1966 Topps High's - Any uncut sheets or partial sheets known?

[Kevvyg1026]

I grew up in the Phoenix area and I do not recall ever seeing 7th series for either 1966 or 1967 in their release years. Now, as I've just got back into collecting, I do find some cards harder to find (e.g., on eBay) than others.

For example, a recent survey I conducted, showed some of the 1966 highs had 20 to 30 copies for sale while others had between 70 to 100 copies. Finding Shirley/Jackson for under BV is an issue but only because of pricing. There are a number of these cards on the market but asking price is typically BV or higher for cards in VG-Ex condition. Same thing for Perry.

The Hoerner card (544) is another example. Finding a well-centered card might be somewhat of an issue since it is on the far left of the sheet and one of the three rows containing this card may well have on the bottom of the sheet. Yet, a recent survey of the PSA distribution showed over half of the cards submitted (234/460) were at grade 7 or higher. This card does exist on the market in reasonable quantity (e.g., last week, there were over 50 available on ebay), but the asking price always seems to be more than BV, even for VG examples, so there is a perceived scarcity.

Interestingly, the two cards I struggled to obtain to complete my 1966 set were 565 Piersall and 569 McFarlane. Although there are a number of both cards available for sale, I was unwilling to pay $30-$40 for VG (at best) cards. After several months, I eventually was able to acquire the cards, but I probably overpaid a little simply so I could complete the set.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Kevvyg1026

I grew up in the Phoenix area and I do not recall ever seeing 7th series for either 1966 or 1967 in their release years. Now, as I've just got back into collecting, I do find some cards harder to find (e.g., on eBay) than others.

For example, a recent survey I conducted, showed some of the 1966 highs had 20 to 30 copies for sale while others had between 70 to 100 copies. Finding Shirley/Jackson for under BV is an issue but only because of pricing. There are a number of these cards on the market but asking price is typically BV or higher for cards in VG-Ex condition. Same thing for Perry.

The Hoerner card (544) is another example. Finding a well-centered card might be somewhat of an issue since it is on the far left of the sheet and one of the three rows containing this card may well have on the bottom of the sheet. Yet, a recent survey of the PSA distribution showed over half of the cards submitted (234/460) were at grade 7 or higher. This card does exist on the market in reasonable quantity (e.g., last week, there were over 50 available on ebay), but the asking price always seems to be more than BV, even for VG examples, so there is a perceived scarcity.

Interestingly, the two cards I struggled to obtain to complete my 1966 set were 565 Piersall and 569 McFarlane. Although there are a number of both cards available for sale, I was unwilling to pay $30-$40 for VG (at best) cards. After several months, I eventually was able to acquire the cards, but I probably overpaid a little simply so I could complete the set.

I imagine the 7th series was limited distribution. From the anecdotal side, my 3 uncles who collected in that year in the SF Bay Area have "complete sets" that end at the 5th series. They found out series 6 and 7 only existed last year when I showed my not quite complete set after finding out they still had their childhood card collections. The 1964 and 1967 sets are missing the last series, 1965, 68 and 69 sets are 100% complete. One has a 61-63 set run that is missing the highs in all three years, and the last 2 series in 63.


I am in that same boat on finishing, I have all the stars and most of the highs but the remaining ones are a bit hard to justify the price tag on for cards which I don't think are actually nearly as tough as stated. 66 and 67 are odd in how highs are priced, with some cards of commons being quite expensive in low grade even (well, relatively expensive depending on ones wallet), and others on the same row being pretty cheap. I love the 66's best of the 60's sets, so I will end up coughing up at some point. Skowron I found to be expensive too, and Bob Allen I haven't found for a reasonable price yet. Plenty of all cards for sale at all times, but some the prices don't seemed based in actual print runs or scarcity.


Off topic from the highs, but series 1 and 6 (especially 6, the difference is night and day), appear to have stock variations that are never mentioned. 6 has the very bright white stock or cream that is clearly not toning or aging.

[toppcat]

I may have old SCD article about the distribution of the 1967 highs but the gist was there were issues, especially outside of the Northeast. Will try to dig it out later.

[tschock]

Originally Posted by G1911

Off topic from the highs, but series 1 and 6 (especially 6, the difference is night and day), appear to have stock variations that are never mentioned. 6 has the very bright white stock or cream that is clearly not toning or aging.

They are definitely a card stock variation. All you need to do is find 1 of each and split the card to see it is the stock and not toning. Unlike some other white/grey, white/cream sets, the '66 set gets no 'variation' love for this.

