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

Yesterday I put together more virtual uncut sheets, this time for 1968 Topps football cards. Again you can see that cards on the corners and edges of the sheets are the toughest to find in high grade.

(Click on the image to see the sheets.)

Today I assembled another virtual uncut sheet, this time for 1966 Philadelphia football cards. Those who collect the set know that some cards are much tougher than others. It appears that the cards in some rows were short printed.

(Click on the image to see the sheet.)

Today I put together another virtual uncut sheet page, this time for 1969 Topps football cards. The page includes both the first and second series sheets. These are the first sheets I’ve seen where half of the cards were printed upside down.

(Click on the image to see both full sheets.)

Here’s something I’ve never seen before–and would love to have!–the entire set of 1961 National City Bank Browns cards, on uncut panels. The set includes a pre-rookie card of Len Dawson, who played for the NFL’s Steelers and Browns before jumping to the AFL’s Texans/Chiefs. Pick the green VIEW & BID button to check out the scans. You can also find individual cards on eBay.

For more interesting auctions, see my Interesting eBay Auctions page.

Last week I added 1964 Wheaties Stamps to the Vintage Football Card Gallery, and there’s now an album with a full set of stamps listed on eBay. The stamps are not separated; they’re still on perforated sheets inside the covers of the album. Pick the green VIEW & BID button to check out the scans.

For more interesting auctions, see my Interesting eBay Auctions page.

Today I put together another virtual uncut sheet, this time 1960 Topps. As usual, it turns out that the toughest cards to find in high grade are the ones on the corners and edges of the sheet. Anyone know why some team cards are oriented one way on the sheet, and some are oriented the other way?

(Click on the image to see the whole sheet.)

Today I put together another “virtual uncut sheet” page, this time for 1961 Fleer second series sheets. The 1961 Fleer second series contains cards from the eight AFL teams of the time, including rookie cards of Jim Otto and Don Maynard. It also includes one card with a mistaken identity.

While the price guides do not designate any 1961 Fleer cards as short prints, it is clear that some cards are much scarcer than others in high grade. Uncut sheets can show why some cards are tougher than others.

On the topic of uncut sheets, I never realized that there were multiple 1962 Post football cards on each cereal box. Yesterday I came across a full back panel on the Vintage Classics page of TheCowboysGuide.com. It makes sense that each box had several cards on it: with 200 cards in the set, one card per box would have required a kid to eat an awful lot of cereal!

Steve Liskey, the owner of the site, points out that some cards could be less common because they were on unpopular cereal. That makes sense: maybe the short prints, like Jim Johnson’s pre-rookie card, were on the back of Grape Nuts boxes?

• Search Nearmint’s Cards for: 1962 Post Cereal
• Search eBay for: 1962 Post Cereal

Today I put together another “virtual uncut sheet” page, this time for 1963 Fleer cards. More reasons to be skeptical of your price guide!