Not long after the New York Yankees secured another seven game World Series championship over the Brooklyn Dodgers in the summer of ’52, Topps architect Sy Berger was hard at work, utilizing feedback gathered from the release of the inaugural Topps set to create an even better product for 1953. The “super-sized” pasteboards were praised by collectors, though the subpar colorization of the black and white images and limited success of the troubled high-number series left plenty of room for improvement. An even bigger problem was brewing in Philadelphia as Topps had the attention of rival Bowman, who would not only increase their card size for the 1953 collection but also file a lawsuit against Topps, alleging player contract violations. It was clear that in 1953, Topps was either going to make their mark or become the next victim to fall by the wayside.
Topps 2.0 – Making a classic even better
In order to improve the appearance of the players, Topps commissioned artist Gerry Dvorak to sketch and paint the likeness of each player. The result was a collection of memorable portraits and action shots, finely detailed with dominating images and warm flesh tones that, to this day, stands among the most admired in the industry. Even the background of each card was carefully crafted, capturing the feel of the stadium crowd and appropriate advertising that lined the fences. Jackie Robinson was moved to the pole position as card #1, with Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Mickey Mantle and Eddie Mathews also moving from the previous year’s high-number series to the ’53 set’s first series. This gave collectors an opportunity to quickly acquire many of the popular stars that they were unable to find the previous year.
As the court battle with Bowman over player contracts raged on, Topps was forced to continually make changes to their print plans, replacing players that they couldn’t get under contract by either “moving up” a player from the next series to the present one or double-printing a player in the existing series. There were also five cards from both the 1st and 2nd series that were moved back, creating “chase cards” that couldn’t be obtained until the next series was released. By the time Topps reached the late-season high number series, there weren’t enough contracted players for a complete run, so many more cards were double-printed, with six (#253, 261, 267, 268, 271 and 275) left out of the series entirely. Seemingly a mix of superstars and “no-name” players, the cards slated for double-printing were likely chosen randomly or left in the hands of the printer to decide. If left up to Topps, they surely would have gone exclusively with big name stars. After all, who’s going to complain about getting too many Mickey Mantle cards? As for the six missing subjects, one can only speculate who they may have been. But it should be noted that Richie Ashburn, Leo Durocher, Gil Hodges, Bob Lemon, Robin Roberts and Duke Snider all appear in the ’52 series and are absent in the ’53 collection.
With the dreadful centering issues plaguing the 1952 Topps high-number series largely corrected, a new wrinkle was introduced that would soon be added to the card collector’s vernacular; chipping. Though the attractive red and black nameplates that ran along two of the edges were met with overwhelming favorability, collectors soon realized that the colors easily flaked, making it a much more difficult task to keep their cards in pristine condition. As a result, only 30 cards from the entire set have graded PSA 10, and less than 1% of all submissions have reached the level of PSA 9. Ironically, Bowman countered with a “color” series revered by many as their best ever, but they fell to Topps once again in terms of sales, and a new king of the baseball card market was crowned!
#4 Ranked PSA Set Registry Collection – 8.41 Set Rating – offered in MHCC October 2015 Auction
Over the last 25 years, several small “finds” of high-grade 1953 Topps cards from Canada produced a modest cache of perfectly centered, chip-free pasteboards that received the blessing of PSA in the form of PSA 8 and higher grades. There’s little doubt that some of those premier examples made it into this complete assemblage. Presented in the October 2015 Mile High Card Company auction is a crowning achievement in card collecting, one of the finest 1953 Topps collections in existence. Nearly impossible to assemble today if started from scratch, this set ranks #4 on the PSA Set Registry with an overall 8.41 set rating. Every card in this collection carries a minimum grade of PSA 8, with #41 Slaughter, 77 Mize, 114 Rizzuto and 63 others graded PSA 8.5, and 54 cards graded PSA 9, including amazing MINT specimens of #27 Campanella, 37 Mathews, 61 Wynn, 66 Minoso, 76 Reese and 86 B. Martin. Included is a stunning PSA 8 example of Mickey Mantle, a card that has been riding the coattails of the 1952 Topps card to record-breaking prices each time one is offered. The most astonishing member of this collection is a breathtaking PSA 9 card of #224 Satchel Paige, one of the single finest specimens known to exist. Offered as a complete set as well as each card individually, with the higher total between the set price versus the sum of the prices of the individual cards determining the method of sale, this set is but one of many collections rating at or near the top of the PSA Set Registry that will be available in the MHCC October 2105 auction.
