1959 Topps Uncut Sheets?

[Keviron]

One of the keys to understanding the 1959 Topps set is the arrangement of the cards on the printing plates. The arrangement could help to explain a lot about the set, from variations to condition scarcity. It is surprising how many “interesting” cards fall on sheet borders and corners. For example, notoriously difficult 572 Billy Pierce All Star is the top left card on the series 7 sheet and frequently messed-with 416 Haywood Sullivan is the bottom right card on the series 6 sheet.

Unfortunately, proof sheets or otherwise complete sheets are rare. Or maybe I haven’t been lucky enough to stumble across them all. From what I have been able to assemble, I believe that toppcat at The Topps Archives blog is correct in that there were 7 separate printing runs.

Can you help me in my research to plate this set? Do you have a scan or photograph of a strip, panel, or sheet of 1959 Topps cards? Is this information compiled somewhere else already? I would also be happy to share the data I have so far; contact me.

Here is what I have:

Series / Number of Cards / Format / Status
1 / 110 / Sheet of 110(?) / no info
2 / 88 / 2 sheets of 132, 11x12(?) / 56+ cards, partial sheet
3 / 88 / 2 sheets of 132, 11x12(?) / 44 cards (1/2) complete
4 / 88 / 2 sheets of 132, 11x12 / complete
5 / 66 / Sheet of 66, 11x6 / complete
6 / 66 / Sheet of 66, 11x6(?) / no info
7 / 66 / Sheet of 66, 11x6 / complete

[Rich Klein]

From what I have seen over the years (no sheets) that there are different print levels for cards in the Higher numbers and I would love to see sheets to confirm my suspicions at all levels on 59.

Rich

[SMPEP]

Sorry for the bad photo!

[ALR-bishop]

Great sheet SM, is it yours ? 1959 is a sentimental favorite for me as it was the first set I finished

[Keviron]

That is a gorgeous sheet, and it looks great in the frame. Wow.

[SMPEP]

Thanks! The sheet is mine - but the photo hides how bad the condition is. The sheet is ripped in two (at the Busby row), and there is another major crease in the bottom Musial row, but it's still the best I have!

Cheers,
Patrick

[ALR-bishop]

Great item in any condition

[Oil Can Dan]

Here's the 7th series sheet:

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[Oil Can Dan]

Here's the fifth series sheet of 66:

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[Oil Can Dan]

4th series. Not sure what to make of the fact that the first four rows are repeated. Would that indicate that all the card in those four rows are double prints, and then theoretically more available than the others?

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[Oil Can Dan]

Wait, never mind - here's the picture of the other 4th series sheet, so obviously then there were multiple printing sheets for the various series:



edit - I just realized that per your first post you already had this info, so sorry for being redundant! I guess I'll leave them up regardless. Unfortunately I don't have any other pics so the mystery will continue.

[SMPEP]

The 1959 Topps cards were printed on a Lord Baltimore Printing press with a splitter attached. Meaning that a full sheet is 264 cards - but it is probably impossible (or close to it!) to find any sheets bigger than 132 because they were intended to be cut into two sheets right off the press. (The cutting of the 132 card sheets was done in Brooklyn at the Topps factory).

So, the two fourth series sheets you have show what the complete sheet looked like (before being split). I do not know which side was on the left and which was on the right.

Cheers,
Patrick

[jmoran19]

All 88 card series have each card printed 3 times (264 total cards) laid out as follows:

Left half of 264 card sheet
Row a
Row b
Row c
Row d
Row e
Row f
Row g
Row h
Row a
Row b
Row c
Row d

The right half (132 cards) would be:
Row e
Row f
Row g
Row h
Row a
Row b
Row c
Row d
Row e
Row f
Row g
Row h

66 card series have each card printed 4 times in 6 row blocks on the 264 card sheet

John

[Oil Can Dan]

That's interesting - thanks for that. Do you have any other insight on how the cards were individually cut? One thing I don't really understand is how certain cards suffer from off-center cutting more than others. For example, #104 Del Rice is really hard to find centered, but even if that were to be say a corner card then how could it be just that one that's off? I mean there are other series 1 cards that are seemingly more off center than others but I assume that the cards were cut the way you'd cut a pizza or something, so I don't really get how some are more off than others. If one were off, wouldn't the entire sheet be off?

