Nearmint’s Vintage Football Card Blog

Occasionally you will see uncut sheets of vintage cards up for sale. Studying uncut sheets can give you insight into why some cards are much harder to find than others. For example, by looking at the uncut sheets for a set, you can see why some cards are considered short prints or double prints. For most sets, the price guides indicate which cards are short prints or double prints, and they adjust the cards’ prices accordingly. I say most, because I believe some short prints are not documented–those in the old Philadelphia sets, for instance.

(Image from legendaryauctions.com; click on it to see whole sheet.)

Short prints and double prints are just part of the story. A card’s position on an uncut sheet can also affect its scarcity, because cards on the corners and edges of the sheets were more likely to be damaged in production. I have not seen this factored into price guides’ prices, though: if two common cards were printed in equal numbers, the price guides will usually–if not always–assign them the same price.

The price guides do assign higher prices to the first and last cards in a set, applying the theory that the first and last cards generally have more wear than the other cards. Supposedly, lots of kids sorted their cards into numerical order, put rubber bands around them, and banged them around. In practice, though, I find that first and last cards aren’t noticeably scarcer in high grades than the other cards, unless they happened to be on the corners and edges of the sheets.

A recent–and timely!–thread in the Collectors Universe forums includes pictures of numerous uncut baseball card sheets and a nice discussion about short prints and double prints. The thread shows the patterns that the card companies used when arranging cards from sets of different sizes on the sheets. Depending on the size of the set (or series within a set), the card companies repeated rows of cards on the sheets in different patterns. I recommend reading the thread.

Pictured here is the card I always use as an example of one that is scarce because of its position on the sheet. It’s a 1960 Fleer Jim Woodward card (his name is misspelled), and it was in the bottom-left corner of the sheet. The Woodward is easily the toughest card in the set–PSA has graded only four of them 7 or better–and a PSA 8 would sell for hundreds of dollars on eBay. Most other PSA 8 1960 Fleer commons sell for $10-20.

Over the past year, I have put together a number of “virtual” uncut sheets in the Vintage Football Card Gallery, including one for the 1960 Fleer set. I have included a little discussion for each sheet, as well. Rather than repeat the information here, I’ll just point you to the pages for the sheets:

• 1959 Topps
• 1960 Fleer
• 1960 Topps
• 1961 Fleer
• 1963 Fleer
• 1966 Philadelphia
• 1968 Topps
• 1969 Topps
• 1970 Topps Super

Here are a few other places that show uncut sheets of vintage cards. If you know of others, let me know, and I’ll add them to the list.

• 1973 Topps, 1964 Wheaties Stamps, early 1970s Topps posters, and others at toppsvault.com
• Lots of basketball cards at sportscardsinfo.com.

Here are more of the ABCs:

• Previous: T is for Topps, Part 4: the 1970s
• Next: V is for Variations
• All of the ABCs

Today a collector on the Collectors Universe message boards posted pictures of 5 uncut panels of 1952 Wheaties Champions cards. From the looks of it, his panels are in great shape. The Wheaties Champions set is a multi-sport set, and it includes women as well as men. There are 10 cards on each panel, so the collector has 50 of the 60 cards in the set.

There are thirty athletes in the set, with each athlete appearing on both a portrait card and an “in action” card. Six of the athletes are football players: Doak Walker, Otto Graham, John Lujack, Tom Fears, Glenn Davis, and Bob Waterfield. I haven’t yet added the football cards in the Vintage Football Card Gallery, but since there are only a few of them, I’ll try to do that sometime soon. There is currently a full set listed on eBay, but I’ll probably pick up individual cards as they become available. Surprisingly, though they were hand-cut from the boxes, most of the cards I see are in pretty good condition. I infer from this that people saved the full boxes, and the cards I’m seeing were cut from boxes relatively recently.

Back in January I posted an article about an autographed 1963 Fleer Billy Shaw card that I picked up on eBay. Well, one collector has done 80 cards better: he has autographed copies of 81 of the 89 cards in the 1963 Fleer set. Yesterday he posted pictures of all of them on the Collectors Universe message board. Check them out!

I’m not an autograph expert, but the jewel in his set appears to be the checklist, which is in great shape and inscribed by Lance Alworth. (You need to scroll down in his post to see it.) The checklist is the toughest card in the set, because its thin borders make it hard to find well-centered. It is also a short print, as are two other cards in the set. They’re not as short-printed as the price guides indicate, though. See my 1963 Fleer virtual uncut sheet for an explanation.

I found this “customized” 1962 Topps Jim Ringo card buried in my junk card drawer today. The Packers traded Ringo to the Eagles after the 1963 season (because he asked for a raise, according to a Packers legend), and whoever owned this card adjusted it for the trade. It reminded me of a thread in the Collectors Universe forums about cards that kids had “improved.” A couple are pretty funny–check them out!

There’s a fun thread developing on the Collectors Universe message boards: collectors there are posting their worst miscut cards. Here’s my entry, a 1963 Topps Tom Bettis with -5/105 centering. It’s nowhere near as bad as the other cards posted, though. Check out the severely miscut ones.

Just out of curiosity, I did a little search for “miscut” on eBay. Most of the results are ordinary miscuts like my Bettis card, but at the moment there’s a half-and-half baseball card and a hockey card that shows parts of four cards. Here are the searches: baseball, hockey, football.

Head-and-shoulder portraits, fake action shots, and sideline photos are all great, but my favorite pose on a football card is where the player is holding his helmet with both hands, as if he is going to put it on. I like seeing helmets on vintage cards, but if the player is wearing his helmet, it usually makes for a poor photo.

The helmet-in-hands pose appears to have been used mostly in the 1960’s. That was after facemasks got substantial enough to obscure the players’ faces, but it was before Topps started airbrushing logos away in the 1970’s. The photographers for some teams in particular favored the pose: it is used for several of the 1963 Topps Packers cards, for instance, and for most of their 1969 Topps cards.

Below are a few examples: 1968 Topps Jerry Logan, 1966 Philadelphia Irv Cross, 1964 Philadelphia Guy Reese, 1969 Topps Alex Karras, 1963 Topps Lou Michaels, and 1967 Philadelphia Bob Hayes. For more, see a thread on the topic that I started on the Collector’s Universe message boards. I posted a bunch of pictures there before the discussion, um, went south.