09 January 2014

my 1953 topps set sampler

about 10 years ago, i went about the task of completing a sampler set for every topps flagship set from 1952 through 1977, excluding the 1970 set which i was working on fully completing. since then, i have completed the 1973, 1974, 1976, and 1977 sets, and i am currently working on 1971 and will soon have want lists up for 1972 and 1975.  i will also put a want list up for 1957 and 1965.  the other samplers are being recorded here for posterity before i strip them for dodger parts.

this is the second installment in this 'sampler' series - 1953 topps.   a fully painted set, there are some nice looking cards in this set.  the sampler consists of (at least) one card from each team - the a's, braves, browns, cardinals, cubs, dodgers, giants, indians, phillies, pirates, red sox, reds, senators, tigers, white sox, and yankees.  there were no subsets, and the only coloring variation was black box for national leaguers, and red box for american leaguers.  i didn't bother to pay attention to positions, so i don't have a manager card here.  there is a coach, though (john riddle).  i only specifically worried about those cards when there was a specific subset that was different from the rest of the set, except for 1976 when the positions dictated the small player graphic on the front of the card.

enough of that - here are the cards.
my approach to filling these samplers was to obtain cards of former/future dodgers and players that i had actually heard of.  valo and lund were dodgers, and i knew who joe nuxhall and hal newhouser and, of course, ralph kiner were.

here's a sampling of the backs. 
thankfully all oriented in the same direction.  there is one other variation there - some cards have the personal data text in black, some in white.  i couldn't care less about that sort of variation here.

in the end, my sampler set contained 31 cards - that's 11% of the 274 card set.  former dodger don lund's card is number 277 in the set, but there were a few numbers that were never released.