Chicago White Sox - 1954 Topps Near Complete Team Set (14/15 cards)

WOW ! Few issues compare to the 1956 Topps Pins set. The colorful and attractive 1-1/8" diameter pins were packaged with bubble gum and featured a color photo of player on front with a pin clasp on back. Many of the images for pins are the same as on the 1956 Topps cards. If you collect 1956 Topps cards than YOU MUST add at least one of these 1956 Topps Pin to your collection.

Packed with stars (no Mickey Mantle), the 1956 Topps Pins set also had a few scarcities such as Chuck Stobbs, Hector Lopez & Chuck Diering.

In the end, collectors of the day preferred cards to pins and Topps cut back the 1956 Topps Pin set from a planned 90 pins to just 60.

The history of vintage baseball card auctions is long and colorful.

T-206 Honus Wagner tobacco cards have sold for upto $2.8 million in auction. The "Holy Grail of Sports Cards", it's extreme-high auction value can mostly be attributed to great PR and "auction fever". It's not close to being the rarest baseball card and Honus Wagner is not Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle. Yes, the T-206 set is beautiful & special but because of the # of cards and scarcities, few collector's try to complete, which should keep auction competition down compared to say 1933 Goudey or 1952 Topps baseball card issues.
BUT IT DOES NOT...

There's a story Wagner banned his card because he was anti-tobacco but there are other stories about financial considerations.

You surely have heard of PSA and may even know that this card was the FIRST they ever graded. But did you know that dealer (B.l. .ast.o name encoded) admitted tampering with the card, perhaps having it trimmed down to size, before PSA graded it so highly for the auction.

Competition was raging between Topps and Bowman in 1953 and 1954 leading to problems with both companies sets. Bowman caused Topps to missing 6 cards in 1953 with Topps getting revenge by signing Ted Williams to an exclusive contract in 1954. Bowman then had to pull Ted Williams card #66 from their set shortly after they started printing, replacing it with Jimmy Piersall, who also was on card #210 making the 1954 Bowman Ted Williams #6 one of 50's scarcest cards.

Perhaps distracted by it's competition with Topps, the 1954 Bowman set was filled with errors and variations. Nearly 20% (40/224 cards) had some sort of variation, with some having more than 2.

The St. Louis Browns recent move to Baltimore also made things interesting. Bowman's artists had no idea what an Orioles jersey would look like - so they just madeone up.