The massive popularity of the 1952 Topps baseball set presented a unique challenge to Topps' designers: how do you follow up a near-perfect card set?  The answer was the beautifully-designed 1953 issue.  With card art consisting of hand-painted renditions of player photographs, each player's team and position information appears in a dark border at the card bottom (red for American League and black for National League) along with a team logo.  The reverse contains statistical and biographical information, as well as a trivia question.  The designs were so beautiful and vivid that many collectors today prefer the 1953 set to its predecessor.  The 274-card set includes a number of challenges to completion, including second-year Topps cards of Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, an extremely tough run of high numbers, a host of difficult single prints, an extremely condition-sensitive #1 card of Jackie Robinson, and tough rookie cards of Johnny Podres and Jim Gilliam.  While the 1952 issue can be a nightmare to complete, the 1953 set is certainly no picnic, in any grade.  Presented here is a collector-grade 1953 Topps set, assembled card-by-card by a longtime collector striving to finish an affordable example of this attractive set.  

A condition breakdown would be approximately 5% VG with a few better, 21% GOOD, 39% FAIR, 35% POOR with a few trimmed.  We selected eight cards to submit to SGC, which graded as follows: #1 Robinson (HOF) GOOD 2, #27 Campanella (HOF) FR 1.5, #82 Mantle (HOF) FR 1.5, #104 Berra (HOF) PR 1, #114 Rizzuto (HOF) PR 1, #207 Ford (HOF) VG 3, #220 Paige (HOF) PR 1, and #244 Mays (HOF) FR 1.5.  Remaining keys would grade as follows: #37 Mathews F, #41 Slaughter G, #54 Feller P, #62 Irvin F (trimmed), #61 Wynn P, #66 Minoso F, #76 Reese G, #77 Mize F, #78 Schoendienst F, #138 Kell F, #147 Spahn P, #151 Wilhelm F, #191 Kiner P, and #228 Newhouser G.  As the prices of early Topps sets continue to escalate, an affordable example is quite desirable.  This is a perfect set for a collector looking for a complete early Topps set, or for someone looking to start somewhere and gradually upgrade.  274 cards total.