Recent Collection Purchased From 1958: The Topps All-Star Collection

1958 Topps Baseball

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 websites like DeansCards.com.

1958 Topps #150 Mickey Mantle

Everyone has their own reasons for selling their vintage cards. One of the reasons could be a collector wanting to sell their duplicate cards.  We've had many cases of customers and clients sending us their dupes in order to maybe focus on another part of their collection, or simply clean out the attic or closet a little bit.  Here's an example of a customer that sent us his extra 1958 Topps Baseball cards for us to purchase.


The "bulk" of the collection

It's no understatement to say that we just bought
box upon box of 1958 Topps cards.

For those who may not be experts, the 1958 Topps Baseball Card Set is easier to build than some other sets released around the same time.  1957 Topps Baseball has an expensive mid-series, that can make the set a bit pricier to complete. 1959 Topps Baseball has a high number series that's slightly more expensive, and also has almost 80 more cards than its 1958 counterpart.  This makes 1958 Topps Baseball an appealing set to build for those new to collecting Topps cards from the 1950s.

This set is also fun to build in the sense that it has so many star cards of those beloved Hall-of-Famer's of the 1950s.  This is due to the Sport Magazine All-Star subset, as well as multi-player cards depicting various players from around the league.  These cards are often themed and have titles such as, "Slugger's Supreme," "Birdie's Young Sluggers," "World Series Batting Foes" and "Rival Fence Busters."

Altogether, we purchased over 3,000 cards from 1958 Topps.  Many of these were duplicates.  We LOVE buying collections like this.  If you aren't familiar with how our "Everyday Discounts" work, click here.  The more cards we have in inventory and the more cards you buy, the more you save!  Nobody else has the selection of 1958 Topps as Deanscards.com.

An All-Star Celebration

1958 Topps #487 Mickey Mantle AS
was triple printed, making it one of the least expensive
Mickey Mantle cards to purchase from the 1950s.

There was an exceptional amount of All-Star cards included in this collection.  Even though they were part of the all-stars subset, not all of these guys were big-time Hall of Famers.  Herb Score wasn't even an All-Star in 1957.  He actually was hurt for most of the season after being hit in the head by a line drive off the bat of Gil McDougald.  A promising pitching career, for all intensive purposes, was cut short as Score would never return to form after the injury.  Virtually every other player depicted in this subset would go on to have productive careers in the big leagues.

All in all, we bought:

41 - #476 Stan Musial AS
27 - #477 Bill Skowron AS
17 - #478 Johnny Temple AS
24 - #479 Nellie Fox AS
24 - #480 Eddie Mathews AS
22 - #481 Frank Malzone AS
32 - #482 Ernie Banks AS
31 - #483 Luis Aparicio AS
19 - #484 Frank Robinson AS
10 - #485 Ted Williams AS
19 - #486 Willie Mays AS
35 - #487 Mickey Mantle AS
31 - #488 Hank Aaron AS
25 - #489 Jackie Jensen AS
27 - #490 Ed Bailey AS
33 - #491 Sherm Lollar AS
17 - #492 Bob Friend AS
21 - #493 Bob Turley AS
19 - #494 Warren Spahn AS
17 - #495 Herb Score AS

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.

1953 Topps Baseball Complete Set

By Dean Hanley
Owner and Founder of Dean's Cards

The 1953 Topps Baseball Complete Set is one of the most beautiful and artistic sets that Topps has ever created. The set consists of 280 cards that were released in four different series. This set is missing cards #253, 261, 268, 271, 275 and 276. This was due to the fact that Topps hoped to nab players who had a contract with Bowman, but the contract was not expired yet. When these cards were first introduced they were sold in Wax packs for  five cents each.

The beautiful portrait like images are based on actual photographs of the more popular players from the series such as Mantle, Robinson, Paige, Berra, Rizutto and Campanella.

The boarders of these cards are solid white. On the front side bottom there is a box that features the players name, position, team and the logo of the team. The backs of the cards feature the player’s stats from 1952 and a Dugout quiz. In this year they even decided to distinguish between the American League and the National League. If the player was in the American League the box is red, for the National League it is black.

