In Progress: Uncut Sheets of 1961 Topps Football Cards

I have not seen an uncut sheet of 1961 Topps football cards, but I am attempting to reconstruct the sheets by studying badly miscut cards. So far I have just a few. Contributions are welcome!

Series 1

There are 132 cards in the 1961 Topps first series, all showing NFL players and teams. The full series would have fit exactly twice on a 264-card full sheet, with no single prints or double prints. I presume that the two halves of the full sheet were identical. Following are the pieces of the half-sheet that I have so far.

The sliver of text at the top of this John David Crow card says FULLBACK and CHICAGO BEARS. Rick Casares was the only Bears fullback in the 1961 Topps set, so the card above Crow had to be Casares.

This miscut Joe Schmidt has a sliver of Eddie LeBaron's card on the left.

This miscut Cardinals team card has a sliver of Gene Brito's card on the left.

I believe that Frank Ryan was the card to the left of this crudely hand cut Raymond Berry card. If it wasn't Ryan, it was George Shaw.

From the extra sliver of text on the back of this Don Bosseler card, you can tell that the card to its right on the sheet was Frank Youso.

Likewise, from the extra sliver of text on the back of this New York Giants card, you can tell that the card to its right on the sheet was Stan Jones.

Finally, the extra stats on the back of this Don McIlhenny card match only those of Max McGee (4 TD's in 1960 and 26 so far in his career), so McGee's card was to the right of McIlhenny's on the sheet.

Here are all of the bits of the first series sheet I have so far. You can click on any of the images to see a large picture.

And this is how the bits are numbered:

Series 2

There are 66 cards in the 1961 Topps second series, all showing AFL players. The series would have fit exactly four times on a 264-card full sheet, with no short prints or double prints. I have just one miscut second series card, a Ken Rice card that has a sliver of Jack Kemp's card on the left.

Together on the sheet, the cards looked like this:

And they were numbered like this:

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.