1957 -- The First Year of Topps' Four Sport Production ... by Brian Wentz (BMW Sportscards)

Baseball, football, basketball and hockey are the four major sports in the world, except for soccer, which is football in every country except the United States. Baseball, however, has always been America's pastime and has traditionally enjoyed stronger grassroots support than other sporting events (leisure activities such as hunting and golf obviously not included). As a result, baseball cards, which sprang onto the collecting scene around the time that Lincoln governed our country, have been produced fairly continually in one form or another for over 130 years. Baseball card manufacturers even prospered to a degree during the Great Depression and ironically it was World War II that ended both. Following this second great war, paper and glucose shortages ended and both Bowman Gum Company of Philadelphia, PA (the surviving Gum, Inc. that started in 1930) and Topps Chewing Gum, Inc. (Duryea, PA) began packaging gum with sports and non sport cards alike.

Bowman produced baseball, football and basketball cards in 1948 and also supplied the former two in the years, 1950-1955. Following their buyout of Bowman in January of 1956, Topps had a virtual monopoly on the gum and picture card market for a quarter of a century. A year later, in 1957, Topps made a historic decision by making a card set for each of the four major sports in the country (this would not be done by a major manufacturer again until 1968). These sets would become among the most important of the Post WWII era and would pave that way for all future cards.

	The first year of Topps' Modern-sized card -- 1957

For the first time, the dissemination of the now standard 2 1/2" by 3 1/2" baseball cards by Topps in 1957 became the benchmark by which most subsequent generations of sports cards would be sized. Only five years earlier in 1952, Topps hatched the idea of producing a larger card, 2 5/8" by 3 3/4", thereby stealing the lion's share of the baseball card market from Bowman, which was still packaging smaller cards. Now, in 1957, probably because of its unfettered monopoly, Topps was able to experiment more freely with card and set design.

Although the 1957 set is not particularly innovative, it did ingeniously incorporate many aspects and ideas that were employed previously. Card #400 Dodgers' Sluggers (Campanella, Hodges, Furillo and Snider) and #407 Yankees' Power Hitters (Mantle and Berra, with Skowron in background) were only the second and third player-combination cards made by Topps and the fourth and fifth made by any company after WWII. Other relatively new concept cards in this baseball set that were the four contest cards, the lucky penny card and the four checklists. Each of the checklists actually comes with two different advertising backs-- Blony and Bazooka Gum. These extra four cards provide an additional challenge to collectors who are fervently working on master sets. Team cards were also a second year novelty that provided collectors an opportunity to view their favorite club in its entirety. The 1956 Fall classic participants were both represented on notable team cards -- the Dodgers (#324) and the Yankees (#97).

Substantively, this set contains rookie cards of Hall of Fame pitchers Jim Bunning and Don Drysdale as well as future Oriole Hall of Fame teammates Frank and Brooks Robinson. Other noteworthy rookies are Yankees Tony Kubek and Bobby Richardson as well as Pirate and 1960 World Series hero, Bill Mazeroski. Of the eight primary rookie cards, Drysdale and Mazeroski are the rarest in top grade and "Rocco" Colavito is the most plentiful. Other difficult-to-find singles were those issued in the fourth of five series. Because this group is scarcer, collectors needed to chew gum consistently throughout the summer and fall of the year in order to obtain all 407 cards.

In all, there are 408 different numbered cards in the set. Gene Baker, pictured on one of these cards, is perhaps best known as Ernie Banks' roommate on the Chicago Cubs; but Baker's card is valuable because a few were printed with the leg on the capital R missing on the reverse (actually overprinted with red). As a result, the name is spelled BAKEP rather than BAKER. This card is quite rare. Not including team cards, 39 Hall of Famers are featured on 34 different cards. Undoubtedly, this is one of the best sets from this time period to collect because of the overall picture quality and the numerous challenges associated with completing it.

Read more about 1957 Topps Hockey, Basketball, and Football -- click here