My Dad and I know a fellow who collected Topps and Bowmans from 51 for the next two decades, including assembling a complete '52 Topps on its original release. And he lived in the suburbs of Kansas City, on the Kansas side. this would seem to confirm that the high series made it west of the Mississippi. He did note that he had EXCEPTIONAL trouble finding the high series 52s, before finally locating a lone drug store in the KC area that stocked the new series. It seems that either penultimate series did not sell so well that most did not restock when the sixth and final series came out, or they mostly all concluded that the high series would sell poorly because the season was winding down.
My Dad came into collecting a little later, starting with Bowman 55s which were lost along the way, then starting in earnest with Topps 57-63 (which he still has). He described getting cards as something of a scavenger hunt, with all the neighborhood kids trading info on which stores had the new series in stock. The information was evidently pretty good, because he managed to assemble on their original release a complete run of sets 57-63, and all but ten cards from a second 57.
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