Joy of a Completed Set: 1957 Topps!

I never owned a 1957 Topps card during my original stint as a card collector in the early 90s, with my modest smattering of vintage not stretching back further than 1969 or so. The first 1957 Topps card I acquired was a year or two after I had returned to the hobby, scoring myself a beat-up, miscut Mickey Mantle for $54 in November 2013. Over a decade later, October 18, 2024, I acquired my last 1957 Topps card, coincidentally also a Yankees outfielder, and between those 2 purchases, I tracked down the other 405 cards in the 407-card set. Yep, 1957 Topps is in the books!

My "setbuild bookend" cards are fittingly off-center towards each other. Tony Kubek isn't a big name today, but he won the AL ROY that year, and add to that the "Yankee tax", and his high-numbered rookie card shook out to being my final need, settling for this one.

Fulls stats, write-up, and a comic.. it's a solid card back design. (BTW, Happy Birthday, Mickey Mantle!)

After the Kubek rookie arrived, I queued up a playlist of Billboard's Hot 100 for the year 1957, and thumbed through the cards to confirm they're all there. When they started counting bananas in "Day-O", it nearly threw me off as I mentally checked off card numbers, lol. Then my heart nearly sank when #156 Gus Triandos wasn't in its place, but thankfully ol' Gus had just been misfiled a couple cards back.

All cards were accounted for, happy to report. The set is in a box, not binder-- apologies to you purists out there-- but I've got several graded cards in there anyways. I'm no "slab bro" or anything, but I plan to keep them encased for safety.

Billy Pierce is my highest-graded card at PSA 7, and turned out to be the only dupe that slipped into my set, also finding a creased raw copy in the box during my verification process. Pierce's upgrade and the PSA 6 Wally Post were scored in a trade with Chris the Collector in 2019. Luis Aparicio (previous pic) was a contest win, I believe, but I think the rest of these slabs were purchases. For a while I was trying to get big names in graded form just to be careful in regards to counterfeits. Not sure I'd bother quite as much today, but no regrets.

My set is a basic "one of each card number" set, not a master set. There are unnumbered checklists (with variations) and contest cards that I don't really have interest in. Same for the one error variation and a "lucky penny keychain offer" card. As it stands, I just have the one above contest card as a representative for the unnumbered appendix stuff. I've thrown the other stuff on my TCDB wantlist just in case, as I wouldn't mind trading for them, but I don't want to pay big bucks for boring cards that are only expensive today because kids back in '57 understandably threw them away with the wrappers most of the time.

Some more big cards that are too good for just a penny sleeve's protection. Another quirk of my set is that the Duke Snider is a buyback auto from 2004 Topps Originals. But hey, that's a real 1957 Topps card, so I count it. If I were one to grade cards, I'd be very curious what that Brooks Robinson rookie I lucked into would score. It seems pretty sharp for one of the top cards in the checklist, and isn't very representative of my set as a whole. For instance..

Consecutively near the front of the set at #8 and 9 are these well-loved specimens. There are several beaters in my set, can't deny. Looks like I've got 155 cards currently logged in a status of "upgrade would be nice" on my spreadsheet. Sure, I wouldn't mind upgrading them someday, but I'm also totally fine if that day never comes. I can truthfully make the claim that I've completed a set of 1957 Topps Baseball, and that's enough for me!

And an even bigger big-picture collecting goal for me wraps up now too: I've now completed my original vintage setbuilding goal of my personal "holy trinity" of favorite sets, one from each decade of the Topps golden era. First for me was 1973 Topps (started circa 11/28/2013, finished  9/26/2015-- my 1st ever completed full-sized set), then came 1965 Topps (kicked off 8/14/2015 and completed 1/7/2018). And now finally, I've completed my trifecta of personal favorites with 1957. 

The Mantle was originally purchased as part of my little Mickey Mantle PC-- no intention to ever complete the set at the time. But soon thereafter I started attending the local monthly card show and would always grab '57s when I found them in the sub-dollar bins. The earliest post I found with the "1957 Topps" label on my blog is a card show recap from August 2015: "I was especially happy to score the two 57s. That's a definite 'maybe someday I'll work on completing that set' dream set for me." 

Hey, dreams do come true! :) It's also kind of neat how I tried to keep track of the source of each card on the spreadsheet, helping to tell the story of how this particular set came together... via trades, card shows, and online purchases. As for the cards themselves, I love the "non-design" of the set and how for the first time Topps let the photograph be the card without much bells or whistles getting in the way. The set makes for terrific snapshots into the game at the time.

