Airbrushing Inside 1963 Topps’ Colorful Circles

BY MARK A. LARSON
Editor & Publisher

If you ask collectors of vintage baseball cards about their favorite Topps sets, many would place the company’s 1963 effort near the top.

Most ’63s feature clean, crisp photos, with minimal airbrushing. The colorful bottom border with a second black-and-white photo inside a circle is also unique and appealing. The backs feature bright yellow on easy-to-read white card stock … and full lifetime statistics.

But back to those photos inside the front circle.

Topps used a second photo on the front several times before – usually in the background. The last time was 1960 when the second photo was off to the side. (An additional photo on cards fronts would not be utilized again until 1983.)

If collectors look closely at the small ’63 photos inside the circle, they will notice some interesting (and often crude) touchup work. Usually this involved the logo on the player’s cap, where an updated logo was attempted. Sometimes uniform fronts were also involved.

For instance, take Johnny Temple of the Houston Colt .45s. His primary color photo shows him capless. (Probably because Topps didn’t have an updated photo of him in a Houston uniform.) However, there was a rather feeble attempt to update the small, black-and-white photo by changing it to the “.45s” cap logo. Plus, the front of his jersey was “whited out” to conceal his previous team. As seen below, the cap logo is ridiculously big, filling the entire front and partway around the side (other examples follow):