Vintage Sports Cards – Baseball – Basketball – Football – Hockey
Here’s a gem from the past: a 1952 Topps Baseball High Numbers Partial Uncut Sheet featuring Eddie Mathews in the lower right corner. It’s been a while since I’ve spotted this beauty in the hobby.
While just a partial sheet, it’s pretty rare to find 25 1952 Topps high-number cards together, let alone in an uncut 5×5 grid! The sheet’s overall condition was described as “Very Good” in the lot’s description in Mastro’s November 2000 Fine Sports Auction catalog.
This 36-card uncut production sheet of 1950 Bowman football cards is a legitimate work of art. I definitely need to pick up an early Bowman-era sheet to display in the Hobby Library.
It consists of cards 109 through 124. Card 144 in the bottom right corner is missing a piece, and there is also a stain, mostly evident from the back, which affects four cards.
Lelands sold the following pair of 36-card uncut sheets in December 2001 for $1491; one is the same but without the missing piece.
The Spring 1982 issue of Baseball Cards has a great article by Bill Bossert called Uncut Sheets Tell the Untold Story. He shares this incredible proof sheet for Topps’ 1972 Candy Lids test issue in it.
Here’s what he wrote about the set and sheet:
I hope that sheet wasn’t cut up. However, I did find this 1972 Topps Candy Lid Test Proof Willie Mays card that was sold by SCP Auctions for $622 on January 29, 2008.
You can see that Topps printed the Mays card on previously used stock, and there are a few other proof’s out there.
Here’s a one-of-a-kind proof sheet of 12 three-card 1961 Bazooka panels. It was auctioned off in Ron Oser Enterprises’ April 2001 catalog.
Complete boxes are really rare, too. Robert Edward Auctions sold this PSA-graded 1961 Bazooka Box (tabs missing) #19/20/21 in February 2022 for $4800.
