Just received the Winter 2008 issue of SGC Collector magazine in the mail today. It usually contains articles pretty much devoted to sports issues, but in this one there is an article devoted to the Look 'N See set.

In Nov at the annual Greater Boston Show I submitted 200 cards to SGC, among them 44 of my LNS set. On the last page I was pleased to see 2 of my submissions used for illustration, including the very tough-to-find in high grade Adlai Stevenson card #98.

Below are the 3 pgs that contained the article.

Thank you for sharing this Fred, I would not have seen it otherwise

You're Welcome Gil---Hope others will see it also. It's a very classy, nicely done magazine that probably not too many on this Board may be familiar with.

Fred, thanks for sharing. The Stevenson card is great, most are o/c top to bottom. Do you know which cards are in that infamous top row? I hope Mike Berkus chimes in with his thoughts.

Hi,

Really glad to see this article, as we are talking about my beloved set of Look N See cards. I wonder where the information came from? I know that bits and pieces of what took place at Topps has accumulated over the years, but much as not been really clarified. For those of you who would like to see that uncut sheet (which by the way it shows the single high number prints on the bottom of the sheet), here is the tag for viewing on the net.
http://chuckmannon-sporttradingcards1950s.blogspot.com/search/label/LOOK%20%27N%27%20SEE%20FAMOUS%20PEOPLE%20-%20UNCUT%20SHEETS.

For those that care, the key to truly collecting this set in graded high condition is the population report that exists with PSA. Although I know the good folks at SGC from their setting up each year at our National, I am not sure how they keep track of graded items. But, PSA does maintain that POP report and it is amazing how rare some triple prints can be i.e. #100 Beaverbrook. All in all we share the same love of the non sport creations made decades ago without any forsight of how much of an impact they would still have long after the gum rotted.

For those of you that saw my thread about the "room" of vintage non sport cards at Topps in NY, I will be back for a visit in Jan and hope to have picture to show.

Have a wonderful holiday and keep the passion.

Mike Berkus

There is a school of thought the Look N See's were issued in three series. I dunno but I do know that many vintage Topps uncut sheets also have a counterpart on a "master" or double sized uncut sheet and drawing conclusions from a single sheet without knowing the array of its counterpart can lead to incorrect assumptions. Having said that, cards on top and (especially) bottom rows especially were subject to damage and other issues in the 50's.

Rehashing an old thread. I am doing research on this set for a guide to the early Topps cards I am working on and found the uncut high number sheet scan referenced in NSB, here and elsewhere. Sheet is a misonomer actually, it's in four pieces but they all fit together. The short print row is actually on the bottom of the sheet, not the top but that might just be an editing error from the article.

There are only 9 short prints on the sheet, then 41 double prints and 10 triple prints. The known high number short prints seem to match up with the bottom row from what I have seen so far and if another sheet exists with the SP row on top it still seems like it only appeared once on that sheet as well.

I do not know, as noted above, if Topps was printing double wide master sheets (with two arrays per half sheet) with these size cards in 1952 as that may be something they started with '52 Baseball and the Giant Size cards. Jury is out but I don't see a lot of evidence in similarly dimensioned sets (Jets, Fighting Marines) that they did this. I suspect they just duplicated the one half sheet on the other side of the master sheet for these three sets.

The first series is a little tougher but if there are not two different sheet arrays and extrapolating from the structure of the high number sheet then I think there are possibly either 29 or 31 short prints OR only 7 or 9 of them (I strongly suspect the latter 7 or 9 option).

Does anyone here have a good, solid list of the suspected first series short prints? I don't think the 8 OP and 37 SP theory in the Non Sport Bible is correct. While most SP's are due to design, some positions on the sheets were more prone to damaged cards than others. The Rembrandt #82 card is an example of this but a sheet where the bottom row repeats what was in the same row somewhere above could yield a couple of cards where there is no designed SP but where they exist in a "between" state, i.e. easier than a SP but harder than a DP.

Thanks!