I hit the '57 wantlist hard for the next few years at the monthly card show, as longtime readers might recall-- (post titled "Wanna see more '57 Topps pickups? Too bad, here they are anyway" lol). Then when covid hit, I stopped going to the card show, and haven't been inspired to return since. Now here in 2024 I realized if I was gonna finish the set, I'd need to get more proactive and start picking off needs at COMC and eBay. And so I did, and a few months later, here we are. I'm glad I did the heavy lifting before the pandemic pumped up vintage prices. It's safe to say this will remain as my oldest completed set from here on out. I have half-hearted whims of pursuing 1959 Topps someday if prices drop or my ship comes in, but besides that, I still have 1964 Topps stalled at 76% and would like to complete that one eventually before my collecting career wraps up. But my focus is jumping back up to the 70s now, aiming to complete a run of that decade's flagship Topps sets. The pesky high-numbers of 1972 Topps, in particular, are currently in my crosshairs. In fact...

The final 1957 card was won from a Greg Morris auction, and if you're familiar with that seller, you know if you win one card from him you should try to snag a few more cards within the next few days before you pay because it's a flat shipping cost for all cards won within a week or something. I scored a bunch of '72 needs, including the 4 highlights above (Finally have the real Ron Cey rookie card!). From my experience, you want to find his auctions that end in the middle of the night (like these)-- his auctions ending in the afternoon/evening seem to end higher (than they probably should) with last minute bids, which I guess makes sense, but something I should try to keep in mind when bidding on his stuff. People might overpay a bit since they know it's still an ok deal with the combined shipping considered, plus he's a trusted vintage dealer not some rando who might try to slip you a fake or try funny business regarding condition issues.

But yeah, before I expanded to include all of the 70s, my longterm vintage collecting goal was completing the '57/'65/'73 trifecta of my favorite sets, so it's a great feeling to wrap that up. Thanks for following along, folks!

Remembering Willie Mays

Like many collectors, I took a moment to appreciate Willie Mays in the wake of his passing by looking through my cards of his.

I watched the Willie Mays doc on HBO a while ago and really enjoyed it. He's got solid representation in my collection, but Mays is a bittersweet figure in my personal hobby history, with a couple questionable decisions on my part regarding good cards of his that I parted with.

About 10 years ago, I bought a Mays 2003 Retired refractor auto for a whopping $300. A guy who read my blog post about it offered me double for it. I couldn't resist that ROI and agreed to part with it, though I've since come to regret the decision in hindsight, still chugging away on a run of Retired refractors as perhaps my #1 collecting goal. With part of the proceeds from the sale, I picked up a replacement Mays auto (more modestly priced at $160 shipped) for another ambitious collecting project of mine: the "Archives Reserve Master Set" I've been slowly building over the years..

It's a nice consolation prize, for sure-- they don't sell for anywhere near $160 anymore!-- though I still miss the '03 Retired refractor. I'm still in touch with the buyer, Dan, and we've done more swaps since. Last time I checked in with him, he was 8 cards away from his goal of completing the 2003 Retired refractor autos. (I'm going for all 3 Retired releases, with 2004 my priority, but Dan doesn't mess much with '04 or '05, instead laser focused on 2003.)

But my initial $300 purchase had a nice bonus included in the lot, and I still own that one:

I call these "charcoal" parallels of 2003 Retired, though officially they are called black borders (despite clearly being speckled dark gray). It's a nice looking card, even if not refractorized. 

It's got the "ebay 1/1" distinction of being jersey number 24 out of 99. You get a nice back of complete career stats, with the black and red text easy to read against a white background, which is appreciated even more in these days of Topps making Archives backs harder to read than the originals they mimic. If you want to check for typos-- I've noticed Retired cards often have uncorrected errors in the stats-- here's his baseball-ref page.

The other bonehead move I made with Willie Mays cards is a few years back when I forgot I had bought his 1957 Topps card for my setbuild and then bought another one. Hey, I was drinking too much in those days. I ended up trading the extra to blogger bud The Diamond King for a Cody Bellinger SSP photo variation RC. Of course, like clockwork, Cody then instantly fell off from the MVP numbers he had been consistently putting up to start his career. LOL. At least he's bounced back somewhat now. Anyways, the card pictured above is the one I still have in my set. Man, I should really prioritize the last 79 cards I need to finally complete a basic set 1957 Topps to hang my hat on.

Ten years ago I was in Hawaii getting hitched. Yep, Willie Mays died on my 10th wedding anniversary. I'm weirdly honored to share a special day with the legendary Willie Mays. It's sad he passed, but he made it to the impressive age of 93. An incredible life to be celebrated for years and years.

