Weird 1967 Willie Mays Anomaly(?)

[jchcollins]

I recently bought a decent '59 Topps Koufax #163 raw at my LCS. It would be maybe a 4 or 5 if graded.

I was surprised when I got it home and was going to put it in a one touch, that it wouldn't fit into any I had...it is just a hair too tall. Like Maybe a 16th of an inch. I compared it to several other '59 commons in my collection and it bears out the height thing. I guess it's just the way it was cut - it's obviously real and I'm guessing it would be pretty improbable that anyone would have "altered" the card to make it bigger...

-John

[jchcollins]

Darren, also with your '67 Mays example -

Some may appear to be "swimming" in the PSA slab because they have tilt or a slight diamond cut. Both are incredibly common on '67 Topps. I do buy into your theory however that microscopic differences in size are also very common. Cards that "swim" in a TPG holder for whatever reason are one of my biggest pet peeves. It's just the annoyance of seeing them move more than any fear that they will get damaged that bugs me most, but I will generally liberate a card from any slab if it moves too noticeably. Toploaders and penny sleeves and you don't have that problem...

[JollyElm]

Call this one Literal Tommy John Surgery...

I ran across another obvious anomaly that is most likely the result of poor cutting practices at Topps, because once again it is hard to believe that all of these cards were independently sliced short side to side by wannabe card doctors. The last card in the 1967 set, #609 Tommy John, is overwhelmingly found to be short side to side and swimming in the holders (as usual, the uploaded scans make some of them hard to see, but each is too thin). Check it out...

s-l1600-9.jpgs-l1600-10.jpg

s-l1600-11.jpgs-l1600-12.jpg

s-l1600-14.jpgs-l1600-13.jpg

s-l1600-16.jpgs-l1600-15.jpg