[G1911]

Post #21 by Jmoran19 showing a partial sheet can be extended. I have a miscut Choo-Choo Coleman that shows a very thin sliver of the upper right corner of the next card. Comparing the coloring and pattern carefully to every other high number, it can only possibly be Bob Chance that was on his left. Chance is the last card show in the second row of this partial sheet in post 21. So that's one more clue filled in.

This site won't let me attach higher quality images than 78kb that won't show much here; PM for an email if anyone wants a better confirmation. Below is Coleman next to Chance plus some of my favorites in the high series, because we can always do with more cards.

[bb66]

Great work G1911. One more card always helps.If we can ever figure out the 7th Series sheet alignments!

[G1911]

Up to 51 of the 77 cards placed into their row. Taking the partial sheets above + Coleman and typing out ('SP''s are the generally stated ones in catalogues). The 550 McCovey row would seem it must be a continuation of one of the rows at bottom, and not a separate row as there should be 7 total rows.


550 McCovey SP, 533 Adair SP, 579 Orioles Rookies, 537 Franks

554 Northrup SP, 568 A’s Rookies, 584 Yankees Rookies, 581 Tony Martinez, 534 Mets Rookies, 558 Red Sox Rookies, 573 Griffith, 536 Egan, 529 White Sox Rookies, 572 Priddy, 574 Mets Rookies (COMPLETE ROW OF 11)

557 Mantilla, 588 A’s Rookies, 545 Dick Green SP, 526 Twins Team SP, 589 Klimchock, 593 Camilli, 563 Twins Rookies, 578 Olivio SP, 548 Kroll SP, 524 Giants Rookies, 539 Astro’s Rookies (COMPLETE ROW OF 11)

591 Rookies (Grant Jackson) SP (START OF ROW CONFIRMED), 540 McClain SP, 567 Howser SP, 527 Navarro, 577 Lamabe SP, 596 Astro’s Rookies SP, 551 Purkey SP, 543 Craig SP

555 Perranoski SP, 562 Snyder, 559 Pena SP, 564 Chance SP, 561 Coleman SP

544 Cards Rookies SP, 565 Piersall SP, 547 Clarke SP, 546 Siebler

585 Taylor, 530 Robin Roberts, 560 Horlen, 571 Dave Roberts SP

594 Salmon, 535 Willie Davis SP, 575 Wilson, 580 Williams SP

[Kevvyg1026]

Thanks for the Coleman addition. Hopefully, some other miscuts will surface to allow the placement of the remaining 26 cards.

The Perranowski, Cards rookie stars, Taylor, and Salmon must be the start of rows since they are under Northrup and we know all the cards in Northrup's row.

And yes, the McCovey four card panel (McCovey, Adair, Johnson rookie, and Franks) must be cards 5, 6, 7, & 8 in one of the other rows. Therefore, these four cards must be in one of the three rows headed by either Cards Rookies, Taylor, or Salmon since at least five cards are known in the either four rows. I lean towards the Salmon row, but only because that would put several SPs together (Davis, Williams, McCovey), even though it should be clear that current price guide listings of SPs is not completely consistent with the card patterns observed,

[Kevvyg1026]

As many know, the 7th series checklist has two varieties: Version A has White Sox (529) and Cardinals (544) spelled out while Version B has 529 as W. Sox and 544 as Cards. Although not very scientific, a quick survey of ebay this morning revealed that the Version A is more prevalent by approximately a 2:1 ratio. Furthermore, five version A cards were found marked up to only # 522 and none of version B were found marked in that fashion. This leads me to suspect that version A was the checklist that was in the 6th series printing and version B was the checklist printed in the last printing.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by Kevvyg1026

I grew up in the Phoenix area and I do not recall ever seeing 7th series for either 1966 or 1967 in their release years. Now, as I've just got back into collecting, I do find some cards harder to find (e.g., on eBay) than others.

For example, a recent survey I conducted, showed some of the 1966 highs had 20 to 30 copies for sale while others had between 70 to 100 copies. Finding Shirley/Jackson for under BV is an issue but only because of pricing. There are a number of these cards on the market but asking price is typically BV or higher for cards in VG-Ex condition. Same thing for Perry.

