1952 Topps High Series
My latest video is live, and it’s another baseball card video:
First of all, if you aren’t aware of it, you really need to check out The Topps Archives. This blog is the best source I’ve ever seen on the early days of Topps baseball cards, and is a must read for anybody with even the slightest bit of interest in the hobby.
I initially was planning on making a video about the rise and fall of Topps, but became so fascinated with the story of whether those high series 1952 Topps cards were dumped into the ocean that I had to make a video dedicated to it.
Here’s a quick summary of what I’ve been able to tell after reading several blog posts and consulting a few other sources:
1952 Topps was a mess. It’s obvious that Topps didn’t plan this set out as well as it probably should have. You’ve got 80 cards in the first series, 50 in the second, three series of 60 cards each, and then a bizarre 97 card final series.
We don’t really know when each series was issued. It’s clear that Topps printed and sold cards in batches of series, though what isn’t so clear is how far apart those series were separated from each other. As I explained in the video, there seems to be at least quite a bit of anecdotal evidence that the final series might not have been released until mid-October, if not later.
The 1952 Topps 6th series was almost impossible to buy. My suspicion is that the series was released so late in the year that distributors simply refused to carry the product. There is ample evidence that the 6th series was only released in the New York and Philadelphia areas, and that it took months for some (not much) product to trickle up to Canada and eventually out to the west coast. In other words, the vast majority of people who claimed that they had 1952 Mantle rookie cards when they were kids are lying.
Sy Berger did not dump the cards into the Atlantic Ocean. This is obvious if you sit down and think about the economics behind taking 2 million cards onto a barge and dumping them in the water. We know that Topps dumped a bunch of cards into the Venezuela market at some point in time. It’s also likely that Topps had a special deal with at least one dealer, which brings me to my next point.
The Card Collectors’ Company likely had a lot of high number 1952 Topps at one point. This is only a guess, of course. However, the fact that they had these cards on sale at some point in 1968 is a pretty strong indication that they had quite a few of them sitting around. There is also a pretty good chance that a significant portion of that inventory was burned in the 1975 Card Collectors’ Company fire.
Anyway, there’s what I’ve been able to put together. If you want to know more, check out this post.
If you ever get a chance, buy a copy of the mid-1970's book, 'The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book.' Written by Brendan C. Boyd and Fred Harris, it is exceptional. Included is a lengthy interview with Sy Berger that appears (judging by the timeliness of some of Berger's references) to have been conducted in the winter of 1973. Interesting that there is no reference in the book to the now-famous 'barge dump' of high-series 1952's. But a fantastic, entertaining read for anyone who loves the post-WW2 era of MLB cards.
I always enjoy discussions about the card collecting hobby. I have the 1952 reprint set that was issued in 1983 and originals of the five players that weren’t included along with another dozen or so commons and one high number. I also have the 1953 and 54 Topps Archives sets from 1991 and 94 respectively. I wish they would have kept producing these. I definitely would have kept on buying them.