Joy of a Complete Checklist Set Circa 1965

With a less than 11 months (about 10) to go in my quest to Strive for '65 set build I have completed another small hurdle one of many such small feats - The subset of checklists complete with the known printing variations. Back in the 1960s and even up until the very early 1970s Topps released the card sets in series during the season, now-days they release the full set at the beginning of the season or before and then at the end of the season release an update set. OH wait now they release a dozen sets every other month during the entire year confusing the heck out of everyone. The big bonus I got is I somehow managed to get all of the checklists UNMARKED.

 

The 1965 Topps Baseball card set consists of 598 cards divided into 7 series with 7 checklist cards. Two of the checklists (79 and 508) have two print variations:

 1965 Topps Baseball 1st Series Checklist 79 A & B Front (B on left A on right)

The variations for card number 79 is better documented and more "official" as far as variants go. On the back of this checklist card number 61 (Chris Cannizzaro Mets) a card I don't yet have is listed on one variant (61a) as just "Cannizzaro", and one the other (61b) as "C.Cannizzaro" (I noticed on my copy of this card when examining with a magnifying glass it looks like the period got double printed or is really a comma, or someone might have tried to highlight the period as it seems to have two periods. UGH might have to replace yet another card before I have even completed the set)

 1965 Topps Baseball 1st Series Checklist 79 A & B Back (A on left B on right)

1965 Topps Baseball 7th Series Checklist 508 A & B Front

  (Large font version A on left Small font version B on right)

 

The variations for card number 508 is much more subtle. It is a matter of print size and apparently only a variation of half a font point, a font point or maybe even 2 font points. Maybe they should just say the difference is in the space between the print and the bottom red border. When you know what to look for it seems to be more obvious on the front than the back unless you have a misprint version that has all the type setting way off. On the backs it looks like the card number is closer to the text of the list in the larger font version.

1965 Topps Baseball 7th Series Checklist 508 A & B Back

(Version B on left Version A on right)

*I do have one duplicate each of 3rd Series 189 almost fully marked front and back, 4the Series 273 Unmarked (got the duplicate when I got 4 of the checklists at once replacing the marked versions) and 5th Series 361 marked on back.