The top selling and most valuable cards in this set are the Mantle, Mays and Robinson cards.

This set is very hard to come by due to the many short prints, slim high numbers and variations. With our high inventory of vintage cards we have 5 different sets available that range from Fair up to Excellent Mint. We also have a Near Complete Set and a Low Number Set Available.

If you are interested in any of our Complete Sets or Custom Sets be sure to contact us.

Dean's Cards offers a 100% Money Back Satisfaction Guarantee on all purchases. Just contact us within ten days of the purchase date and we will refund your money or, when possible, replace the cards. 

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.

Dean's Cards Recently Added Cards (RAC): The Hottest Cards Are Here First

by Dean Hanley
Owner of Dean’s Cards

Every week we add thousands of cards to our Dean’s Cards inventory of vintage baseball cards, football cards, basketball cards, hockey cards, other sports cards and non-sports cards – but there is one place where you can easily find the hottest additions to our inventory. Just go to the Recently Added Cards (RAC) page, which you can find linked on the right side of our Home page.

Our Recently Adds Cards (RAC) page shows our latest vintage cards.

Since we are always buying card collections, our team of card experts first personally inspects and grades all cards. Then the cards are scanned so you can see the actual cards that you buy – that takes the guesswork out of knowing how your cards will look when you receive them.

Our customers routinely tell us that are very pleased with the quality of the cards they purchase from us since we use the Grading Standards of PSA as the minimum baseline for grading the cards in our inventory. One positive aspect of Dean's Cards grading standards is that we take into account a card's "eye appeal."  Other grading companies, such as PSA do not always take "eye appeal" into account when grading cards. As collectors ourselves, we tend to be a bit more critical of a card's eye appeal than the professional grading companies. Collectors who are accustomed to purchasing ungraded cards from other vendors are usually amazed at our tough grading standards.

I encourage you to visit our RAC page regularly to find the latest additions to our inventory, since many cards go quickly. Here are a few recent “Star Card” additions that may interest you:

• 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card – The card was rated by PSA as authentic, but it has been trimmed. Still, the card is a beautiful example of this highly sought card.

• 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth baseball cards – This set actually featured four Babe Ruth cards and we now have two of them available: Babe Ruth #144 and Babe Ruth #181, both graded as PSA 3.

• 1949 Leaf Joe DiMaggio baseball card -- The 1949 Leaf set was the first to be printed in color post-war and DiMaggio’s card was No. 1 in the set.
• 1950 Bowman Ted Williams baseball cards – available in PSA 3 and 5
• 1952 Bowman Willie Mays baseball card -- The 1952 Bowman Baseball cards are one of the first to feature the players' printed autographs.  

• 1953 Topps Willie Mays baseball card -- The 1953 Topps baseball cards feature numerous large close-up portraits of the players.
• 1953 Topps Jackie Robinson – Card No. 1 in this popular set.

• 1955 Topps Sandy Koufax rookie card – You’ll find this card in a variety of grades.

And, of course, you can find all the latest Mickey Mantle baseball cards by visiting this special page we created to celebrate The Mick’s career in baseball cards. You'll also see a special video about Mickey Mantle baseball cards.

If you’re looking for early 20th century baseball cards, the RAC page will show you our latest additions, including T3 Turkey Red baseball cards, T206 baseball cards, T204 Ramly baseball cards, and T205 Gold border cards.

If you are a set collector, you’ll also find our latest complete sets, near complete sets, starter sets, near complete sets, and additions to sets on the RAC page. Some of the latest additions include:

• 1933 Goudey baseball cards
• 1934 Goudey baseball cards
• 1953 Topps baseball cards complete set
• 1959 Topps baseball cards complete set
• 1966 Topps baseball cards complete set

The RAC page is updated many times throughout the week, so we hope you will visit often to see the latest and greatest we have to offer you at Dean’s Cards!

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.

The 1951 Bowman Baseball Card Set: Bigger, Better and More of them.