Been at this for a decade now

Hey, here are some cards I got in trade from my buddy Dennis at TMV. He found some autographs he was interested in from my trade bait page, and we were able to hammer out a deal that resulted in big help to vintage setbuilds of mine. 

I've been after a second-year Garvey for a long time. Needed it for my set (129 cards left to go.. pretty much all high numbers or variations), plus he's a solid PC guy of mine thanks in no small part to his Padres tenure (growing up in San Diego in the '80s, as I did). Being a tough high-number, I'm unlikely to score a dupe for the PC anytime soon, so I'll be content with just the one.

And how about another Dodgers legend? Freshly-minted Hall of Famer Gil Hodges was probably the biggest name left on my '57 Topps needs. Just 80 more cards left to go, and none of those should run me much into double digits. I should probably hit that quest harder, hunting down deals on my remaining needs and finally sticking a fork in what's my longest-running setbuild. --Scratch that, my blog archives reminded me that 1964 Topps was in the works (and still is) when I officially declared I'd be trying to complete a set of 1957 Topps back in February 2017.

Typically when I get a player's '57 Topps card, that's my oldest card of the guy, with my collecting focus not often stretching back past the 60s, but I'm very happy to own a beat-up Bowman rookie of Gil Hodges. Cool to add another playing-days card of the man.

Anyways, those 2 cards would have been fine in exchange for the pair of autographs Dennis was interested in, but he kindly threw in another cardboard heavy-weight to take the return over the top...

Yes, the Klutts rookie second-year! This was the main hurdle in finishing my 1978 Topps build. Just 34 cards left there, nearly all commons.

And for good measure, a new Gavin and 12/25 card from the set containing the most Christmas Cards ever, 2008 Topps Moments & Milestones. Chase Utley, not too shabby.

Thanks again for the trade, Dennis! Always a pleasure.

- - -o

I had some other Gavins and Christmas Cards I've been meaning to post about, so I guess I'll do that here. The below were all eBay buys. I don't focus as much these days on either minicollection, though once in a blue moon I'll do a search and see if I can find anything cool cheap. But I also have a saved search for cards that are both Gavins and 12/25.. and are autographs. Like this pair..

Gavin Williams again on the left. He's likely to crack the majors this year with Cleveland. And a pitcher named Gavin Stone (whom I also have a 12/25 auto of) made his debut for the Dodgers earlier this year. Two new MLB Gavins in the same year?! What a time to be alive. As a kid growing up with it being an uncommon name, never thought I'd see that day.

A better look at the numbering. The other guy, Gavin Stedman, is still an amateur, so we'll see if he ends up doing anything notable in the sport. Remember back when I collected Gavin Lux as an amateur? Then he was a 1st round pick and did well in the minors and his cards were really hot there for a moment? (I didn't sell any of his cards then, not even my dupes *kicking myself*) And then he struggled and then got hurt, and now his cards aren't worth much? The cardboard lifecycle. Now that I've been back in the hobby for over a decade, I've seen it plenty of times, and it's probably why I don't mess with modern cards much anymore.

This trio of Christmas Cards are the result of some more bids that came out on top. I don't collect Nick Fortes, just taking a flyer on a cheap 12/25 RC. Dick Williams is a PC guy (Pads in the Hall), and I don't think I had a relic of his, so that helped me go after this ugly card featuring a b&w photo of Dick with his back turned pooping out a white swatch. I sure don't chase modern Pinnacle at all (honestly never that big on Pinnacle even in its prime), but it was the cheapest Juan Soto christmas card I could find, so I went for it.

- -o

Oh, it's my 10 Year Blogiversary today, June 15. Normally I'd make a bigger deal of it, but I'm more in a working-on-stuff mindset at the moment, with some creative projects in the works that I'm excited to share soon. I'll try to do a "celebrating 10 years of Baseball Card Breakdown" thing later this summer, perhaps with a contest/giveaway aspect. But can't get to that today.

Oh wow, it's not serious, but technically speaking I just now found out I have cancer while working on this post. It's just a little basal cell skin irritation on my back that needs a 15-minute procedure to burn off and isn't at all likely to spread anywhere, but still, yikes. (Finally went to the dermatologist for the first time as an adult earlier this week.)

Ok then. Thanks for reading! Got a COMC package due tomorrow, so you'll likely be hearing from me again soon!

coVIdNTAGE

 Time to show off the vintage from my big COMCOVID shipment.

I miss finding pre-Topps beaters for cheap at the card show. This well-loved pair of 1950 Bowman cards each ran me a buck-something. Love the artwork on these!

