Topps 1968 Milton Bradley set

[goheels]

Mark,
Here's a picture of a Brooks MB with a top border (lower part of the Ron Mix card). For whatever reason, there aren't many Brooks cards cut with the border. I have about 30 Robinson MBs and only a few with this border.

[goheels]

Here is one of my two PSA 8 Robinsons. Came from my "Game 7" purchased for a minimal sum over 20 years ago from an antique/toy dealer in the midwest. I have a couple raw cards that may equal or surpass this one but I did think this one was undergraded. To date this game has yielded 8 PSA 9 cards, still have some more to be graded. I thought the centering was perfect on this one.

[goheels]

For my MB auto collection I tried to get cards with borders. Brooks signed this for me years ago. Very gracious.

[kickstand19]

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Here are a couple 2014 Topps 75th Anniversary Buybacks I located when Series 1 broke a few months back. Good illustration of how mainstream these cards are. I thought they were pretty cool...

[Mark70Z]

Originally Posted by goheels

Mark,
Here's a picture of a Brooks MB with a top border (lower part of the Ron Mix card). For whatever reason, there aren't many Brooks cards cut with the border. I have about 30 Robinson MBs and only a few with this border.

You really shouldn't have more Brooksie MB's than a Brooks collection... So if you ever make a reduction to the 30, please let me know.

Thanks so much for posting the Brooks MB cards; I really enjoyed the view...

[goheels]

You can barely see the white border at the left, almost perfect centering.
Second card is nice too. Both came straight from games and went to storage years ago. Fortunately, both of these cards came from the middle of a stack that had a relatively loose rubber band. Smaller rubber bands have taken great looking cards down to a PSA 6 from the indentations on the side.

[horzverti]

The card in the middle is a reg Topps card and the cards on the left and right are Milton Bradley versions.

You can see that the Milton Bradley issues have yellow backs and the regular Topps has the orangish back.

The Milton Bradley version often has a more orangish red color and the reg Topps version will have a deeper true red color printing of 1968 Rookie Stars.

These MBs are by no means plentiful and should demand a higher premium. Sure they can be found on eBay, but I don't think their current prices reflect accurately on their scarcity. It is no secret that MBs exist, but I think we should expect their demand to increase as they become more regarded as necessary in the 1968 Master Set.

I feel that the 1968 Milton Bradley cards are an absolute gem of an issue. Thanks for the great thread.

[horzverti]

Heels, those are gorgeous MB Ryans!

[Bestdj777]

Anyone know what the deal is with the 68 Mantle? My understanding is that there was no MB version, and it is not on the checklists I've seen, but I have seen pictures of what was represented as a MB version.

Thanks,

Chris

[goheels]

I have seen the picture and website you are referring to. There aren't any MB Mantles, never were. All the cards were taken from the 1st and 2nd series. I have opened up 8 games to date in my lifetime--about 800 cards in total. That should average 6 cards each (800/132=6.06). In that grouping I have a few cards with only 3, maximum 9, about what you would expect statistically. No Micks.

[Bestdj777]

Originally Posted by goheels

I have seen the picture and website you are referring to. There aren't any MB Mantles, never were. All the cards were taken from the 1st and 2nd series. I have opened up 8 games to date in my lifetime--about 800 cards in total. That should average 6 cards each (800/132=6.06). In that grouping I have a few cards with only 3, maximum 9, about what you would expect statistically. No Micks.

Thanks for confirming. I really appreciate it. Not sure where those pictures from--photoshop?--but they had me searching for a bit for a Mantle. I'm very glad I won't have to shell out the money for one though.

[goheels]

Vorzverti,

You bring up a great question about the possible difference in the front of the cards. Your two Ryan MBs sure look different.

If you look at my two, one is orange looking and the other is red. I looked at my Ryans and I don't see a pattern.

A better test was the 155/156 World Series cards. I had exactly 6 regular WS 5 and 6 cards each to compare with 28 and 25 MB cards respectively. I think that's a good sample size. I don't see a difference in the cards. Some look like red and some like orange.

I did a decent look at cards 7,8,10 (leader cards with red/orange tops) and the lettering for the Indians Rookies/Tigers Rookies, both Marichal check list cards, and Dodgers/Yankees cards which have red circles. Didn't see a difference. It would be nice if picking out MBs were that easy.

Al Richter has a great picture of the 68 Billingham rookie card regular Topps issue which has the orange and red variations. There are a few rookie cards like that in the regular 68 set, and amongst variation guys I think there is a bit of divided opinion. It really is hard to distinguish. I feel the same about the 1964 Topps Leaders Cards, red vs orange "variations".

The only difference I have seen on the MB vs regular fronts so far (other than cards with borders) is that the cards with bluer backgrounds like Jim Merritt, Don Wilson, and Ron Willis are more intense and darker hues than the regular cards. I have 46 Merritt MB cards and 14 regular Merritts. In general the MBs are bluer but at the end of the spectrum some of the lighter blue background MBs are lighter toned than the darker regular cards. It does get to the backs of the cards with this issue. I quit trying to guess on the fronts after wasting quite a few dollars on ebay buying what I thought was an MB and I finally figured out I just couldn't tell. I wouldn't gamble on a Ryan with those prices, to be sure.

But then my eyes are quite middle aged.

[goheels]

The WS Game 6 card is badly miscut. It resides in the 7th row, 7th column, and the white border is a Pete Beathard. The Hudson (3rd row, 10th column) is worse and you can see the AL 10 card on the obverse.

The corners are perfect, these cards came straight from a sealed game. I don't know if the resolution shows it but there is an indent at the top of the WS GM 6 card and a small one at the bottom. Whenever the rubber bands were placed vertically and not horizontally there was more of an indent. This card was 3rd down in a stack of 26 cards. The Hudson likewise came from the same game, different stack. There were six terribly miscut cards in this one game, none in my other games. The Hudson has a small ridge at the upper right border, from years of pressure in the box. That indent usually knocks a PSA grade down to a 5 to 6.5. The cards before and after these two were perfectly centered, rare for MBs. Go figure.

These scans were high res 600 DPI. You can't see the flaws on the scans but they are there. PSA misses them sometimes but not often. It certainly adds to the challenge of getting decent grades. These cards with the high gloss and brighter than average colors look sharper than regular 68 vending cards, but the dings of the box and rubber bands make it a crap shoot.

[horzverti]

Thanks for the analysis Heels. I need to find myself a red lettered MB Ryan now.