And That's A Wrap

Writing this blog has been a wonderful learning experience. The 1959 Topps set held many more stories than I even imagined when I started it back in February of 2011. It began with a posting of my Brooks Robinson card.

I've been looking back at those early posts recently and have noticed how things evolved over time. I seemed to have moved away from posting about the card's appearance and a brief peek at the player and more towards lengthier player bios. Not sure if that was a change for the better or not!

Overall though, I'm happy with what I've produced here. There were times I thought I wouldn't finish and indeed there was a period in early 2012 when I stepped away from posting. When I came back having decided that posting a card every day was unrealistic things became much easier.

A few closing thoughts:

I'm not completely done here. As time goes by I am going back and cleaning up a few things. Not that it matters much to anyone except me but when I began I was using the default 'medium' Blogger image size. Along the way I switched to 'large' and I'm in the process of changing them all to the bigger size. While I do that I am also adding 'tags' which I neglected to do for a long time back when I was just beginning.

I am also double checking to make sure I haven't missed a card along the way. I tried to keep my checklist current as I went but there is always the possibility I skipped a card. If so I will add the entry ASAP.

I also have a few projects in the back of my head but just never had the time or proper motivation to tackle. If you've read more than two or three of my posts here you know I have an (unhealthy?) obsession with the stadiums seen in the photos used in this set. Most of the stadiums can be ID'd pretty easily. But I didn't keep a running tab on them. I may just satisfy my curiosity on a rainy Sunday and then post my results. I can take a pretty confident guess that 60% of the shots were from Yankee Stadium.

And I want to do a "Best of" post. Some cards/entries are special to me for one reason or another. It might be the player on the card, the card itself, how I acquired it, or the story I dug up when looking for material to include. I plan to put that list of favorites together and tack it on here.

Finally a few words about the great people I've come to know through this blog. I haven't 'met' any of you in person but I feel I've made friends though the comments, corrections, additions, criticisms and general kibitzing all of you have thrown my way here for three years. I am continuing my blog over at The Five Tool Collector and now I can be a bit more active on the 1963 Topps blog hosted by Jim from Downingtown. I will continue to read memorabilia blogs every day and I hope to continue to communicate with my friends.

It's been a blast and I'll see ya on the 'net.

National League by Color.... and random things

This is third installment of my breakdown of the '59 Topps set. This one looks at the National League cards. First up is a summary of the base one player cards. (The AL and a whole set summary were in my previous posts.)

NL Observations: .......No one team had a single color dominate as thoroughly as the Tigers were covered with red to the tune of 84%...... Milwaukee's 19 of 26 in yellow led the way (that's 73% if you are scoring at home)..... The NL got 32 of the 33 total black framed cards in the set..... The NL has just 4 of the 95 red cards. The Phils, Cards and Reds each had seven different colors...... The Braves, Giants and Pirates had five...... Dodgers and Cubs had six different colors...... The Braves coming off two consecutive World Series appearances had the fewest base cards while the fifth place Cubs had the most.

And this chart breaks down the ancillary NL cards. Again 'High Lites' refers to the Baseball Thrills subset.

NL Observations: .......the Braves get a boost in their total card count with the All Star Selection subset but unlike the Yanks their total still ranks behind several other NL clubs.... every team card in the Senior circuit has yellow as one of its elements... the NL has only six 'one team' multi-player specials but they have the Ashburn/Mays special and Robin Roberts appears one the Ace Hurlers card so that narrows the gap... the Pirates, second place finishers in 1958, were given three multi-player specials, all were red and yellow in one combo or another.... the Ashburn/Mays card is green and white which makes it the only NL special without a yellow element.

Final Thoughts.... Topps liked yellow in 1959, they used it on 14 of 17 multi-player specials, 14 of 16 team cards, and more than a quarter of all the base player cards.... I also noticed that the Cubs and Tigers team cards include the designation "Team" following the name i.e. "Detroit Tigers Team" as opposed to just "Detroit Tigers".. can't think of why that would be.... my preferred frame colors are black and dark blue which explains why I have so many favorite cards among the Phils' and Reds' cards.

That's it. I enjoyed doing the research. I know it all adds up to nothing but it does satisfy some of my curiosity about this great set. I would like to find a series breakdown by card number as that would give me another view of the color distribution. I just haven't googled deep enough to find it. And I'd bet someone out there has the set on uncut sheets. How cool would it be to lay them out end to end to see the color patern. Maybe spread out like that we'd see the yellow cards spell out 'TOPPS" or the name of Sy Berger's dog. Who knows.

It's back to regular card posting now. Thanks for reading. Comments always appreciated.

Categories and American League by Color

There are 572 cards in the '59 Topps baseball set. That doesn't take into account the card back variations like the included or not included 'optioned' or 'traded' line and the three different versions of the Spahn card back. Here we are interested only in the colors of the card fronts, especially the base card frames.

First, here is the total set by color of the base cards and the complete set listed by category:

Yellow and red frames dominate the set. And by a wide margin obviously. Yellow is far ahead of second place red. And the 95 red cards are more than double the number of any other color. Between the two they represent about 48% of all the single player base cards.

And here is the American League broken down by color of the base one player cards: 

Interestingly, among the AL cards red is the dominant color and 91 of the 95 red cards in the whole set  are of AL players. Four clubs clearly have red as their dominant color. The Tigers, in fact, have only five of their 31 cards in a color other than red. Yet, of the remaining four clubs, two don't have a single red card and the A's have only one. Of those other four only the Red Sox are not primarily represented by yellow framed cards. The Bosox have no color that they can call their signature color in the '59 set. 

