HEY ALL!!  Well another day of slower internet. Just living with it and hoping it speeds up after cyber Monday. More baseball cards today, I know, I know, you all get SO excited about it. In the 50's and 60's Topps would start issuing cards around March. The start of spring training. As the year went on they would issue " Series " of cards usually 75 to 130 new cards. You can fit 132 cards on a standard sheet for printing before you cut them in to individual cards. Topps would issue about 6 of 7 Series of cards through out the summer. As the summer wore on and less and less teams were involved in the pennant races, there would be less and less interest in baseball cards. So by the 6th or 7th series Topps would print less and less of each card. This created a natural shortage of cards in the last series. You may print let's say 300,000 of each card in series 1, but only 100,00 of each in series 7. That way there was not any cards left over in the retail stores, so it looked like the cards were big sellers. That stopped with the 1973 set, it was the last set done that way. After that Topps and other companies would issue 2 or 3 series of cards, but would release them early so the cards could sell all summer. Use to be they would issue Series 1 in December and be done with the current year's cards by May or June. Well the card companies thought it would be cool to " create " a shortage of cards like there use to be. So they started printing cards with certain markings in them, like gold borders or die-cut cards or something to make the short supply cards stick out from the regular cards. It worked to a certain degree. Most of the collectors considered those cards as " parallels " and a lot of them do not chase after them. So the idea did work to a degree. CHOW MOI