 Although the 1951 Bowman baseball card set increased in both card size and number of cards, it ultimately maintained the attractive design of the 1950 set. The only real design difference between the two sets are that the player names were now located on the card fronts. There are 324 cards in total, each measuring 2-1/16” by 3-1/8.” Cards from the 1951 set can also be identified by the distinctive coloring of the words on the back. The text is printed in blue ink except for the word “baseball,” which is printed in red ink at the bottom of the card.

 Bowman used the same printing technique in 1951 that they had used in the previous set. They had artists colorize black-and-white photographs.There is one card with original artwork: #195 Paul Richards, the White Sox manager who was hired after Bowman had already started production on the set.

Many collectors feel that the 1951 Bowman baseball card was the company’s best effort. Bowman had the good fortune of printing the rookie cards of two of the biggest stars of the decade in its 1951 set: Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays.

Furthermore, both of these cards are part of the high number series (#253-324), making them even harder to find and more expensive to collect. Lastly, its operations became so smooth that aside from a few mistakes spelling last names, there are very few pricy error cards.




This article is taken from Dean’s upcoming book “The Gum Card War and the Great Bowman & Topps Baseball Card Sets of 1948-1955”, which is now available for sale at Amazon.com. 

 Dean Hanley is an authority on vintage sports cards and has written numerous articles on the topic. 
 Mr. Hanley is the founder DeansCards.com, and with well-over one million vintage cards in inventory, DeansCards.com is the largest seller of vintage cards on the web. Dean has also published “Before there was Bubble Gum: Our Favorite Pre-World War I Baseball Cards”, which is also available in eBook form at Amazon.com and has just released a T207 reprint set. For more information, please visit www.DeansCards.com.

A Few More Thoughts On Our Mantle Cards

A few weeks ago, we mentioned that we bought back many of our Mickey Mantle baseball cards from 1953 all the way to 1969. Since we wrote that article, a few of the cards have sold, but we have also enjoyed the opportunity to really look at our collection of Mantle cards.

One of the earliest Mantle card that we have is highly representative the 1953 Topps set, which consists of hand-drawn pictures that were made using the real photographs. This particular set includes many close-up head-shots. While there may be more attractive and more expensive cards of the Mick, the 1953 Topps #82 Mickey Mantle card feels like it is one of the most personal.

Another staff favorite is the 1957 Topps #95 Mickey Mantle card. The 1957 Topps set is the first Topps set to feature photos in a natural background. Although actual photographs were on the 1954 set, they were on a solid-color background. This set is also the first smaller sized cards issued by Topps. This photo of Mantle in his Yankee pinstripes is difficult to find, primarily because of condition issues.

Finally, one of our most expensive cards from the 1959 Topps set is the #10 Mickey Mantle PSA 7 NM card that we currently have in stock. This card has the classic "framed" look, which was borrowed from the previous year's football set. This particular card is one of the cleanest 1959 Topps Mickey Mantle cards that we have ever seen.

To view all of our Mickey Mantle cards, please click here.

Just In: 1952 Topps #311 Mickey Mantle

GAI 5 EX

SGC 30 Good 2

We don't get to see one of the most popular baseball cards in the hobby very often, so when we do, its pretty exciting. We just got two 1952 Topps #311 Mickey Mantle baseball cards in today. One grades a SGC 30 Good (2), while the other is a GAI 5 EX. Both of these cards are particularly nice because all of the flaws affect the white border. There are no creases that go across the Mick's face or interfere with the card's natural beauty. It's always fun to tell people that yes, we do have the '52 Topps Mantle in stock and we hope they stick around for a little while.

Getting Our Mantles Back

We just had a long-time customer sell sixteen Mickey Mantle cards back to us. The cards range from 1953 all the way to 1969 and include five cards that grade PSA 7. We originally wrote about most of these cards in our of our first blogs, which talked about all of the PSA-graded Mantle cards. Most of these cards sold a few months after this original blog article was written. Everything else grades Excellent and above. The consensus at the office is that the rarest of these cards is the 1955 Bowman. We rarely get a chance to see this card due to condition issues, which stand out on the wood grain television border, and scarcity.

