I was able to use this technique on the 1999 US Topo maps as described, & now I'm trying to use it on Worldmap v4's 2153 maps, reducing it to 240 maps - so I spent hours making gdb's from 3x3 grids of the original maps, then ran the combinemaps script - but gpsmapper crashes w/error 1073741819, during poi info sorting. Sounds similar to the error discussed in this thread, but all the "useful" sounding links mentioned therein appear to be dead, so I can't figure out how to resolve my error.
If somebody has WM4 & wants to try my gdb's, here's my zip file.
Thanks!