The Hoerner card (544) is another example. Finding a well-centered card might be somewhat of an issue since it is on the far left of the sheet and one of the three rows containing this card may well have on the bottom of the sheet. Yet, a recent survey of the PSA distribution showed over half of the cards submitted (234/460) were at grade 7 or higher. This card does exist on the market in reasonable quantity (e.g., last week, there were over 50 available on ebay), but the asking price always seems to be more than BV, even for VG examples, so there is a perceived scarcity.

Interestingly, the two cards I struggled to obtain to complete my 1966 set were 565 Piersall and 569 McFarlane. Although there are a number of both cards available for sale, I was unwilling to pay $30-$40 for VG (at best) cards. After several months, I eventually was able to acquire the cards, but I probably overpaid a little simply so I could complete the set.

We got the 7th series in 1966 in Orange Co. CA, but never saw the 7th series in 1967.

[JollyElm]

Are there any specific facts known about the actual distribution of cards within the packs from the high series? Here's why. There are always great discussions about whether or not the print sheets had SP's involved, and/or how many cards were actually short printed, but there really could be much more to the issue. For instance, like multiple people here indicated, their neck of the woods either didn't get the late series cards, or they only received a limited number of them. The logical conclusion would lead you to believe that Topps didn't print as many cards for the late series and sent a lot of cardboard to the furnaces as they began to concentrate on football, basketball and hockey cards instead.

But which cards got destroyed (or were never distributed)? Was it an equal amount of each card across the series? Or was there something else to it? Were there more cards on the second print sheet that got eliminated? Or maybe the cards appearing on the low end of the sheets, for some reason? In other words, where were the cuts made to decrease the amount of cards printed? If you can see what I'm getting at here, it may help to determine why some cards may NOT appear to be SP's (when looking at uncut sheets), but in reality there were far fewer of them sent out to the stores. Food for thought.

[toppcat]

No luck on the 67 high number article from SCD. I did find a reference in a message I was exchanging with a St Louis collector years ago who said they never got the 6th series there but did get the 7th.

I did find a 9/18/92 Brigandi Coin Co. ad showing the following semi-highs as purported SP's:

#460 Killebrew
#475 Palmer
#476 Perez

The problem with the old ads like these is they never listed the SP commons, only stars. Anyway, Brigandi's take on the high # SP's was off so who knows what their source was.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

Are there any specific facts known about the actual distribution of cards within the packs from the high series? Here's why. There are always great discussions about whether or not the print sheets had SP's involved, and/or how many cards were actually short printed, but there really could be much more to the issue. For instance, like multiple people here indicated, their neck of the woods either didn't get the late series cards, or they only received a limited number of them. The logical conclusion would lead you to believe that Topps didn't print as many cards for the late series and sent a lot of cardboard to the furnaces as they began to concentrate on football, basketball and hockey cards instead.

But which cards got destroyed (or were never distributed)? Was it an equal amount of each card across the series? Or was there something else to it? Were there more cards on the second print sheet that got eliminated? Or maybe the cards appearing on the low end of the sheets, for some reason? In other words, where were the cuts made to decrease the amount of cards printed? If you can see what I'm getting at here, it may help to determine why some cards may NOT appear to be SP's (when looking at uncut sheets), but in reality there were far fewer of them sent out to the stores. Food for thought.

I think this is unlikely, as I don't think there were 2 sheets used to print a Topps series. The 2 half sheets are different, but they were printed together as one large 264 card sheet before being cut into the 2 easier to manage half sheets and then cut into individual cards. I can't imagine why Topps would print out X number of high series sheets, cut up off the left half of it and distribute, and then throw away most of the right half of the sheet, doubling their print costs to accomplish nothing. If anything, Topps was pretty smart about minimizing costs, shrinking card size and lowering quality after knocking out their competition, experimenting with further size reductions (such as in 1975), being late to adjust to the late 80's increase in quality, etc.

Further, it doesn't seem there actually are cards that are actually that much rarer than the others today. Just cards commanding a lot more money due to a reputation that does not appear to be grounded in fact. It's easy to find 591 or 544 or 598, they aren't that much tougher than any of the others. A 3:4 ratio makes sense with what appears to be available both online and in collections.

It may well be that the way distribution worked made certain cards greater rarities in a specific geographic location; that a high pack may have only had cards from one half sheet (they probably did), and that if one row was on the right side more than the left side, and a pack in Y city/region only had left side cards, it would make certain cards tougher. I would think this would be sequenced (Topps STILL uses sequences today that make it easy to predict the next card in the pack if one has opened enough of them) and would balance out in the next box, but who knows.