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1963 Fleer Checklist Maneuver

I was skimming through rec.collecting.cards.discuss for the first time in a long while (jeez, that NG died a horrible death), and, amazingly, someone actually posted a good question, which I will post here, as I doubt an answer would appear there. I don't think there's any way to know the answer, unless someone does. Here it is:

This post is a combination of an observation, a logic deduction, and a couple related questions.

The observation is that the 1963 Fleer Baseball set is sorted first by the league name, then by the team city name, then by the player's last
name. But there's an exception (or anomaly) to this rule, and that is with the Willie Mays card. Instead of being near the very end of the
set along with the other San Francisco Giants, he's at #5 and squeezed in between the Baltimore Orioles and the Boston Red Sox.

It's fairly easy to deduce that an American League player (most likely from Baltimore or Boston) was dropped from the set, and Mays was moved into the #5 slot to fill the vacancy. Fleer probably found this method more economically advantageous to deal with than renumbering most of the set.

The questions I have are these: Which player was dropped from the set, thereby necessitating the change? Why was he dropped from the set?

WANTED:
2005 Origins Old Judge Brown #/20 and Black 1/1s, 2000 Ultimate Victory Gold #/25
2004 UD Legends Bake McBride autos & parallels, and 1974 Topps #601 PSA 9
Rare Grady Sizemore parallels, printing plates, autographs

Nothing on ebay

Comments

  • GriffinsGriffins Posts: 6,076 ✭✭✭
    The other possibility is that Mays wasn't originally slated for the set, then when they got him signed Fleer dropped one of the RedSox or Orioles. From what I've read this set was supposed to be more than 66 players, and Fleer thought they could get around Topps exclusivity by packaging them with cookies instead of candy. Could Mays have been in the 2nd series and pushed up to have more impact on early spring sales?

    Always looking for Topps Salesman Samples, pre '51 unopened packs, E90-2, E91a, N690 Kalamazoo Bats, and T204 Square Frame Ramly's

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