Flipping A Coin

Well, as you can see from a comment to the previous post, there is still another pattern to be discerned in the 1971 Topps baseball coins. We'll let our anonymous tipster tell the tale:

"I believe the rim colors were based on the division alignments of the NL and AL. Blue rims for the NL and AL East Divisions, Copper for the NL West and Gold for the AL West. That may explain the Sizemore exception. He was traded from the Dodgers (green circles with copper rims) to the Cardinals (blue circles with blue rims). They probably were only able to change his rim from copper to blue, but kept his circle green."

Well, the rim/circle theory checks out but my semiotic abilites maxed out last time!

Here is the Sizemore coin:



He should have had a copper rim as a Dodger (NL West) but his trade to St. Loo (NL East at the time) on October 5, 1970 changed things. His interior color ring of green would not have changed due to happenstance (NL East rings are not blue) but Topps corrected his rim color to that used for the NL East teams. The pattern in 4 pocket rows is disrupted but the overall color scheme remained intact. Wow!