A Dicey Situation

There is some seriously interesting Topps test material popping up in uncut form of late.  The latest entry in the clean-out-your-checking-account sweepstakes is a 1961 Dice Game (really 1963 it seems) production sheet.  Those of you familiar with this 18 subject set are aware of its extreme rarity and high percentage of Hall of Famers, offered recently by Collect Auctions.

Here it is in all its black & white glory:

I count eight Hall-of-Famers on there, nine if you count Camilo Pascual's Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame enshrinement (and excluding specific team Halls-of-Fame).  You can see the centering lines at all four cardinal compass points above, and also on the back of the sheet:

I believe this sheet has belonged to the (Larry) Fritsch family for decades.  The February 1974 issue of Sports Scoop had a piece by Ron Greenwood mentioning Fritsch had a set of the cards:

An ad in the January 1978 issue of The Trader Speaks offered the set...

...but as PSA notes in this article, it was merely a test by Fritsch to gauge interest and determine values. They speculate, as do I, that what was being offered in 1978 was the uncut sheet featured above.

While there is nothing to indicate they produced the set, which was never released in any form, the look, typefaces and a later Heritage-type lookback set all scream Topps. I believe, albeit without concrete proof, the set was reconfigured and eventually turned into what we know as the 1967 Baseball Punch-Out set. Sometimes development of a non-mainstream set took several years to accomplish at Topps.