[jmoran19]

I believe they were cut into 11 card strips first but not 100% positive. Corner cards are always the hardest to find centered, top and bottom row cards on the 132 card half sheets are the next hardest, 3rd are the other cards on the left and right edges and coming in last would be all the cards that don't qualify in the 3 scenarios above.

110 card series would have 2 rows double printed so the 264 card count would be:

88 cards printed 2 times
22 cards printed 4 times

[SMPEP]

Dan - some cards are off center, because they were laid out off center on the printing press. I don't know the printing of the 1959 Topps set as well as I know the 1952 Topps set, but in that set there are many cards that were not laid out evenly (Charley Maxwell is the most famous example - but Antonelli, Don Johnson and Gus Bell also all suffer from significant issues - and there are more than this). I would assume the same thing happened with the 1959 set.

Cheers,
Patrick

[jmoran19]

Here of some more partial uncut sheets from 1959, none are mine.

Maris block



Musial block



28 additional cards to Musial Block

[Keviron]

Thanks everybody for the great information! Reuben Amaro (178) in the upper left hand corner is another tough card, and the printing layout bears this out...it's often found with a large left border.

[toppcat]

Here's three more, top one is from the high numbers

[Oil Can Dan]

Originally Posted by SMPEP

Dan - some cards are off center, because they were laid out off center on the printing press. I don't know the printing of the 1959 Topps set as well as I know the 1952 Topps set, but in that set there are many cards that were not laid out evenly (Charley Maxwell is the most famous example - but Antonelli, Don Johnson and Gus Bell also all suffer from significant issues - and there are more than this). I would assume the same thing happened with the 1959 set.

Cheers,
Patrick

Thanks Patrick. I'm still a bit confused though. So you're saying that it's less about the cutting and more about the printing press, but I still don't get how one could be 'off' and the rest are not. For example - you'll see Bobby Shantz in the top left corner of the sheet above, and that's a notoriously tough card to find centered. But the one immediately to the right of him, Jack Sanford, is not. How could Bobby's card be off center but the one right next to him not be? Regardless of whether it's due to cutting or printing the sheet, I just don't get how in a row of 11 cards that the first one could be off center while the ten others are not (or are materially better).

I'm sure it's an obvious thing that's right in front of me that I'm just not getting, but I'm not getting it.

[steve B]

The card can be setup slightly off center compared to other cards on the sheet. Then when they're cut even if the cutting is perfect that one will be off center.

Another thing that can happen is if the entire sheet is slightly off. If the spacing is off by 1/100th of an inch, once you've made eleven cuts the error is nearly an eighth of an inch, but the width can still be 2.5 inches.

Similarly, an error in width will also move the centering as more cuts are done.

That's one reason why cutting into strips is not a good practice. But Topps probably did it that way. The 79s with 78 backs were originally found as strips If I remember it right. (They were sold as strips, but may have been found as complete sheets.)

Steve B

[toppcat]

Corner cards are notoriously tough-don't forget all that waste area in the gutters.

[SMPEP]

Dan - Steve answerd your question much better than I could have.

Cheers,
Patrick

[Kevvyg1026]

My understanding of the 1959 series printings is similar to what you posted. I would add the following:

Series 1 should haveone slit (half sheet) with 10 different rows plus two rows printed a 2nd time, while the other slit will also have the ten different rows, with two other rows printed twice. This gives rise to 4 rows printed 3x each and 6 rows printed 2x each. To my knowledge, there are salesman samples and a few miscuts, but no one has yet attempted the re-construct a virtual sheet for this series.

Series 2 has 88 cards in it, so each card will be printed 3x across the entire sheet. One slit will have the 8 different rows followed by the top 4 rows printed a 2nd time. The second slit will have a similar pattern but it is the bottom 4 rows printed 2x on the slit. So the pattern goes like slit1 - A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H while slit 2 goes like E, F, G, H, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H. There is enough information available to reconstruct the entire sheet.

Series 3 and series 4 both have 88 unique cards and will follow the same pattern as series 2. I have not seen any uncut material fr series 4,but as shwn in another post, there is a 44 card panel for series 3 and there are a few miscuts around. I am not aware that anyone has attempted to reconstruct a virtual sheet for eoither series.

Series 5, 6, and 7 have 66 cards in each series, so the pattern for each half sheet should have each of the 66 cards printed 2x each while the 2nd sit will be identical to the 1st slit. Enough info exists for both series 5 & 7 to reconstruct the entire sheet, but I have only seen miscuts for series 6 and have not attempted to reconstruct that sheet.