1971 Topps Baseball Set Collectors- Card Centering Question

[Tere1071]

I'm at the point in my collecting where I probably won't pursue trying to complete anymore baseball card sets due to the expense. I'm going to put together lower grade Topps Football sets form 1970 and 71; plus, a 1-263 1972 collection. For my baseball card sets, I'm working on upgrades, particularly my 71 set.

I originally began collecting it as a vg/ex set, but I can never leave well enough alone, it turned into an overall ex-mint endeavor with 29 graded. Centering wasn't much of a priority until recently, now I'm going back and upgrading certain cards. I can live with 60/40 centering side to side and 70/30 top to bottom in near-mint condition. However, there are certain cards in the set that are difficult to find even with those requirements, not to the mention those which are subtly slant cut. Some of this would be eliminated if I were to go after cards graded 8 or above, but I cannot pay those prices.

So, here's the question: which cards in the 1971 Topps Baseball set have you found to be difficult to find centered, stars and commons alike?

Happy collecting!

Phil aka Tere1071

[jmoran19]

In general sheet corner cards are the toughest follow by edge cards. For 1971 cards that have a horizontal image are very hard to find centered. Especially Munson.

John

P.S. photos of the uncut sheets can be found here

https://mrpekrul.wixsite.com/narcissism/1971

[Tere1071]

Thank you, John for the reference. Yes, I saw many of the cards that I'm upgrading, particularly in the 4-6 series sheets.

Happy collecting!

Phil aka Tere1071

[jchcollins]

I would agree the ‘71 Munson is particularly difficult to find well-centered. I seem to see plenty of sharp copies of this card in shops and at shows, but many are MC or badly OC. ‘71 in general is a bear for centering. It’s not uncommon to find all of the stars badly OC. I had a particularly tough time with the #280 Fergie Jenkins card for whatever reason. The one that came with my set was like 95/5 s-s. I upgraded it eventually for a better centered one, but it’s still not perfectly centered.


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[JollyElm]

One that definitely flies under the radar in the world of tough-to-find-centered cards (at a cheap price, I mean) is the knuckling Hall of Famer, #248 Hoyt Wilhem.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

One that definitely flies under the radar in the world of tough-to-find-centered cards (at a cheap price, I mean) is the knuckling Hall of Famer, #248 Hoyt Wilhem.

I checked and my #248 was mostly spared by the centering gods for whatever reason…




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[inceptus]

Beckett used to publish a magazine called Graded Card Investor & Price Guide, and back in 2007 they did a nice data-rich piece on graded 1971 cards.

They focused on heavily/moderately/sparsely submitted cards, and among other things looked at tough cards within those respective cohorts. Within those tough card groups I suspect you'll see a lot of the cards that are difficult to find well-centered. (Claude Raymond was/is one of the more-notorious examples.)

Of course the data is almost 20 years old (!) at this point, but it's sill an interesting and potentially relevant read.

[Tere1071]

I made a list of approximately 75 cards that I found to be a bit more difficult to find centered. I'm not going to list all of the cards on my list, but here are some of them:

131 Blefary
133 Lolich
141 Quilici
187 Abernathy
246 Taylor
320 McNally
351 B. Williams
351 Shellenback
377 Garrett
451 Keough
513 Ryan
537 Egan
539 Brown
557 Satriano
564 Fitzmorris
568 Campisi
577 Lonborg
580 T. Perez
585 W. Davis
608 Wegener
617 Darymple
632 Jarvis
634 Regan
635 Murcer
650 Allen
651 Robertson
681 Butler
719 J. May
727 Lamb
734 Gardener
735 Shannon
750 McClain

More information to follow tomorrow PST.

Good night.

Phil aka Tere1071