It was just 3 weeks into the start of a new year and America was inaugurating John F. Kennedy as its 35th President. World War II was long behind us but a new threat emerged from its aftermath, one that would leave our nation on edge for decades and change the culture of our society. In a time marked by unrest and uncertainty, the Topps Company released a 1961 baseball set that brought order to chaos.
The most important rookie card ever produced!
Offered is one of the most stunning, mid-grade M101-4 Sporting News Babe Ruth rookie cards in existence!
For an inaugural collection, the 1933 Goudey set initially appeared to have no “drama” other than a change to card #6 Jimmy Dykes, who was originally listed as 26 years old and later corrected to 36 years old. That is until collectors began to sense a common theme; they were all one card away from completing the set… and it was always the same card! While U.S. Caramel and George C. Miller had implemented a similar technique of short-printing one card so severely that only a few lucky patrons could complete the set, Goudey took the concept a step further by totally omitting card #106 completely, keeping customers buying their product in a futile search for the non-existent pasteboard. But it didn’t take long for Goudey’s subterfuge to be discovered and the missing card #106 was printed in the final run of the following year, explaining why it bears the design of Goudey’s 1934 product. It is unknown why Napoleon Lajoie, a star that had been retired for over 15 years, was made the subject of the missing pasteboard, but with the card produced in limited quantity and available only by mail to collectors that formally complained in writing, the “1933” Goudey #106 Lajoie ranks with the T206 Honus Wagner and the T206 Ty Cobb with “Ty Cobb” reverse as the most coveted rarities in sports card history.
Because of extremely limited distribution, little is known about the 32-card set other than it features artistic renderings of actual photographs with a presentation similar to Diamond Stars cards and can easily be mistaken by collectors unfamiliar with the Miller collection. The portraits on the George C. Miller cards have a less refined appearance compared to Diamond Stars cards and are identifiable by the backdrop, a striped blue and red sky pattern, and no player names on the front. The reverse is unique, offering the players’ vital information, 1932 and career statistics, a checklist of the entire set, and details to redeem the set for a prize. Two players are represented from each of the 16 major league teams, with Jimmy Foxx, Dizzy Dean and Lefty Grove leading a group of stars and Hall of Famers. It is unknown as to why the Yankees are represented by Red Ruffing and Bill Dickey instead of Ruth and Gehrig; perhaps the two Yankee legends’ request for compensation was too high. Two different reverses were produced: Type I has larger, brighter print with the names of Foxx and Klein spelled incorrectly, revised to the correct spelling on the Type II reverse. As with other companies that offered a prize for the redemption of a complete set, one “chase-card” was extremely short-printed to increase sales from patrons determined to assemble a complete set. Just like Goudey’s 1933 Napoleon Lajoie and U. S. Caramel’s Charles Lindstrom and William McKinley cards, the George C. Miller card of Paul “Ivy” Andrews ranks as one of the most formidable acquisitions in card collecting. So difficult to obtain, PSA doesn’t even consider it part of the set, viewing it as a “bonus card” on the PSA Set Registry. The cards were offered in wax wrappers touting “National Ball Game Toffee” and “American Ball Game Toffee”, the themed wrappers giving collectors a better opportunity to acquire the players of their choice and more accurately target the goal of assembling a complete set. Less than 5 wrappers of each are known to exist and an American League specimen recently sold at auction for over $5,000.
Several facts contribute to the extreme rarity of the George C. Miller collection. The Miller Candy Co. was much smaller than other companies that issued sets and the cards were only available in the Greater Boston area. Also, the cards were marketed for children, not known for their ability to take great care of … well, much of anything, and a complete set was redeemable for a ball, glove, or ticket to a big league game. The cards that were sent in had the bottom edge cut off or had holes punched in them and were returned to the sender along with their prize, assuring that the cards could not be sent again. Quite often, the children would then discard the damaged pasteboards having already reached their goal of acquiring the prize. Even if a forward-thinking collector managed to sidestep those pitfalls, staining from the toffee candy was a common occurrence and lessened the chance of retaining high-grade specimens right from the start. As a result, less than 3% of all George C. Miller cards submitted to PSA have graded above PSA 6.
