Completely Red: 1959 Topps

This is a quality complete team set that I'm proud to add to the annals. While not a terribly hard set to complete, as there were only two Reds in the high-number series, I was sitting on all but one for a long time. One of the high-numbers was a Mike Cuellar RC which doubled as an uncorrected error. In combination, these attributes made it a touch expensive. I finally grabbed one at a show last weekend (posts upcoming). The best card of the set is clearly the Frank Robinson which I found a while ago in terrible (awesome) condition. There are a whopping 17 players in this set that made an All Star game, plus 7 rookie cards, so the values are skewed a little bit toward the high side.

As far as the set design, this was a huuuge improvement over the 1958 yellow-bomb design. While I appreciate the through-the-camera view I assume they were going for, I think had they zoomed in a little more, so that the photo was bigger and the colored border smaller, this would be an A+ set. I suppose that's technically not the border, but you know what I mean. Most of the Reds got the black border, but we see some appearances of green, blue, orange, and yellow. No red or pink. Not that I think pink is terribly great on a baseball card, but I find myself oddly wishing there were a couple.

Great set. Let's check the stats.

STATS:

Cards - 34

RC's - 7 (Coles, O'Toole, Osteen, Pena, Mabe, Pavletich, Cuellar)

All Stars - 17 -(Hoak, Lawrence, Haddix, Bailey, Osteen, Kasko, Ennis, Newcombe, Temple, Bell, Nuxhall, McMillan, Robinson, Pinson, Thomas, Purkey, Cuellar)

Cy Young Winners - 1 (Don Newcombe)

Hall of Famers - 1 (Frank Robinson)

Reds Hall of Famers - 10 (Bell, Temple, Nuxhall, O'Toole, McMillan, Purkey, Lawrence, Pinson, Robinson, Lynch)

Spectacles - 4 Pair

Awesome 50's Hair - John C. Powers

High as Balls - Bob Mabe

 

Checklist:

14 Pete Whisenant
25 Don Hoak
58 Eddie Miksis
67 Brooks Lawrence
81 Hal Jeffcoat
97 Jerry Lynch
111 Redlegs Checklist
120 Chuck Coles
136 Jim O'Toole
158 Walt Dropo
171 Willard Schmidt
184 Harvey Haddix
201 Tom Acker
210 Ed Bailey
224 Claude Osteen
232 Eddie Kasko
255 Del Ennis
271 Orlando Pena
288 Dutch Dotterer
312 Don Newcombe
335 Johnny Temple
356 Bob Mabe
365 Gus Bell
389 Joe Nuxhall
405 Roy McMillan
431 Whammy Douglas
435 Frank Robinson
448 Vada Pinson
489 John C. Powers
490 Frank Thomas
494 Don Pavletich
506 Bob Purkey
518 Mike Cueller
541 Bob Thurman

Go Reds.