Bob Scheffing and Willie "Puddin' Head" Jones. Sure, in a perfect world I'd love to have these in EX/NM or whatever, but I don't mind wear on really old cards. Adds to the character. These cards lived. Kids in the 50s shoved these pieces of cardboard into their pockets, played with them down by the schoolyard, and at least in the case of the Jones, apparently ran them through the wash.

These non-sport tobacco minis were each under a dollar.

1968 Brooke Bond History of the Motor Car #48 -1967 Ferrari P4, 4 Litres

1925 Wills Life in the Tree Tops #28 Young Kestrels

I wanna say I saw some of these History of the Motor Car cards on somebody's blog, and went out to find one for myself. This was a year ago, before I started doing my Vintage Frankenset, so that didn't play a factor, but serendipitously I had an opening at #48, so this Ferrari will be pulling into a parking spot there.

Sadly the same can't be said for the Young Kestrels or above 1950 Bowman cards, as their numbers are already filled, but I suppose you can never have enough old-ass cards, right? Pulled the trigger on the 1925 Kestrels back in September 2019 for 75¢ from COMC seller MashingDingers, who I recognize as a Twitter acquaintance of mine (who has expressed an interest in writing a guest post, so who knows, might be a Baseball Card Breakdown collaborator at some point), but I don't think I bought it because it was from him, but probably just trying to find the oldest/cheapest card available that caught my eye.

I wanted to pick up some more Pumpsie Green cards and did just that by grabbing his '61 and '62 Topps. I remember reading his SABR bio while waiting at the vet during the final days my previous pup Annie's life, so there's an additional emotional component towards getting a little PC going for him, the first black player for the Red Sox.

Here's an unassuming 1969 Topps card that I heard about and had to score myself a copy. The highlight of this Mel Queen card is the back..

Both pitching and batting stats! Seems like Topps is usually too lazy to make a special back like this for 2-way players, so the extra effort is appreciated.

Lastly for this post, I picked up a couple cards for vintage sets I'm building. Bob Purkey is a nice semi-high number I found a good deal on for my '64 Topps set that's just over ¾ of the way complete, but one of the cards in this shipment I was most excited about is this particular Gene Baker for my '57 Topps set that's also inching towards 80% complete.

According to TCDB, 1957 Topps #176 Gene Baker is the only card in the set with error and corrected variations listed. As for which variation this one is..? Welp, it's actually a "missing link" between the two! Check it out:

The variation involves a printing flaw with the player name on back. Apparently some of the pressings had a bit too much red ink or something, flooding the last letter of text in the player's first and last name. "EUGENE W. BAKER" became "EUGENF W. BAKEP". I found a curious copy on COMC where the troublesome letters in question are not at their full errored state, but also not quite their fully formed correct versions either. The last E in Eugene has a shorter bottom compared to the top, and the R in Baker has a noticeably thinner tail.

The corrected variation is common and typically sells for under 5 bucks in average condition. I paid $1.25 for mine last fall. In researching around for this post, all recent completed listings on eBay show the error selling for comfortably in triple digits... except for one that sold for "just" $57, but in my opinion it's a fake. Take a look:

Really looks like some dipshit used a red pen to obscure the R in an attempt to increase the value of his 1957 Topps common. You can tell the coloring seems just a little off right there. And notice how the last E in Eugene is conspicuously full. If it was an authentic error variation, both the R and that E should have been affected (Correct me if I'm wrong, but they sure seem to go hand-in-hand). Yep, pretty sure this particular "error" card was faked. Lame. I feel bad for whoever bought it.

Anyways, I don't intend to drop $100+ on the error card-- no offence to Gene Baker who was an All-Star in '55 with the Cubs and got a ring as a bench guy on the 1960 Pirates-- but I'm glad to score what might be an even scarcer variation. What do you guys think, should mine be added to TCDB as a 3rd variation for the card, or would that just piss people off and I should continue to appreciate it as a printing-flaw oddity, not a true variation?

Thanks for swinging by and going down this Baker street with me.

Good times for this Padre fan (trades n' stuff)

Big night for my Padres the other night! I would have been ecstatic if San Diego got a no-hitter from some random call-up I never heard of, but what makes it even sweeter is that Joe Musgrove is from my hometown and I've been collecting the guy's cards for a few years already. Congrats, Joe! Making El Cajon proud.

Such a great story of a local kid rising who grew up rooting for them to achieve that elusive Padres no-hitter. Seems like a real good dude, too. Gotta bump him up into the "high priority" tier of my player wantlist.

Now to catch up on some good stuff that's come my way from trader buds over the past couple weeks.

