75 Topps Mini - Question on short cuts

[Kutcher55]

I have been grinding on this set for a couple of years, been a lot of fun. If you have gone down the rabbit hole on this set as I have, you're aware that the green/yellow (top to bottom) and red/yellow border cards have a strong propensity to be factory cut short. Some of the higher profile examples of these are Mike Schmidt, Bob Gibson, and then Claudell Washington and Frank Tanana, which are widely considered the two toughest cards in the set. Those cards also suffer from ink bleed issues, but anyway.

There's a long time thread on the Collectors forum that has kind of died out. I read though it and it was full of good information although much of the conversation centered around the PSA 9s and 10s that guys were collecting. I am more curious about these miscuts and the history/story behind the creation of the set in general. Some observations/questions:

1. My sense is that greater than 50% of these red/yellow, green/yellow cards were short cut. Maybe greater than 80%, though that's more conjecture based on the cards I seen and owned.

2. The short cuts are not uniform in length. Some are barely short and others are very short.

3. It's only the above color combos that are short cut. You are highly unlikely to find a different type that is short cut. In fact, I don't think I ever have seen one and I've handled 1,000s of these little cards.

4. I believe it has something to do with their position on the printing sheet, but not sure. If anyone has the 132 card print sheets handy (there should be 5 of them) I'd love to see it.

5. Occasionally you will find some "long cut" cards but these are relatively unusual, compared to the short cuts certainly.

6. Given #5, it suggest that somehow the top of the sheet got cut too low on most of these cards and that caused it.

If anyone has any other info on this, or this set in general I would appreciate it. Curious for the hard core collectors thoughts as well as anyone who has inside info as to the making of this set and what was going on behind the scenes. This has been an obsession. Still also looking for upgrades of course. Thank you!

[Nick55]

I think you summarized what is known about this set pretty well.

I was an avid collector of the set and participated in the Mini thread in the forum you mentioned prior to 2019.

The red/yellow and green/yellow card combos (top/bottom) were on the top rows of their respective sheets.

Tan/blue and pink/yellow combos can often be found long, but not as often as the two short combos, as you mentioned. The tan/blue and pink/yellow combos were found on the bottom row of their respective sheets.

I don't have photos of the sheets, but you can find dozens of them with a simple Google search. My understanding is that the card placement on the sheets for the Mini version was the same as the regular version.

I hope that helps.

[Kutcher55]

Thanks Nick. I didn’t know that about the longer cut card types. I have a few in my backup sets and have been meaning to validate that. I also spend a fair amount of time studying the PSA pop reports. There are a number of cards that have less than ten PSA 9s graded. The minis are also an issue that have been heavily impacted by tougher grading standards. They were talking about this in the collectors forum a decade ago and things have gotten even tougher since then. The difference between an old slab 8 and a new slab 8 can be huge. There are old slab 8s out there that would grade a 6 now or even worse.

The other thing is that it’s truly challenging to find cards without microscopic surface flaws, bubbles etc. It seems 70s topps cards, particularly 75 & 76 were prone to these sorts of issues. Some graders overlook these issues and some don’t.

Curious if any Topps historians can share the inside story of how these were conceived and why they didn’t move forward with it in 76 until 89, I think, at the height of the junk wax era.

[Nick55]

Hi Jason, I remember those conversations in the collector's forum, very well. Incidentally, my experience today is the same with 1978 OPC baseball, which I started collecting after I sold my Mini registry set in early 2019. For that reason, I don't grade much anymore.

[Kutcher55]

Here's an update in the world of 75 mini short cuts. Ebay currently has an auction for a PSA 9 Rick Wise. This is no doubt a tough card, as there are only 3 PSA 9s that have been graded, no 10s. It could arguably be as tough as the Tanana or Claudell. But look at this old slab example. It looks flat-out bad for the grade, not to mention the photo is poor for a card that currently has been bid up to an insane $2,027. Complete MINI MADNESS, although I'm not complaining. Classic example of buying the grade IMO.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/386068128530

[deweyinthehall]

That upper left corner looks really suspect for a 9 - maybe it's just the way the photo was taken. I'd say the seller isn't doing himself any favors with the images, but the bidding seems to contradict me there...