Someone trimmed an entire 1959-66 Topps collection. All of it. ~1,500 cards.
Someone posted on Facebook about a collection they'd turned up at a garage sale. At the bottom, an innocuous little FAQ:
- It is about 1,500 cards
- Yes, they are all trimmed
First thought: what junk!
Second thought: but why?
Third thought: holy #@$%, that's a lot of Mantles and a Pete Rose rookie.
Nobody was hiding anything. It's right there in the FAQ. We went back and forth for two weeks anyway, making sure we both understood exactly what was changing hands. Last Friday I drove two hours each way and brought it home.
The previous owner had cut roughly an eighth of an inch off all four borders. Every card in the collection, not a sampling. They measure about 2.25 x 3.25 instead of 2.5 x 3.5, so you see it instantly next to an untrimmed card (see above).
The cuts are consistent but not all of them are clean, and on a few the knife went past the border into the design. There are '65s with the team pennant precisely sliced out of the card (see photos).
And here's the part I keep turning over. The collection was meticulously organized. Sorted by team first, then by type: dedicated pages for the World Series cards, the Rookie Parades, the League Leaders, the All-Stars. This was a person with a system, who sat down and did this deliberately, to card after card, for what must have been a very long time.
Sadism? Masochism? Or the most patient act of self-sabotage I've ever seen?
Here's what I think. If you've handled '61s and '62s you know the centering is atrocious, Topps' cutting was all over the place those years. So a kid with a system looks at a stack of crooked cards and reaches for the obvious fix: even up the borders.
Except a border you've evened is a border you've made smaller, and now it doesn't match the one next to it, so that one comes down too.
It's the sideburns problem. You start out straightening one side, and three passes later you have no sideburns and you're committed.
Fifteen hundred cards is a long time to stay committed.
What's actually in here
- Mantle turns up on at least 17 cards, not counting the Yankees team cards he's somewhere in. Nine are his own: '59 #10 (two copies), '60 #563 All-Star, '61 #475 MVP, '62 #200, '62 #471 All-Star, '63 #200, '64 #50, '66 #50. Eight more feature him or share the card: '60 #160 Rival All-Stars, '61 #307 World Series Game 2, '62 #18 Managers' Dream, '62 #318 Switch Hitter Connects, '63 #2 AL Batting Leaders, '63 #173 Bombers' Best, '64 #331 A.L. Bombers, '65 #134 World Series Game 3
- 1963 #537 Pete Rose rookie
- 1963 #553 Willie Stargell rookie
- 1962 #387 Lou Brock rookie
- 1965 #16 Joe Morgan rookie
- The complete 1962 Rookie Parade run, #591 to #598: all eight high-number short prints, Uecker rookie included
- The high numbers are unusually well represented. 50+ of the 76 in 1962 (#523 to #598), including #544 McCovey, and 40+ of the 54 in 1963 (#523 to #576), including the Rose and Stargell rookies and the #540 Clemente. The high series are the hard part of finishing any set from this era
- Multiple Clemente, Mays, Aaron, Koufax, Berra, Maris, Banks
- Counts by year, rounded down. Every pile has a few more in it than this:
| Year | Cards | Set |
|---|---|---|
| 1959 | 60+ | 572 |
| 1960 | 60+ | 572 |
| 1961 | 130+ | 587 |
| 1962 | 440+ | 598 |
| 1963 | 290+ | 576 |
| 1964 | 120+ | 587 |
| 1965 | 180+ | 598 |
| 1966 | 140+ | 598 |
The '62 is about three quarters of a set and the '63 about half, and in both cases the high numbers are mostly there. The 1959, 1960 and 1961 runs are almost entirely low series, so treat those as starter lots rather than partial sets.
The Pitch
The whole collection is listed on eBay at $7,000. I'm not linking it here. To this sub it's $6,000.
Ground rules:
- I'll entertain any offer of $5,000 or more. Below that I'd rather break it up than take a number I'll be thinking about six months from now.
- Post offers publicly in the comments, not in my DMs. I'll answer publicly too. Everyone sees what everyone else is willing to pay, including me.
- No full checklist, in the interest of my sanity. I'll do my best on reasonable photo and info requests, but I'm not cataloging 1,500 card numbers.
- Fewer than 5% have issues beyond the trimming, possibly a lot fewer. Creases, writing on the back, the usual for sixty-year-old cardboard. Where one of the better cards has a real flaw, beyond having been completely altered, obviously, I've done my best to flag it.
- Shipping is on me, insured and tracked. Local pickup available in Manhattan, NY, which I'd honestly prefer for a box this size. You're welcome to come look at the whole thing in person.
- PayPal G&S and I'll cover the fee. Zelle or cash if you'd rather. Happy to point you at vouches either way, just ask.
Realistically, nobody knows what this is worth. There are no true comps for a collection like this one.
I also don't know which version of it people want more: an instant legendary collection with a hell of a story behind it and an affordable price tag, or the chance to take it apart and pull exactly what their own set is missing. I'd be curious which way people land on that.
If the collection doesn't sell in one piece, I'll break it into year lots and singles in a couple of weeks. Comment if you want a heads-up when I do and I'll tag you.
One last thing
Out of roughly 1,500 cards, exactly one is untrimmed. It's also the only card in the entire collection from after 1966: a 1967 Yankees team card, full size, filed in with everything else.
I don't think it got in by accident. He'd stopped by then, and he was a Yankees guy. So somewhere in 1967 he picked up one card of his team, put it where it belonged, and never got the knife out again.
What would you have done with these?