So just how rare are George C. Miller cards? The answer is … very! Even as early as the 1950s, George C. Miller cards were rarely encountered and considered as scarce as many obscure issues from the late 1800s. The DeLong set, also from 1933, is considered difficult, yet the 649 George C. Miller submissions to PSA is just 26% of the total number of DeLongs that PSA has graded. Each of the four Babe Ruth cards in the 1933 Goudey set has a higher submission rate than the entire George C. Miller set. In fact, the most highly submitted card from the set (Charlie Gehringer – 29) pales in comparison to the number of 1933 Goudey Napoleon Lajoie cards that PSA has evaluated (81), an example that routinely sells for tens of thousands of dollars.
However, Frazee had another option; the Chicago White Sox offered star outfielder Joe Jackson and $60,000 cash for Ruth’s services; rejected in favor of the larger cash deal. Had the White Sox offer been successful, Joe Jackson would have patrolled the outfield in Boston and Babe Ruth would have played in Chicago. Well, for a short while anyway. With rumors of a conspiracy to fix the 1919 World Series continuing through the 1920 season, a grand jury was convened to investigate. While cleared of all legal charges, Jackson’s reign in the Boston outfield would have abruptly ended when Commissioner Landis issued a lifetime ban of Jackson and the other alleged co-conspirators. Ruth would have found himself toiling in relative obscurity, leader of an organization gutted by scandal that would finish no higher than 5th in the American League for the remainder of Ruth’s career. Instead of being the saving grace to restore baseball’s integrity, he would wear the cap of the team that destroyed it. There would be no “house that Ruth built” and no New York Yankees dynasty. “The Babe” likely would have been just another name among the greats, and the sport of baseball would have followed a very different path.
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 final series would offset any drop in demand due to the upcoming football season. But that series (#311-407) was delayed and barely made it out of production by September. To make matters worse, many stores that successfully sold the product all season chose not to order the final series so late in the year and collectors were either unable to locate the cards or were simply unaware that the cards even existed. Not even an appearance by the “Commerce Comet” could turn the tide and sales plummeted. With cases of unsold 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 final 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 final series issues are unusually scarce, especially in presentable condition.
As a Master Set, ranked #3 on the PSA Set Registry, the collection includes all 407 cards in the series with the 80 additional 1st series cards in “black-back” form, the celebrated Joe Page and Johnny Sain “wrong bio” reverses (#48 and 49) and the newly discovered and scarce Frank Campos “black star” variation (#307 graded PSA 5), bringing the total collection to 490 cards. The cornerstones of the set are naturally the Mickey Mantle card #311, a fresh and vibrant PSA 7 with an above-grade perimeter and incredible image quality to offset the typical centering variance, a phenomenal PSA 7.5 specimen of Eddie Mathews’ rookie card #407 and a breathtaking PSA 8 black-back version of Andy Pafko’s card #1, one of just 5 in existence with a lone specimen graded higher, along with a PSA 6 of the red back variety. Nine cards are graded PSA 9, headlined by card #2 James Runnels black-back (one of 2 with just one graded higher) and including #38 Westlake (pop 4, none higher), 71 Upton (pop 2, none higher), 108 Konstanty (pop 5, none higher), 207 Harris (pop 10, none higher), 210 Fowler (pop 7, none higher), 245 Robertson (pop 5, none higher), 292 Baker (pop 8, none higher), and 322 Jackson (pop 7, none higher). 
Other extremely high-grade low pops include PSA 8.5 cards of #12 Basgall (pop 1, two higher), 131 Martin (pop 3 none higher), 246 Kell (pop 3, two higher) and 398 Rice (Pop 1, one higher) with incredibly sought-after PSA 8 rarities of #9 Hogue red-back, 11 Rizzuto black-back, 20 Loes red-back, 48 Page correct bio black-back, 49 Sain correct bio red-back, 162 Crandall, 165 Kazak, 175 B. Martin, 180 Maxwell, 261 Mays, 312 J. Robinson, 316 Williams, 320 Rutherford, 326 Shuba, 341 Jeffcoat, 373 Turner, 388 Chipman, and 403 Miller. Over 83% of the entire collection (9 PSA 9, 15 PSA 8.5, and 384 PSA 8) is graded PSA 8 or above. A link to the complete card by card breakdown of this set, including individual grades and populations, will be available through our website or by visiting the PSA Set Registry. This collection is being offered as a complete set as well as each card offered individually, with the final sale going to whichever total (the set versus the sum of the individual lots) is higher. This gives prospective bidders the opportunity to examine each and every card in the collection through the use of our high quality scans. We’ve been honored to offer some of the world’s finest 1952 Topps sets over the past few years, but this collection takes it to a whole new level of excellence!