This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 4/1/2022
When Babe Ruth became baseball's all-time home run king in 1921, there was little national attention paid to what was really an enormous feat. Of course, the great American pastime wasn't as celebrated as it is today and the art of the home run played a secondary role to the traditional "station to station" concept of scratching out runs and stopping the opponent with dominant pitching. Babe passed Roger Conner on the career home run list when he hit his 162nd round-tripper, pushing his total to 714 at the time of his retirement in 1935. Even with burgeoning home run maulers like Gehrig, Greenberg, and Foxx startinhg to put up "Ruthian" type numbers, baseball aficionados were sure the mark would never be broken. Many made a run at the Babe but all fell short for various reasons until Hank Aaron knocked the Bambino from the top spot in 1974. Aaron never flashed gaudy home run stats like some of his contemporaries; he never even reached the 50 homer plateau at any time in his career, but his consistency in posting 30 to 40 round-trippers per season for over two decades catapulted Aaron to the top of the all-time list. Aaron made his baseball card debut in the 1954 Topps set, a collection that doesn't contain a card of Mickey Mantle, but it's a pretty safe bet that even if it did, it would be one of the few Topps collections where the Mantle card isn't the marquee pasteboard. The rookie cards of Al Kaline and Ernie Banks in the series would provide more than enough power to lead any Topps series, but it's the introduction of home run legend Hank Aaron that rises to the top as one of the most coveted debut cards ever produced. Graded by PSA, the presented NM/MT example has easily met the increasingly demanding standards set forth by the California grading company, delivering a worthy specimen that truly pleases the eye. The centering mildly favors the right edge with a few degrees of a counterclockwise turn, but the image of "The Hammer" shows keen sharpness, surrounded by a glowing orange backdrop that is uncommonly intense and a shade or two darker than usual for the issue. Flip the card over and you're treated to an aggressively toned reverse beaming with green pigment that is unwilling to relinquish its hold on the edges and corners. Among the top-five post-war HOF rookie issues produced, and an absolute necessity in any respectable high-grade HOF collection.