This is a pretty thorough collection of the Mick's career but also demonstrates the evolution of both Topps and Bowman as they celebrated one of the best hitters of the 1950's and 1960's. Listed below is the entire collection and links to the individual card on our website.

1953 Topps #82 Mickey Mantle - VG/Ex
1954 Bowman #65 Mickey Mantle - SGC 70 EX+ 5.5
1955 Bowman #202 Mickey Mantle - VG/Ex
1956 Topps #135 Mickey Mantle - Ex/Mt
1957 Topps #95 Mickey Mantle - VG/Ex
1958 Topps #150 Mickey Mantle - Ex/Mt
1959 Topps #10 Mickey Mantle - PSA 7 NM
1960 Topps #350 Mickey Mantle - PSA 7 NM
1961 Topps #300 Mickey Mantle - Ex/Mt
1962 Topps #200 Mickey Mantle - Ex
1963 Topps #200 Mickey Mantle - PSA 7 NM
1964 Topps #50 Mickey Mantle - Ex/Mt
1965 Topps #350 Mickey Mantle - Ex/Mt
1966 Topps #150 Mickey Mantle - PSA 7 NM
1968 Topps #280 Mickey Mantle - PSA 7 NM
1969 Topps #500A Mickey Mantle (yellow letters) - Ex/Mt

PSA 7 Mickey Mantle Baseball Cards

Mickey Mantle Baseball Cards are most popular among any of the post-war cards that Topps ever produced.  It has now been over 40 years since Mickey retired and his cards show no signs of slowing down in popularity.



Dean's Cards is featuring a collection of PSA 7 Mickey Mantle from 1959 to 1968. Mickey’s cards are always difficult to find in pristine condition because his cards were always the ones that the kids liked to handle and show their friends.

The 1959 Topps Mantle card has the most value of this group and is extremely rare in this condition. Please also notice the latitude that PSA allowed for the wood grain borders of the 1962 Topps Mantle card.  I have  seen PSA do this before, but here at Dean’s Cards, we do not grade that lax.

These cards are all online and ready to buy.  Please click on the image to see the card. Enjoy the scans!

Mickey Mantle Baseball Cards

Mickey Mantle baseball cards are in more demand than cards from any other player from the post-war vintage era.  Part of the reason was that the New York Yankees were in 14 of the 16 World Series between 1949 and 1964.  This dominance will probably never be matched.  Much of the reason the Yankees were post season regulars every year was because of Mantle.

Mickey’s Rookie card is officially from 1951 Bowman, but the 1952 Topps card is the most famous and has book value of $20,000!  If you can not afford those, you may want to consider some of his reprint cards.  They are very popular with collectors.

Mantle had an exclusive contract with the Bowman Gum Company in 1954 and 1955, so he has no Topps cards for those years.  1956 and 1957 are some of Mantle’s best looking Topps cards, then for some reason Topps decided to issue a run of Mickey Mantle portrait shots from 1958 to 1963.

Mickey Mantle Overstock Sale!

As the vintage set of the week is the 1959 Topps baseball card set, we might as well feature the key card in the set #10 Mickey Mantle.  This is one of the most popular of Mantle cards with a Beckett Book Value of $1000.  Although, cards of “The Mick” are always in demand, we currently have 9 of the 1959 Topps #10 in “Very Good” condition.  We have marked this card down another $50, so with your discount – you can buy this card for $225!

Dean with the 1959 and 1964 Topps Giants Mantles

We also marked down the 1964 Topps Giants Mickey Mantle card in “Near Mint” Condition and #487 1958 Topps Mickey Mantle All Star card in "Excellent" .  The 1958 card was a “triple print”.  Dean’s Cards currently has 13 of the 1964 Topps Giants and 15 of the 1958 Mantle All-Star cards in stock, so we can afford to offer a very nice savings for the holidays. These two cards give the budget collector a chance to own an original Mickey Mantle in nice condition for under $100.  The cards will return to regular prices at the end of the year.

Happy Thanksgiving from Dean’s Cards.