Uncut sheets are a great way to piece together information about vintage sets. Here’s a lesson learned (pointed out by jackies_and_jordans on Instagram) from Heritage Auctions’ November 2014 $31K sale of this blank-backed uncut sheet of 1961 Fleer basketball cards.
Sure, the sheet was blank-backed with a few creases and surface scuffs, but it was the first time an auction house had ever offered an uncut sheet of 1961 Fleer basketball cards. Fleer released the set as a 66-card single series with 44 base cards and 22 “In Action” cards loaded with stars. You can see that the 6-row/11-column uncut sheet has every card in the set single-printed (there were no short or double prints).
What you will find is that all of the cards on the right edge are tougher to find in good condition than the rest, and they happen to be card numbers 1 through 6 in the set (including Elgin Baylor).
You can see in PSA’s population (as of 1 September 2025) report that cards 1 through 6 have populations of 492, 365, 874 (Baylor), 440, 335, and 343.
However, when you look at PSA’s population report for cards 16 through 21, the pop counts are considerably higher, which is interesting since, as the uncut sheet shows, none of the cards were short-printed. The total graded populations for these cards are 861, 584, 577, 780, 590, and 555.
PSA has only graded 114 1961 Fleer basketball cards as 10s, and just one of those is in the first six cards (Paul Arizin). There are 1494 PSA 9s in the Pop Report, but just 54 from the first six cards. If PSA 9s were evenly distributed, you’d expect 135 PSA 9s in the first six cards. With 7,839 PSA 8s, you’d expect there to be around 712, but there are only 364.
Given this disparity, PSA’s Price Guide for cards 1 through 6 is higher than other commons, more considerably so in higher grades.
So what’s going on? Well, the cards on the right edge seem to have been cut narrow by Fleer, so PSA seems to often flag them as “minsize” or “trimmed.” Even cards that make it through grading tend to measure slightly narrow. Unfortunately, either Fleer’s quality control didn’t adhere to stringent standards or the cards were cut narrow due to the sheets being cut from left to right, allowing insufficient room to cut in a centered manner. So the population report is probably much lower for the first six cards in the set because of rejections due to size sensitivity and folks just not submitting what would end up as low-grade examples.
Kudos again go out to jackies_and_jordans on Instagram for originally making this connection (in 2024) and pointing out the interesting nuance for the 1961 Fleer basketball set. So, if you’re looking to complete a set and struggling to find nice examples of any of the first six cards, now you know why!
Happy collecting!
Check out The Uncut Sheet Archive for more!
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