Between The Buttons

I have had, for the longest time, a scan in GIF format, of a 60 "button" uncut proof sheet (missing 4) of the 1956 Topps Pin Set.




I believe this was from a Topps Vault auction, as was the detail below:



The GIF was always hard to read but I finally deciphered the uncut sheet and found out something surprising; my assumption that three of the missing proofs were the short printed Diering, Lopez and Stobbs pins was wrong. All three of those actually reside in the bottom row. I created a schematic of the sheet to make things easier. Leftmost five columns first, then rightmost five.

Leftmost:

KALINE	WEHMEIER	AARON	BOYER	RIVERA
GOMEZ	POWER	SAUER	LONG	KENNEDY
BOONE	FINIGAN	SULLIVAN	PAULA	BANKS
MOSSI	(MISSING)	A. SMITH	O'BRIEN	HATTON
(MISSING)	(MISSING)	(MISSING)	DONOVAN	HADDIX
MOON	STOBBS	TURLEY	HEGAN	MIRANDA

---------------------------------------------------------------
Rightmost:

COLLINS	HOUSE	FOWLER	TRIANDOS	SIEVERS
ROSEN	AMOROS	CONLEY	GROAT	MATHEWS
ROBINSON	SPAHN	HARSHMAN	TREMEL	BLACK
SPOONER	ZERNIAL	JENSEN	BERRA	M. SMITH
SNIDER	H. SMITH	McMILLAN	ARROYO	HODGES
LOPEZ	MAYS	RIZZUTO	NEGRAY	DIERING

I have to wonder if the three short printed pins were damaged in the production process, maybe they were at the points the sheet was "grabbed" during cutting and printing. The fact they are all in the bottom row is pretty interesting.

The four missing pins are: Hofman, Kluszewski, Skowron and Williams.

Here is a closeup of a proofed Zernial from a different sheet:




Here is the only thing on this page that is mine, from my subset of Dodgers, which shows how they look as issued:




Such a great set-too bad only 60 of the 90 planned pins were issued. The pack graphics feature Ted Williams; sadly I had a great scan of a pack that was lost when my hard drive crashed last year. I'll post it here if I find it again.