Fifties Friday: 1959 Topps

With today's post, I've reached the end of the line for the 1950's. When the decade began, Topps wasn't even in the baseball card game. But by the end of the decade, they were the only player in the game and along the way, they created an industry.

The design on the 1959 cards combines elements from the past two seasons. There is the color photography from 1957 and the colored background from 1958. The set was made up of a whopping 527 cards, Topps' biggest set yet. And remember, this was when there were still only 16 teams. Do the division and you are at about 32-33 cards per team.

The Cubs came in with 39 cards! That is by far the most from any Topps base set. Boosting the team set total were three specialty cards that featured Ernie Banks. Ernie had an All Star card, a Baseball Thrills card, and was one of three Cubs Clubbers.

I find it interesting that several of the cards have pictures that were taken at the Giant's new home, Seals Stadium (Seals Stadium has two easy to identify markers: red pipe dividers in the box seats and a single deck). I wonder why Brooklyn-based Topps would use a photographer on the other side of the country to take their pictures. By this time , Chicago was the only two team city left in the majors. You would have thought they would use a Chicago photographer, who could take pictures of the all the teams.

The Cubs team had some odd name things going on too. This set is probably the only team set to feature two Moes (Drabowsky and Thacker) and three Taylors (Sammy, Tony, and Taylor Phillips).

Rather than showing the cards in alphabetical order, I've got them by background colors, starting with the least common color, light green, red, and black, and ending with the most popular color, green.