whole sheet to add the yellow on the pale yellow (no green throat) house card.

Sent from my SM-S918U using Tapatalk

That seems to make sense. However, if each mid-series gray back were double and single printed in equal quantities, how do we explain the rarity of certain cards like the Reiser gray back? There are several others that are quite scarce as well.

OK OK..
From memory tough ones
131
140
171
180
181
189


I can't make heads or tails out of it!


Sent from my SM-S918U using Tapatalk

I think you can draw some interesting conclusions from pop reports about card scarcity within the same series (eg. 171-190 having a shorter print run than the rest of the 3rd series, or the same for 281-300 in the 5th series). Pop reports are unquestionably the best tool available to judge surviving populations (and by extension scarcity). That said, pretending they are gospel truth is foolish.

If every card were submitted at the same rate, you could make some really meaningful conclusions, but that's not the reality. Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays are more valuable, and as such, are submitted far more often than Ray Scarborough or Eddie Yost. If I own a low grade Mantle, I'm going to grade it every time. I'm not doing that with a Yost.

The OP on some level recognizes this fact, but doesn't seem to grasp that that incentive doesn't just exist for Mantle and Mays, it exists for ALL of the 6th series in a way that it doesn't for any other series. A Sam White #345 in a PSA 2 is a ~$120 card. A Pat Mullin #275 (the apparent rarest card in the set) in a PSA 2 is a $20 card. Plenty of people are grading that White, while you're losing money by grading the Mullin in that condition.

It's a simple matter of dollars and cents, people don't like losing money.
There isn't enough return in low grades to justify grading a Mullin, so collectors aren't doing it. High series cards are valuable, and collectors spend the money to protect them and to try to lock in the value. The end result is the graded population of 5th series is disproportionately low, while the graded population of the 6th series is disproportionately high. It has nothing to do with actual scarcity.

It would depend on the error, and where in the process it hapened.

Errors on the original art would require reshooting at least one color to make a corrected mask.

Errors on the mask might be easily fixed, might not. Most are, but would require making a new plate for that color.

Errors that happened in platemaking would just require making a new plate. Or if it was super simple like a random spot it could just be stoned off the plate.


Most of the 1952 varieties seem like small stuff that slipped in while the plates were being made. It's fairly well known that they were done on 100 card sheets. What's not really known is if for say the first series 1-80 they did multiple sheets with different layouts, or if it was 80 plus 20 double prints.
The errors in that series are major, and probably from the mask being wrong, so they at least had to redo that for all four colors.

The gray backs are a 60 card series, so the simplest layout would be 60 plus 40 double prints, leaving 20 more difficult ones.
Unless they had a reason to play around with which ones were tougher, I can't see a reason to make new masks. That would be a fairly substantial expense.
Depending on timing, they probably made new plates, and errors that happen in that process would be different.

Steve,

Do you have any insight into whether a job like pre-production salesmen's samples would be shopped out to a smaller printer or whether Topps would print these in-house? The reason I ask is that the '52 Topps salesmen samples appear to be printed on the same gray paper stock and appear to have the most common type of fronts as most gray backs (dull grayish/brown hue).

I have always thought that the reason for different paper types i.e gray backs was due to contracting out a portion of the printing to another source, due to higher than anticipated demand.

It's possible. We can be fairly sure they did it a decade later because of the green tints, But by then they probably farmed out a portion of the production.
Some random pros/cons

If it wasn't so early, I'd think it was. But promotional stuff should have been done early to generate pre sales for series 1. So promos should be pre-demand. And doing them on cheaper stock makes some financial sense. Not much need to farm them out.

If I recall it right, the 51s come on two different stocks. That would be from two different runs, which seems backed up by the variations in the redbacks.
Different places? Or just different times?

I'm not sure what proofing Topps did early, but they were doing all sorts of proofing by the mid 60's. If their capacity was essentially the same, they would have had plenty of time to do promo stuff alongside the other sets and products they were printing for.