In 1951, on a typical autumn eve in New York City, 28-year old World War II veteran Sy Berger sat down with Woody Gelman at the kitchen table of his Brooklyn apartment and designed what would become the standard-bearer for an entire industry, the 1952 Topps baseball card set. Rejecting the traditions and conventional wisdom set forth by the Bowman Company, Berger's 1952 Topps set would provided a dramatic alternative, offering super-sized 2-5/8" by 3-3/4" pasteboards which included the player's name, colorized photo, facsimile autograph, and color team logo on the front with the player's height, weight, batting and throwing orientation, birthplace, birthday, career stats, and a short biography on the back, innovations to the generations-old concept of baseball trading cards that are still employed today. Packaged and sold as "five giant size picture cards" with a stick of bubble gum, the end result produced a cultural shock wave that forever changed the manner in which fans followed their favorite teams and athletes. Sprawling displays that touted the new Topps trading cards infiltrated nearly every Woolworths and "five & dime shop" in the nation, with seemingly endless stacks of wax packs, boxes, and even cases available for purchase. Initial sales were encouraging enough for Topps to begin planning a 1953 edition and the company felt confident that withholding baseball icons Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella and Eddie Mathews until the third series would offset any drop in demand due to the upcoming football season. But the third and final series (#311-407) was delayed and barely made it out of production by the start of football season. Not even the "Commerce Comet" could turn the tide, and demand simply vanished. With cases of product stranded in the Topps warehouse for years, Sy Berger decided in 1960 to load up a tugboat with approximately 300 to 500 cases of 1952 third series product and dispose of it New York Harbor, sending them to a watery grave somewhere off the coast of northern New Jersey. For this obvious reason, the famous Mickey Mantle card #311 and all other third series issues are unusually scarce, especially in presentable condition. The significance of this groundbreaking set, the difficulty of its third series high-numbers, and the red and black back variations of the first series (#1-80) all combine to make collecting the 1952 Topps baseball set one of the single most passionate and pursued pastimes within our hobby. Mile High Card Company is proud to present this complete 407-card set, ranked on the PSA Set Registry with an overall GPA of 7.232 and the finest 1952 Topps assemblage that we've ever offered! Bids will be accepted for both the complete set and the individual cards listed in this catalog, with the final sale determined by the complete set price versus the aggregate total of the individual cards, whichever is higher. This affords you the opportunity to examine each and every card through our high-resolution scans, with detailed descriptions of the most significant. One common theme you'll notice in the descriptions is that the cards have superior eye appeal to the assessed PSA grade, revealing the collector's desire to not only complete the set, but to do so with only those specimens that exhibit a particularly noteworthy quality. For most, the PSA assessment is technically accurate, but there will be instances where a review could prove fruitful. We have taken great strides to present this amazing collection as comprehensively as possible and hope you enjoy participating in this auction as much as we do in presenting it! For a comprehensive breakdown of this set, both for condition and population, please visit our website for a link to the PSA Set Registry.
At the end of the auction, the set will be sold to the highest aggregate bidding, whether that is the sum of the individual lots or the highest bid for the complete set. Our website will automatically reflect whichever portion has received the highest bidding total. Placing a bid on this lot constitutes bidding on the complete 407 card group.
http://www.psacard.com/PSASETREGISTRY/alltimeset.aspx?s=74262&ac=1