The massive popularity of the 1952 Topps baseball set presented a unique challenge to Topps' designers: how do you follow up a near-perfect 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 cards of Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays (really third-year cards, of course), 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 Padres and Jim Gilliam. While the 1952 issue can be a nightmare to complete, the 1953 set is certainly no picnic.

Presented here is an attractive collector-grade set, consigned by its original owner, who completed the set in the year of issue. The cards have been well-handled, as the consignor was a youngster back in 1953. A fair amount of the cards have creases or water damage that has slightly warped the cards or created surface wrinkles. A technical breakdown of the cards is as follows: 6% VG/EX, 27% VG, 36% GOOD, 22% FAIR, 8% POOR with a few stronger than VG/EX. 

Ten of the cards have been graded by PSA or SGC. A breakdown of those cards, along with the other keys, is as follows: #1 Robinson (SGC GOOD 2), #27 Campanella (SGC VG/EX 4), #37 Mathews (SGC VG 3), #41 Slaughter (G), #54 Feller (SGC VG 3), #61 Wynn (G), #62 Irvin (VG), #66 Minoso (VG), #76 Reese (P), #77 Mize (G), #78 Schoendienst (VG), #82 Mantle (PSA GOOD 2), #104 Berra (SGC VG 3), #114 Rizzuto (VG), #138 Kell (G), #151 Wilhelm (G), #147 Spahn (VG), #191 Kiner (SGC GOOD+ 2.5), #207 Ford (F), #220 Paige (SGC GOOD+ 2.5), #228 Newhouser (SGC VG 3), #244 Mays (PSA VG 3), #263 Podres (VG), #258 Gilliam (VG).  One of the most beautiful postwar vintage baseball sets, completed during its year of issue, consigned by its original owner. 274 cards total.