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.