1971 Topps 5th Series Double Prints?

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

As for the checklists, they throw off counts as Topps would indeed preview an upcoming series and either number such a checklist as part of a prior series and/or include a extra printed list from a later series on a prior series sheet.

You can tell because in '71 there should be multiples of 132 ending the first 4 series, i.e. 132, 264, 396, 528 but they actually end 132, 263, 393, 523.

Once Topps started printing checklists as separate cards in 1961, for the next nine years the first series would always be 1-109 when it should have gone to 110. This is because they would wedge in a preview checklist from a later series, reducing the count to 109. This is a major source of 1960's and eraly 70's checklist variations, by the way. I believe this is one of the 1963 first series sheets, it looks like 3 different checklist cards are on it:



The checklists are the only thing breaking up the unity of 11 card rows in Topps baseball sets from this era (57 through the UV cards). Some of their non-sport and test sets would not follow the 11 card rows arrays but in their standard baseball sets it seems they never strayed from it.