1974 "Wash Nat'L Lea" why were some cards spared from this?

[darkhorse9]

I've never quite understood why some of the San Diego Padres cards were spared from the "Washington Nat'l Lea" variation since the entire set was printed at one time?

Cards #1-387 were victims, but Padres #406-660 weren't except for #599
If it was a sheet issue, why such a clear separation except for the rookie card (Friesleben)?

Any input?

[deweyinthehall]

I did some research on this a few years ago when I was putting together a 1974 master set - nothing original, just casting about to see what was out there on hobby message boards, websites, and some research posted by Keith Olbermann, possibly to the Sports Collectors Digest site but can't be sure this many years later.

Best I can tell:

By the time Topps' 1974 cards had to go to press, it seemed to all who thought about this that the Padres were, without a doubt, moving to DC.

With this in mind, Topps hedged their bets and redesigned ALL the Padres cards across all 5 printing sheets to "Washington, Nat'l League".

By the time that Ray Kroc bought the club in January of 1974, a large enough quantity of the first 3 sheets had been printed to make it prohibitive to scrap them all and begin printing again. It was decided to simply stop the presses and re-do the Padres before more of sheets 1-3 were produced.

However, the final 2 sheets had either not been printed at all yet or had been printed in small enough quantities to make it acceptable to scrap all that had been produced, re-do the proofs, and then begin running them all off as Padres.

Washington versions of cards from the first 2 sheets - Grubb, Troedson, Greif, Colbert, Jones, Beckert, McCovey, Hilton, Romo and the team card - seem to have been issued in greater quantities than cards from the 3rd sheet - Roberts, Gaston and Morales.

The final 2 sheets - including the one with Winfield - were all corrected before going to print.

BUT WAIT - the Friesleben rookie card is on the Winfield sheet!

When the proof readers made the changes to this sheet, the Friesleben card - the only Padre among the rookies - was missed and slipped through. Once the mistake was discovered, Topps hastily re-did the card, but used a font larger than that used on all other rookie card designations. Once THAT mistake was discovered, they did yet another redesign, making the font smaller, the same as the other rookies.

The result of all of this is that the Friesleben Washington variation is the most common version of the card. The card with the larger font is second, and the card with the smaller font (the true correct version) is rarest.

Sadly, the evidence suggests there are no Winfield rookies with a Washington designation out there to be found someplace....

[ALR-bishop]

Thanks for that info Dewey