Friday, November 26, 2010

Fifties Friday: 1958 Topps

In 1958 Topps must have been feeling pretty good. They had defeated all competition and had the baseball card business all to themselves. Their product was becoming very popular and I bet they were making a lot of money.

A sign that the cards were selling would be the fact that Topps again increased the set size for 1958. There were 494 cards in the set now, which was a huge increase over the 407 cards in 1957.

I don't like the '58 design; to me it is a step backwards from the full color photos on the '57's. Most of the cards featured a tight head shot with a colored background. They almost looked like the painted cards from the mid-Fifties. I also like to figure out at which ballpark a picture was taken, and I can't do that with the '58's.

The Cubs count increased to 29 cards. Included among them was an Ernie Banks All Star card. This was the first time Topps had separate All Star cards.






























































4 comments:

  1. It would be nice if Topps would bring back team cards and have the names on the front like this one. I'd like to see a team card hybrid of these types of fronts and the backs that are like the early 70s team cards.

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  2. Check out the C on El Tappe's helmet! It's gigantic. Also there are three Braves unis in this one...Thomson, Phillips and Sam Taylor. The Tony Taylor and Goryl photos look poorly converted from black and white. The Littlefield card has him traded on the back (figures). I really like this set...the backs are a lot of fun.

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  3. "Mike" Drabowsky? Is that Moe (a/k/a Myron) Drabowsky?

    ReplyDelete