Friend of the blog Alex T. has been incredibly generous with hooking me up with cool oddities for my collection for a few years now. I'm falling behind because I also got a great Dick Allen set from him not long ago I haven't posted about yet, but more recently was this Rod Beck postcard and a pack/set of Michael Bolton softball cards.

"The Trucker" comes from a series of Marvelous Moustaches postcards by Left Field Cards, created by French-born artist Amelie Mancini. I remember checking these out a couple years ago after hearing about them somewhere on the cardsphere. I debated purchasing a set, but ultimately didn't pull the trigger and I think they sold out shortly thereafter. So it was an awesome surprise to pull Rod Beck out of the package.

Alex reached out to Amélie about availability for an order, was able to snag this one for my Shooter PC, and he even thought to ask if Amélie would be so kind as to sign them, which she graciously did down on the back.

I had to frame it up, at least for a while, and currently have it hanging in the living room. My wife says to her it's a picture of Kenny Powers, and she's not far off.

Here are what the softball cards look like. We got to talking about these cards after Michael Bolton was featured on my 1991 MusiCards blog, and Alex happened to have an extra of this set to spare. Especially love the Yount.

Big thanks, Alex! Great stuff.

- - ---o

I did a quick PWE swap with Robert at $30 a week habit. My 2011 Topps parallel frankenset has really slowed down in recent years, but I haven't nixed the project yet. I'm nearing 700 different cards for it, but still just a little over halfway done. So yeah, these Jays needs from Robert are appreciated.

- - ---o

Night Owl struck with an expertly curated package of cards. I collect more Dodgers than I should, being a Padres fan, but yep, I'm very happy to receive Greg's dupes of Walker Buehler or Gavin Lux.

Also a pair of blue Fire Matt Chapman cards and some set needs.

And some vintage set needs! Love to see it!! Feels like this part of my collection is kinda paused waiting for the current sportscard bubble to pop and get those prices back down a notch or two.

But the real star was this well-loved 1957 Elston Howard. Solid name to check off my long-running '57 Topps setbuild. Nice!

Thanks a lot, Greg! Much appreciated! I'll return the favor pretty soon.

Thanks for reading. Go get that cardboard! :)

a vintage advantage

Expect to see plenty of vintage on this blog in 2021 as my interest in current cards continues to wane (I don't plan to attempt ripping much if any current product this year). I've revived my goal of completing a page of each vintage Topps baseball set, and I've been filling out my new vintage (non-flagship) frankenset. Plus I've also got a few vintage setbuilds in varying stages of advancement, and sometimes I just pick up random singles for PCs or whatever. Such as...

Check it out! I hadn't picked up a playing-days Clemente in a while, and when I saw this '62 Post with a low opening bid, I took a run at it. The first four cards in this post were from the same seller, taking advantage of combined shipping. Not in perfect condition, but just right for my collection.

Clean back, too.

And here's a '61 Post Willie Mays. I threw bids on a handful of cards from the seller and this was another that I ended up with after the dust settled. Again, not in mint condition, but considering the fair price, works just fine for me. Helps kick up my little PC of the Say Hey Kid.

Some light pencil marks on the back that I've resisted the urge to try taking an eraser to.

I also snagged this '60 for my Minnie Minoso collection.

Looks good.

Here's the main card I was after from the seller. Bobby Richardson was one of the few notable rookie cards missing from my 1957 Topps setbuild. Took me a while to find one that looked ok in the price range I was hoping for, but I'm happy with this one.

Just barely makes it out of my personal "upgrade needed" threshold. It's from the toughest series of '57, so you can't be too choosy unless you really want to pay up.

Here are a couple more rookie cards of All-Stars that I needed for my set. Chris the Collector surprised me with this pair recently.

Thanks again, Chris! Very much appreciated!

About half my recent Sportlots box order was vintage cards, including a couple more '57 needs plus Don Larsen for my '64 build. It's been slow going, but I'm nearing 80% complete with both. Doubt I'll complete either this year.. maybe in 2022.

A more realistic goal for me this year would be to finish off at least one of the 70s sets I've got in the works. Thanks to these from Sportlots, I now have only 29 cards left on my 1974 wantlist, though the remaining cards are pretty much all HOFers and "Washington" Padres variations (the latter of which I've been considering cutting bait on). The Red Sox checklist finishes all of those red-bordered inserts for me, though I'd like to upgrade many of them from marked on the back to unmarked.

My 1978 build is a bit further out, with 131 cards still remaining after checking in these four. As always, please check out my wantlists and get in touch if you think you might be able to help me out with anything in trade. Thanks