Finally finished my Red Heart set! Special thanks to those who helped

[Zach Wheat]

Originally Posted by almostdone

Blue set

Drew,

Nice accomplishment. I have not completed the set as I tend to focus on the larger sets first. Were there any rarities within the set? Were there any variations? What was the hardest card to find?

Just curious. Thanks.

Z

[almostdone]

Originally Posted by Zach Wheat

Drew,

Nice accomplishment. I have not completed the set as I tend to focus on the larger sets first. Were there any rarities within the set? Were there any variations? What was the hardest card to find?

Just curious. Thanks.

Z

There aren't any variations in the set. Just the standard 33 cards. 11 in each series. I've seen original advertisements for the set on eBay. If you collected 10 (I think) labels for the dog food cans and mailed them into the company with the postage they would send you one series.

The red ones are short printed but not scarce by any means. The two biggest cards are of course Mantle and then Musial. It's one of the few mid 50's issues of Musial and being a collector of his stuff it is one of my favorites.

Another interesting thing is 11 of the cards in the set are represented by players that ended up in the HOF. That's 1/3 of the set being HOFers! Also I've wondered about team choice. At the time there were 16 major league teams but three are not represented. 10 of the players are from Chicago. 5 from the Cubs and 5 from the Sox. Yankees, Dodgers and Giants are also well represented which makes sense given the era.

I did find that there are more decent conditioned cards out there compared to Topps sets from the same era. Probably because he sets were mailed to you and didn't end up in a kids back pocket or bicycle spikes on the way home from the five and dime.

The biggest issue is centering but it isn't impossible. Overall it was a lot of fun to put together and not too crazy expensive getting bogged down in the commons.

If anyone hasn't ever had any cards from it I would recommend looking into it. It's a great set and I think it represents the 50's style sets very well.

Drew

PS I did want to actually thank Chris, Campyfan39, for his help. He gave me a great deal on the Mantle at well below what I would have paid for a perfectly centered example.

[Brian B@rry]

I have this set, albeit with some cards pretty badly miscut side to side. I think those came from Wholesale Cards - they are in pristine condition otherwise. I had a real tough time finding the Lemon card. I finally saw it at a show. Either the dealer could sense my desperation or he knew that the card was tough because he held the line on the price, which was pretty high (I think I paid $30 about 30 years ago). Even as he was closing up his table he refused to budge, so I bought it. I had been hunting for at least a year for that card.

It's a great set and yours looks real nice. Congratulations!

[LeftHandedDane]

Congrats Drew! Hopefully I am not far behind you as I have only two more to go to complete the set! I find it to be one of the most beautiful sets to display, and like you am impressed by the density of star cards.

[almostdone]

Originally Posted by LeftHandedDane

Congrats Drew! Hopefully I am not far behind you as I have only two more to go to complete the set! I find it to be one of the most beautiful sets to display, and like you am impressed by the density of star cards.

Thanks. What two are you lacking? I actually have a couple of doubles I was going to list on the BST in a few days.
Drew

[LeftHandedDane]

Erskine and Pierce. Let me know if you have them by chance.

[CobbvLajoie1910]

Beautiful set, Drew -- congrats to you.