The history of Topps baseball card sets
BY MARK A. LARSON
Power!
No other word can better describe the 1961 baseball season … especially in the American League.
Rocky Colavito – not Roger Maris – is the best example of the sheer dominance of sluggers during the ’61 season. Colavito played for the Tigers and had his best season. He blasted 45 homers and drove in 140 runs. In addition, Detroit had a record of 101 wins and only 61 losses.
One would expect that Colavito would be the American League’s home run and RBI champ and Most Valuable Player, while the Tigers would be heading to the World Series. Not so. Not even close. In the year of the slugger, Colavito finished fifth in the home run race and third in RBIs. The Tigers, meanwhile, finished in second place eight games behind the powerhouse Yankees.
It was the year of power, and power was defined with just three words: New York Yankees.
We all know about the Yankees. Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle battled through early September for the league lead in homers. When the season was over, Maris had 61 and Mantle 54. The Yankees set an all-time record with 240 homers as a team and won another pennant and World Series – beating Cincinnati four games to one.
In addition to Maris and Mantle, the Bronx Bombers had four other players with 20 or more homers: Bill “Moose” Skowron (28), Yogi Berra (22), Elston Howard (21), and Johnny Blanchard (21).
The American League had no less than six players with 40 or more homers: Maris, Mantle, Colavito, Jim Gentile, Harmon Killebrew and Norm Cash. Plus, each of those same six sluggers had 120 RBIs or more.
The National League didn’t have quite the voltage of the A.L., but there was no power outage in the senior circuit either. San Francisco’s one-two punch of Orlando Cepeda and Willie Mays wasn’t too far behind the A.L.’s Maris-Mantle combo.
Cepeda led the N.L. in homers and RBIs with 46 and 142. Mays was second in home runs with 40 and third in RBIs with 123. In addition to the Giants two powermen, three other National Leaguers hit 35 or more homers and had 115 or more RBIs. Frank Robinson, Joe Adcock and Dick Stuart were near the top in round-trippers. While Robinson, Stuart and Hank Aaron were in the top-five RBI group.
For all the excitement created by the long ball in 1961, Topps issued a relatively bland-looking set. But dull or not, the ’61 Topps offering is the most valuable major baseball set issued in the past 30 years … worth more than $5,000 in top condition.
The front of the cards offer one of the simplest designs. The top nine-tenths of the card is all photo (in a white-bordered outline). The bottom tenth features the player’s name and position in one colored box, while the player’s team is in another, smaller color box to the right.
The backs are in a horizontal format and include year-by-year major and minor league statistics. Most cards also feature three cartoons in separate boxes at the bottom of the reverse. As usual, some of the cartoons are quite clever. For instance, one of the illustrations on the back of John Romano’s card (#5) states: “Johnny spends his spare time constructing things out of wood.” The cartoon shows him whittling a bat.
Topps’ 1961 set is noteworthy for two things. For the first time League Leader cards and separate checklist cards were issued in a set. Prior to ’61, checklists were issued on the backs of team cards.
The League Leader subset idea was used by Topps for the next two decades. It features 10 cards (#41-50), five cards for each league, covering the categories of batting average, home runs, wins, strikeouts and earned run average. Surprisingly, RBI leaders were missing. They wouldn’t be added until the 1964 set. Each League Leader card featured head shots of four, five or six of the leaders in that category from the previous year on the front of the cards. Backs included a list of yearly leaders going back to the early part of the century.
Two other subsets stand out in 1961. Cards #401-410 feature “Baseball Thrills.” These cards highlight a great moment in baseball such as “Babe Ruth Hits 60th Homer” (#401), “Larsen Pitches Perfect Game” (#402), or “Mantle Blasts 565 Ft. Home Run” (#406).
Cards #471-486 feature Most Valuable Players in each league from 1950-60. Some of the big names include: Yogi Berra (1951, 1954-55), Mickey Mantle (1956-57), Roger Maris (1960), Roy Campanella (1951, 1953, 1955), Willie Mays (1954), Hank Aaron (1957) and Ernie Banks (1958-59).
Other standard subsets in the ’61 set include Managers (#131-139 and #219-226), World Series cards (#306-313), and All-Stars (#566-589).
The 1961 set is also noteworthy for containing one of the toughest, and most valuable, 7th series. Cards #523-589 are quite scarce, as any set collector can attest to. The 7th series includes all the All-Star cards, 10 of which are valued near $100 or more. Team cards of the Minnesota Twins and Pittsburgh Pirates are $50-60, as is Hoyt Wilhelm’s card. Even commons in top grade can run $30 or more.
In addition, some 7th series cards were printed in smaller quantities than others, which makes them that much more challenging to collect.
Three key rookie cards stand out in the 1961 Topps set: Ron Santo (#35), Billy Williams (#141) and Juan Marichal (#417).
Santo and Williams played for the Cubs throughout the 1960s and into the early ’70s. Santo, a third-baseman who hit 342 home runs, was only recently discovered by collectors. His card is now $35. Williams, a Hall-of-Famer who hit for power and average, patrolled the outfield at Wrigley. His 1961 rookie card currently goes for $120.
Marichal anchored San Francisco’s pitching staff throughout the 1960s. He, too, is a Hall-of-Famer and won 20 or more games six times. Marichal’s ’61 card is $125.
The 1961 Topps set appears bland at first. Yet it can grow on you if you take into consideration the era in which it was produced. Not only was it a time of less sophisticated photography and graphic design, but the year of power!
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See related article on BaseballCardFun.com entitled:
“BASEBALL HOBBY NEWS — ’61 Topps Set Contains Some Oddities“
Click Link Here
• Originally Published in Sep. 1991 “Baseball Hobby News” •
THIS ARTICLE FROM “BASEBALL HOBBY NEWS” MAGAZINE IS REPRINTED WITH THE PERMISSION OF BOTH THE EDITOR/PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR. IT HAS BEEN RETYPED, BUT NO CONTENT HAS BEEN CHANGED (EXCEPT FOR VERY MINOR ADJUSTMENTS, CORRECTIONS TO TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS AND CHANGES TO GRAPHICS). COMMENTS OR INFORMATION IN THE ARTICLE MAY BE OUT-OF-DATE.
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