1964 Topps - Is There A Set With More Variability?

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by jingram058

But there are wild variations to color for the players name bottom banner and the team name font color. On the back, some are in fact creamsicle orange, but some are not orange, but red. And sometimes you can read the text, and sometimes you can't. Sometimes they are flat out blurry or out of focus (like my shaky Parkinson's photography, apologies).

I don't like the design of the set anyway compared to the 1963 or 1965 issues, but you've just given me another reason not to collect the 1964 cards.



P.S. Please reduce the width of your picture though. It's messing up the formatting of this page.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by Balticfox

I don't like the design of the set anyway compared to the 1963 or 1965 issues, but you've just given me another reason not to collect the 1964 cards.



P.S. Please reduce the width of your picture though. It's messing up the formatting of this page.

Looks fine on the mobile version.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Balticfox]

The picture is going well beyond the side of the screen on my 17.1" laptop. Pictures should be limited to an absolute maximum of 1050 pixels or so.

[jingram058]

Originally Posted by Balticfox

The picture is going well beyond the side of the screen on my 17.1" laptop. Pictures should be limited to an absolute maximum of 1050 pixels or so.

I have no way to fix them that I know of. If they're too big the photo uploader won't accept them. I will take more and remove these if it's that big a deal.

[ALR-bishop]

I have some nostalgia for the set because I completed it by buying it series by series as they were issued by Topps through The Card Collector's Company in NY

[raulus]

I guess you could argue that the modern stuff has lots of variability, with all of the colors and refractors and whatnot. You can pretty much taste the rainbow!

But I suppose the counterpoint is that variability is deliberate, whereas with 64T, it's an accident of production.

[jingram058]

Originally Posted by Balticfox

The picture is going well beyond the side of the screen on my 17.1" laptop. Pictures should be limited to an absolute maximum of 1050 pixels or so.

Consider them fixed.

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by jingram058

Consider them fixed.

Thank you!

[akleinb611]

This thread brings up something I noticed a very long time ago (in 1964, in fact), which is that it is almost possible to figure out which series a particular card belongs do, by looking closely at the card photo itself. Each series in 1964 has its own "look," and unfortunately, since I'm not conversant in photography terms, I may have trouble articulating what I mean by that.

I collected this set at the age of nine, and yes, I noticed that the first series featured mostly photos that were rich, well color balanced, lacked grain, and has a certain three dimensional quality. The second series seemed - flatter, somehow. The third series was shockingly grainy, really subpar in a number of ways I can't quite articulate. The fourth series seemed a bit better, if still falling short of the quality of the first. The fifth series was the most striking. It was as if Topps had noted the graininess of the third series and had completely overcompensated. The photos in the fifth series have an unnatural smoothness that made all the players look like they had been dipped in wax. And then the sixth and seventh, final series, were corrected again, and were almost as well balanced as the first series.

I may be better at explaining all this now, but even as a kid, I could see that each series looked strikingly different. This wouldn't have been the result of multiple printings, because each series looks the same within itself, just very different from one series to the next. This sounds like what the OP is saying. Has anyone else noticed this, and has anyone gotten hold of information about what was going on at Topps that year?

I've provided examples from the first, third and fifth series, but I have no idea if my impressions will be visible on the scans. Your thoughts?

[G1911]

Originally Posted by akleinb611

This thread brings up something I noticed a very long time ago (in 1964, in fact), which is that it is almost possible to figure out which series a particular card belongs do, by looking closely at the card photo itself. Each series in 1964 has its own "look," and unfortunately, since I'm not conversant in photography terms, I may have trouble articulating what I mean by that.

I collected this set at the age of nine, and yes, I noticed that the first series featured mostly photos that were rich, well color balanced, lacked grain, and has a certain three dimensional quality. The second series seemed - flatter, somehow. The third series was shockingly grainy, really subpar in a number of ways I can't quite articulate. The fourth series seemed a bit better, if still falling short of the quality of the first. The fifth series was the most striking. It was as if Topps had noted the graininess of the third series and had completely overcompensated. The photos in the fifth series have an unnatural smoothness that made all the players look like they had been dipped in wax. And then the sixth and seventh, final series, were corrected again, and were almost as well balanced as the first series.

I may be better at explaining all this now, but even as a kid, I could see that each series looked strikingly different. This wouldn't have been the result of multiple printings, because each series looks the same within itself, just very different from one series to the next. This sounds like what the OP is saying. Has anyone else noticed this, and has anyone gotten hold of information about what was going on at Topps that year?

I've provided examples from the first, third and fifth series, but I have no idea if my impressions will be visible on the scans. Your thoughts?

I can't describe it any better than this, but I think this is true of a number of the old Topps sets and you are exactly right. The photos or borders or both look distinctly different in sharpness and clarity and after awhile you can predict which series a card was in. Oftentimes the first series and the high numbers have the 'best' photo quality, I think.