A truly rare piece of Topps history was recently hammered down at Heritage Auctions and it was a real doozy. Yup, an uncut sheet of the 1968 Basketball set popped up out of nowhere and went for just over an eye-popping $128,000, or a cool $2,900 per subject!
The sheet has the set printed twice:
Nuts, right? I believe it's a final production piece as the only markings are centering lines that appear smackdab in the middle of the sheet, top and bottom:
On the back, we get two complete puzzle images of the Big Dipper himself, Wilt Chamberlain:
The 44 card array is intriguing but certainly within the "11 X arrays Topps used at the time for their standard sized sets. I'm trying to match with some other B&W sets of the era to see if it may have been printed along with another test but I don't think that was the case as nothing else really matches up. I think then this is just how Topps printed them up for the test.
This is a really great piece of Topps history and while it's partially wrecked, I'm hoping the winner doesn't decide to chop it up but it certainly could happen.
I had always wished that Topps would have reprinted (knowing that I would never be able to own the original) this set at some point. There are is a dearth of 1960s basketball cards available - they only had to track down releases for 22 players and or their estates to get this done.
ReplyDeleteI always found it strange that the design was exactly like 1960 Leaf, and then in 1977 Renata Galasso would use the same design on her glossy greats (TCMA).
I always thought 2 things were possible 1) Topps did not actually design these cards and/or 2) there was a one person involved in the production of these sets.