Recent Collection Purchased From 1956: Davy Crockett and Topps Baseball Cards

1956 Topps Baseball and 1956 Topps Davy Crockett

At Dean's Cards, we buy hundreds of vintage baseball card collections every year. These collections range from cards acquired during childhood (that have most likely been sitting in a closet or attic for years), to collectors selling their baseball card sets and cards that have taken years to acquire through shows, card shops, or a website like DeansCards.com.

Everyone has their own reasons for selling their vintage cards, and one of the most common reasons for selling cards is due to down-sizing.  Over the past few months, we have bought over 5000 cards from a gentlemen who is doing just that.  And as you will come to find, this particular collector had an affinity for all things 1956 Topps!

1956 Topps Davy Crocket Orange Back Sets

1956 Topps Davy Crockett #1 King of the Wild Frontier

He started off by mailing in 13 Davy Crockett Orange Sets (with duplicates), and it is the most Davy Crockett cards we’ve ever seen in one place!

This set really is an interesting release by Topps. While today we mainly see action figures of our favorite movie characters and super heroes, back in the 1950's, trading cards were the equivalent. Thus when the Walt Disney film "Davy Crockett King of the Wild Frontier" premiered in 1955, naturally the movie appeared in playing card form as well. 

#80 Bowie's Last Stand

The 1956 Topps Davy Crockett trading card set originally consisted of 80 cards that could be purchased in 1-cent and 5-cent wax packs each with a stick of bubble gum. The cards were numbered and when all 80 orange-backed cards were put in sequence, the entire movie was in the palm of one's hand.

If you're interested in buying a 1956 Davy Crockett Orange Back Complete Set (or two!) we know just the place. Dean's Cards has over 2,000 singles in stock as well, with images of all cards. Relive the movie and all of Davy's exploits via this vibrant 80-card issue.

For more information visit our 1956 Topps Davy Crockett Orange Back Cards Category page.

1956 Topps Baseball Card Sets

After we purchased the Davy Crockett cards, we moved onto his vintage baseball card collection.  He mailed in 3 pretty nice 1956 Topps complete sets, which we paid a pretty penny for (But it was worth it!).  

We have a number of different 1956 Topps Sets for sale.

It's always great when we get we can buy multiple mid and high grade sets such as these three. All the cards get the same treatment: they are graded, scanned, sleeved (with QR code for online viewing of the scans), and placed into a set by our in-house software. The result of this is nothing short of the most consistent set for the best value of any on the market.

1956 Topps Baseball Card Singles

What we didn’t know when we bought the three 1956 Topps Baseball sets, was just how many 1956 Topps cards the gentlemen had left to sell!  This past week, we received a shipment of nearly 4,000 1956 Topps Baseball Singles. 

It was unreal, we had never seen a collection of 1956 Topps like this. At the time we had over 6,000 cards in our inventory for this set, and now we were going to be able to add four thousand more!  Not only was the sheer number of cards amazing, but there were also an equal number of stars and hall-of-famers included. We're talking: 29 #30 Jackie Robinson cards, 24 #31 Hank Aaron cards, 18 #5 Ted Williams cards, 18 #130 Willie Mays cards, 12 #33 Roberto Clemente cards, 14 #135 Mickey Mantle cards, and dozens upon dozens of team cards.

Stacks of 1956 Topps Stars and Hall-of-Famers

This is the largest collection of 1956 Topps cards that we’ve purchased in the last 13 years, and it could not have gone more smoothly (for the seller as well as us).  The gentlemen simply mailed in the cards in batches, and we would have an offer for him within 2 business days of receiving them.  After agreeing on a price, we ordered him a bank check, and he mailed in another batch.  We repeated this process several times and purchased his entire collection.

If you're interested in selling your collection to us, please read our seller testimonials. On there you will find dozens upon dozens of satisfied clients. For more information on selling a vintage baseball collection in general, please click here. We look forward to hearing from you!

By Dean Hanley

 Dean Hanley, founder and owner of DeansCards.com, is considered one of the foremost experts on the subject of vintage baseball cards, other sports and non-sports cards and has a regular column in the Sports Collectors Digest and publishes articles on his blog.

Dean has also written two books on vintage sports cards: The Bubble Gum Card War: The Great Bowman & Topps Sets from 1948 to 1955 and Before There Was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Cards. Both are available in eBook and paperback form.

T207 Repint Complete Set

By Dean Hanley
Owner of Deanscards.com

The T207 set, commonly known as the brown background set, was originally manufactured by the tobacco industry giant, the American Tobacco Company, in 1912. The T207 baseball cards measure 1½” by 2-5/8”. Shortly after this set was printed, the American Tobacco Company would be dissolved due to the Sherman anti-trust legislation that broke the monopoly on tobacco.

The T207 baseball card set is a true hobby classic. The 200-card T207 set contains 13 players that are in Baseball’s Hall-of-Fame, including Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker, Frank Chance, John McGraw, Smokey Joe Wood and Joe Tinker. Two interesting T207 cards are Eddie Cicotte and Buck Weaver, who were members of the 1919 White Sox and banned from the game for life.


 This set is unique to Dean’s cards. We created it ourselves. It took a total of two years to get the entire process done. This is the only official T207 Reprint Set out there. To do so, we created a new company called Dean’s Reprints and began securing the needed images.

 This is one of the most famous pre-war sets and it was never issued or offered in the form of a reprint set. Reprint Sets give collectors the opportunity to enjoy cards that they might not be able to collect in the original form.

 DeansCards.com sells quite a few reprint singles and complete sets every year. For that reason, I decided we should recreate and issue a T207 reprint set. Due to the quality of the century old cards, almost all of the T207 images needed to be retouched. Great care was given making sure that the reprint cards remained true to the original set.


The original T207 set includes eight possible backs containing the name of tobacco brands in which the original cards were enclosed. We included a variety of these backs in the reprint set including three cards containing the ultra-scarce “Red Cross” backs. We were careful to use those backs on
cards, whose originals have been discovered with a Red Cross back.

One of the most interesting features of the T207 baseball card set are the player biographies on the back of the cards. Each of these bios needed to be retyped. We were careful to stay true to the original fonts and leave the original century old misspelled words. We also made sure to give it an assigned number to help collectors keep track. To ensure it is indeed a REPRINT, we added REPRINT to the back of the cards. I hope that the hobby purists will forgive us for these minor changes.

To view/purchase the original cards please click here.

 Dean Hanley, founder and owner of DeansCards.com, is considered one of the foremost experts on the subject of vintage baseball cards, other sports and non-sports cards and has a regular column in the Sports Collectors Digest and publishes articles on his blog.

Dean has also written two books on vintage sports cards: The Bubble Gum Card War: The Great Bowman & Topps Sets from 1948 to 1955 and Before There Was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Cards. Both are available in eBook and paperback form.