AL observations.... Kansas City has the AL's only black frame and are the only team here that is represented by eight different colors. They lack a dark green card (ironically I think given their later history). They also are noteable in that there are six colors which appear on one or two of their players' cards.... the Yankees have the fewest total base cards (28). I'd have lost a bet on that one..... the White Sox have cards in only three different colors while the Orioles, Tigers and Yankees are seen with four....

This next chart tracks the colors of the team card (the frame is listed first, inner circle color next). It also shows the number of players each team has in the various subsets, All Star Selection, the Rookie Stars, Baseball Thrills (called High Lites in the chart's header), The center column gives the colors of the 'special multi-player cards (if they feature players from one specific team, called one team specials here). The same naming convention as the team card applies.

More AL observations... counting the specials the Yankees now have the most cards in the set of any AL club.... the White Sox total does not include the #156 Billy Pierce/Robin Roberts "Ace Hurlers". Counting that card would also give the ChiSox 38.... while it isn't too surprising that the Yanks had two multi-player special cards the fact that the Red Sox and Senators also have a pair of them probably is. Neither was a threat in the previous season, Boston was third, 13 games out and the Senators finished in last in '58, 31 games behind the Yanks.... every AL team card and all but one of the AL multi-player specials includes either yellow or red...

Next up: The National League

Colors of 1959, an Overview

Among the reasons I have enjoyed putting together the 1959 Topps baseball set is the aesthetic appeal. The combination of posed photos and portraits and the circular frames made it stand out from the other sets I considered. I'm a fan of the '58 set because those cards are the first I actually remember being aware of. The 1960 set was the first I actively collected. But the '59 just kept stood out.

When I jumped into putting the set together I already owned the Orioles and a group of stars and commons, maybe 20 or so. I noticed that the Orioles' team 'set' was mostly of the yellow 'frame' variety with some blue and red cards mixed in.

As I picked up more and more cards it was apparent that some teams seemed to have one predominant colored frame. I knew that at some point I'd like to sit down and track the set's colors. I started the project a few times and finally had the time recently to sit down with my binder and catalog them one by one.

I made a simple spreadsheet to tally the colors as I flipped the binder pages. I made a few notes as I went along as well. Before giving the breakdown in the next post there should be some discussion of the colors themselves.The base, one player cards come in nine different color frames. Those colors are red, yellow, black, pink, orange, light blue, dark blue, light green and dark green. Each of the colors has a consistent pattern of frame/player name/team name/position. All except one. When cataloging colors I began with ten colors. I had looked at the orange cards and seen at least two differing shades. But the more I looked the more convinced I became that the variations are simply due to the vagrancy of color printing in the late 50s. Even laying out the red cards side-by-side revealed some variations.

A look at each color in turn:

RED:
Red cards vary slightly in shade but it's seems obvious that the differences are just variations in the printed sheets. Red cards are where we see the difference in complimentary colors. Most have player names in white, team name in yellow and the player's position in white. But some have team names in white as well. Easy to see here:

There doesn't seem to be any correlation between the team lettering and color of the backs (different color combos and different cardboard colors were used), the team involved or the series in which the card was issued. 

EDITED to add: With Topps' history of yellow/white letter variation I thought that I should check closer into this. I've looked at a lot of the red cards online thinking there might be some sort of 'variation' involved with the player name color but every card I see online jives with the one in my binder. And given that I've never seen any mention of a lettering variation involving the '59s I am chalking the red card player name differences to 'just a Topps thing'. 

Dark Blue:
As opposed to the light blue also used. These have player names and positions in white, yellow team names.

January 2014 Update. I recently realized that there are two separate combos of colors involved on the light blue cards. Most of them follow the convention of the Curt Flood card below.

Light Blue type #1 (with black player names):
Black/black/white is the lettering combo.

But there is another combo used with this color frame. A comment on the Billy Harrell card entry mentions it as being exclusive to cards issued in the 5th Series. There are three total cards with this lettering combo, #433 Harrell, #436 Granny Hamner and #395 Elston Howard (shown below).

Light Blue type #2 (with white player names):
White/yellow/white is the lettering combo.

Dark Green:
White/yellow/white is the lettering combo.

Yellow:
Red/red/black is the lettering combo.

Pink:
All lettering is black.

Black:

Yellow/yellow/white is the lettering combo.

Light Green:

And here I see enough variation in the card frames to make note of it. But given the color combo is consistent across all shade variations I believe the differences are due to the printing process. Black/yellow/black  is the lettering combo.

The Gary Geiger card is from the high number Seventh Series and has a distinct 'lime-greenish' tinge to it. There is one other light green card in that series and the color is the same. As with other variations across colors I believe these to be simply printing anomalies. The lettering combos are the same across all the shades.

And finally, Orange:

I went back and forth in deciding whether of not Topps intended to print both 'orange' and 'red-orange' cards. The differences are easy to see:

Because the color of the lettering is consistent, white/black/white, and the fact that there are some cards that fall between the darkest and lightest examples, I think that the cards were intended to be 'orange' and the variations are again, due to the printing process used. And I'm going to list them as being in the same category. I wish I had more insight into all this. There might be more info on the net.

In the next post I'll break the set down into card 'type' and list the American League breakdown by frame color.

1959 Topps Baseball One Cent Wrapper

I'm not sure how I had two entries posted on Saturday. No matter. Today is a good chance to take a look at the Topps 1959 one cent wax pack wrapper. This is one of two different penny pack wrappers sold back then. There were also five cent packs for the rich kids.