The Curious Case of 1972 Harmon Killebrew...

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

Personally, it's tough for me to imagine that Topps laid out the sheets and somehow misaligned the Killebrew card. Certainly something to consider, but I would think the chances of that being the case must be pretty remote.

Only 2 possibilities.

If the Killebrew card is on the sheet straight, then the cut is wrong and the card won't be in square. Easiest way to tell is take a stack of cards, put a "tilted" Killebrew in the middle, and feel with your fingers if it is perfectly aligned with all the other cards. If it is, the cut was square and the "tilt" would by necessity be attributed to its positioning angle on the sheet.

If the card is not cut with 4 square 90 degree angles, then cards adjacent on the sheet must have been impacted by the common miscut edges. In this case, if the cutting process involved cutting sheets into rows first, the impact to other cards would be greatly lessened, only affecting the cards to the immediate left and right.

My guess is that they are cut square, with 4 90-degree corners, and the card image is slightly tilted on the sheets. Maybe at some point they realigned it to account for the better examples you've found, or, since it was a double print, maybe one was aligned better than the other.

[JollyElm]

I don't want to argue minutiae here (as I got this thread started again to celebrate my acquisition of a centered Killebrew IA card, WOO HOO!!!), but if the sheets were printed correctly and then became slanted (placed incorrectly?) in the cutting machine/on the cutting table/whatever (not properly squared off prior to slicing), then as long as the second cut(s) were perpendicular to the original 'angled' cut(s), you would still end up with perfectly rectangular cards that had tilted images on them. (Obviously, not every card on the entire sheet would be usable, because at some point you would go off the page, so to speak, and you'd have to chuck some miscut/malformed cards out...unless maybe you had a large enough gutter to handle it...but all of the eventual keepers would be of the correct size and shape, just skewed.)

[Mark17]

I don't want to pursue this further so this will be my last on this topic.

If the card was correctly aligned on the sheet, and if the final card was perfectly rectangular, but tilted due to miscut, it would mean:

Whichever cut was made first, vertically down the whole sheet or horizontally across the whole sheet, the problem you initially described would result in quite a lot of significant miscuts. The second cut, likewise, would create the same tilting on every other card on the sheet.

If the initial cut was clean, so as not to negatively impact the other cards, but the other cut created the tilt, then the card would not be square.

Think of it this way. Impose a grid over an uncut sheet, make the Killebrew tilted, and, as your diagram shows, every other card on the sheet gets goofed up too, many resulting in bad miscuts. There is no way Topps would've cut that much scrap (waste) without correcting the problem, and quickly.

Best explanation is that the cutting equipment worked properly, every card on the sheet was cut square and the Killebrew image, at least one of them, was a little off.

[steve B]

Mark is correct.

The most likely thing is that the Killebrew in at least one position was laid out with a bit of tilt in relation to the other cards.
As bad as Topps QC was at the time, nobody wants to make loads of really bad cards. They had no problem shipping them once they were made, but a few thousand non- square cards would have been a problem.

[JollyElm]

The problem with the 'evidence' in this thread, even mine, is that it is all anecdotal, not actually factual. So like in political arguments, it gets laughably frustrating watching as the 'proof' moves in different directions to fit certain narratives. It's not a sleight against anybody, but here are quite a few angled Billy Martin IA cards (coupled with the well known multitude of angled Cleon Jones IA cards) that sorta 'disproves' certain points...

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[Mark17]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

The problem with the 'evidence' in this thread, even mine, is that it is all anecdotal, not actually factual. So like in political arguments, it gets laughably frustrating watching as the 'proof' moves in different directions to fit certain narratives. It's not a sleight against anybody, but here are quite a few angled Billy Martin IA cards (coupled with the well known multitude of angled Cleon Jones IA cards) that sorta 'disproves' certain points...

The proof has not moved. All of the examples you have provided, and for that matter all of the 1972 Topps cards I have ever seen, were cut square. If you can find a bunch of examples of cards that are cut out of square, then that would be evidence of an alternate scenario. Absent that evidence, I contend the problem was not in the cutting process.

All of your examples are easily explained by Steve's initial observation, that some cards could easily be slightly tilted when printed on the sheets. Just as variations are created, and errors are corrected, the sheets can easily be altered at any time throughout the print run. For that matter, considering the volume of cards being printed, and the fact that in 1972 Topps was still printing cards a series at a time (meaning, a large number of cards from a single sheet needed to be manufactured in a tight time frame,) it is very possible there was more than one printing plate being used.

Any conversation, even political ones, can result in agreement when all participants fundamentally rely on logic and evidence. If a large percentage of Killebrew cards have the tilt you have observed, while a miniscule percentage of 1972 Topps cards are not cut square, then, again, it is not a problem created by the cutting process.

That leaves only one explanation: some cards were not aligned straight on the sheets, on some printing plates, during at least part of their print runs.

[steve B]

One of the non- card items I collect was laid out by hand, and in a rush Out of a sheet of 100 of the same object every instance was put on the plate tilted. Every single one. Outside of the rare bit of sloppy cutting (where yes, they had some awful miscuts) there are none that are centered properly.


While the exact details of the entire process were probably treated as trade secrets by Topps, they wouldn't vary all that much from industry standards.


The masks (Large sheet sized composite negatives) used to make the plates were assembled by hand. I don't recall the shop I worked for making any mistakes in that department that made it to the pressroom. But we did high quality lower production work and Topps printed millions of cards regularly.

Getting one card, or even a group of cards crooked compared to the rest of the sheet wouldn't be all that hard, especially with a design that has a rounded upper border.


If we had a decent scan of that part of the sheet, maybe the lower few rows, we could probably measure the tilt.


Looking at uncut sheets, another thing I notice is that in 72 the dashed lines along the sides and bottom of the sheet appear. Earlier sheets don't have them.

Those lines to me indicate they switched to an automated cutting system, one that probably cut the cards essentially as they came off the press. Similar dotted lines were used on other things as a guide for the "electric eye" that guided the sheet through the cutter. A system like that may have cut vertical strips. The 79s with 78 backs I got when they were originally found came as a vertical strip. (It's also totally possible the people who found them found intact sheets and cut them as strips themselves, although strips instead of panels is an odd choice. )


That system may have drifted a bit, making the tilt worse. - In other words, a card slightly tilted on a sheet was then cut even more tilted, but still with all corners at 90 degrees by an automated system the factory wasn't quite used to.