Extraordinary collector-grade near-complete 1959 set.  One of the most attractive and widely-collected of all Topps' issues from the 1950s, the 1959 set is a colorful and bright one, featuring a player image inset against a colorful border, the player's name printed in lower case type at an angle across the top of the photo.  The issue includes a number of subsets, multi-player cards, and variations, a large reason for its popularity.

This set, nearly complete (missing just the Mantle, Aaron and Gibson cards, though the Mantle is featured elsewhere in this auction), and at first glance boasts the appearance of a VG to VG/EX set, the cards well-loved but carefully handled over the years, the primary flaws relating to corner and edge wear, along with the typical Topps quality control issues of the era.  However, the young collector who assembled this set (as well as several other baseball and football partial sets featured in this auction) diligently wrote the uniform number of the player on many of the cards.  In fact, approximately 343 of the cards in this set have writing on the reverse (either the uniform number or a filled-in checklist), each in blue ink.  As a result, a condition breakdown of the technical grade of the set would be 2% EX, 9% VG/EX, 16% VG, 5% GOOD, and 60% FAIR, with a few lesser.  

Key cards grade as follows: #20 Snider (VG/EX), 40 Spahn (GOOD), 50 Mays (F writing), 150 Musial (VG), 163 Koufax (F writing), 180 Berra (F writing), 202 Maris (F writing), 338 Anderson (F writing), 350 Banks (SGC EX 5, submitted by us), 360 Kaline (VG), 387 Drysdale (F writing), 390 Cepeda (F writing), 415 Mazeroski (VG/EX), 430 Ford (VG), 435 F. Robinson (F writing), 439 B. Robinson (VG), 450 Mathews (F writing), 478 Clemente (F writing), 515 Killebrew (F writing), 550 Campanella (VG), 561 Aaron AS (VG/EX), 563 Mays AS (F), 564 Mantle AS (F).  An extraordinary exercise in young baseball fandom, resulting in a well-loved, collector-grade near set.  569 cards total.