(LOT 1492)

1962 proved to be an eventful year to be sure, as the Beatles released their first single, “Love Me Do”; “Lawrence of Arabia”, “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Spartacus” killed at the box office; John Glenn orbited the Earth in Friendship 7; the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly brought the US and USSR to nuclear war and baseball was expanding, AGAIN. The Houston Colt .45s and the New York Mets joined the stalwarts of the National League, adding the two franchises to equal the recently expanded American League. And, let’s not forget that Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle were coming off the 1961 season in which they were locked in a home run assault on Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs for the majority of the season as Maris ultimately eclipsing Ruth in the final game of the season against Boston. That year, Topps Company, Inc. released the unique 1962 Topps baseball set featuring a wood-grain border and the largest quantity of cards (598) they had ever issued. Little did they know that that original “regular” set would increase to nearly 700 cards for a master set which included short prints, variations, checklist variations and the extremely rare “green tint” series.

When Topps printed their original order for the 1962 baseball set, they did not anticipate such a high demand for the second series (#110-196) and were forced to use a different printer for another run because their contracted supplier had already begun printing the third series. When they shipped the printing plates to the new printer in upstate New York, many of the plates were damaged in transit. The combination of working with different plates and the magenta color separations prepared incorrectly created the green hues or tints on the short run of the highly sought-after series. Because it was such a limited production segment of the 1962 Topps set, the green tint or “greenies” subset is extremely difficult to assemble let alone in such high-grade due to the fragile nature of the wood grain border.

Offered is the #1 PSA Graded “Green Tint” subset from the 1962 Topps Baseball issue including 2 variations. There are two different card #139s and no green tint card of #159. This offering also includes a subset within the subset of green tint “Life of Babe Ruth” subjects. Again, all of these cards are minimally graded PSA 8 or better and each one carries a hefty price based on recent sales, with several extremely low pop examples. (Card #139 Ruth HR only has a pop of 5 and recent sales of this card alone, nearly equal our minimum bid on the entire lot.) Complete with 87 different graded cards including 29 – PSA 9s, five PSA 8.5s and 55 - PSA 8s with no qualifiers. No card carries a grade less than 8 for an astounding 8.33 GPA. The offered subset would rank #1 on the PSA registry and therefore any master set builder of 1962s immediately takes a huge leap up the ladder of ranking. This unique subset is impossible to reproduce, especially in such high-grade, and the difficulty cannot be understated.