Uncut Sheet of 1959 Topps 2nd Series Football Cards

An uncut 132-card sheet of 1959 Topps football cards recently appeared in an internet auction, and below is a virtual version of it. If you hold your cursor above a card, your browser should show you the number of the card and the name of the player. Clicking on a card will bring up the full-sized scan.

These are second series cards, with numbers from 89-176. This sheet was originally half of a 264-card full sheet configured like this 1966 Topps baseball card sheet. You can see on the baseball card sheet that the top eight rows (88 cards) on the left half of the sheet are repeated twice more on the full sheet. On the 132-card football card sheet below, the bottom four rows are the same as the top four rows. On its matching 132-card sheet, the other four rows would have been repeated.

According to the PSA population report, the cards least often graded mint on this sheet are Bruce Bosley, Junior Wren, Dan Currie, Lindon Crow, Jim Schrader, Yale Lary, Rick Casares, Bill Wade, Jim Ray Smith, Chuck Weber, Gern Nagler, Art Hunter, and Zeke Bratkowski. At the time of this writing, there were 6 or fewer of each of these cards graded PSA 9 or 10. Wade, Smith, and Schrader are on the corners of the sheet, and except for Nagler and Hunter, the remaining cards are on the edges. Nagler, Bratkowski, and Wren all appear in row 5, which would have be the top row on the matching sheet.

The Tom Tracy card, a common that the price guides value higher because it is the last card in the set, is actually more common in mint condition than nearly all of the cards on the sides of the sheet. Supposedly the last card of a set was susceptible to damage (rubber band marks, for example) from being on the bottom of kids' stacks of cards. In reality, though, it appears that a card's position on the sheet affects its scarcity more than its being the last card in the set.

The following table shows how the cards were arranged by number on the sheet. Why would Topps choose this seemingly random order? Perhaps so the cards would appear to be randomly distributed in packs, even if they were packaged in order by row or column. (Thanks, John F., for the suggestion.)

This second series sheet contains the rookie cards of three hall-of-famers: Bobby Mitchell, Jim Parker, and Jim Taylor. The picture on the Jim Taylor card is actually Jim Taylor of the Cardinals, however, not hall-of-fame Jim Taylor of the Packers. For other cards that picture the wrong players, see my Mistaken Identities page.

For general information on uncut sheets of vintage football cards, see my blog article, U is for Uncut Sheets. Also see my other virtual uncut sheets, listed in the left column of this page.

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