1950s Card Poll

[BMW]

1951 Topps
Pretty neat design, not well known that this was Topps first major foray into the baseball card market. The player's head pops and over the top border, but not to such a large extent that you couldn't simply have it in the diamond. Still, the cards have no stats on them, so to speak.

1952 Topps
Simple and recognizable design.

1953 Topps
Another simple and recognizable design.

1954 Topps
Decent design, but the plain-color background on the player's face makes this one a bit out of reach. That and the duplicate photos. Excluded from poll.

1955 and 1956 Topps
Gorgeous design, but the duplicate photos make this one difficult to do convincingly. Excluded from poll.

1957 Topps
Simple design, and achievable. But it may be too simple for my tastes.

1958 Topps
Another simple design, but the plain-color background on the player's face makes this one a bit out of reach. Excluded from poll.

1959 Topps
These are pretty recognizable, but I think they're a bit gaudy. The player name is on a slant, but not to such an extent that making it horizontal ruins the card.

1950-1954 Bowman
These designs are all very simple. The differentiation on Color and B&W can't really be controlled by the card, it's just based on what your OOTP option is. They're all nice, but fairly simple.

1955 Bowman
Very iconic design. I'd probably hate to have 100 years of baseball with television set baseball cards though.

1951-1952 Berk Ross
The first set is actually had two players on a card with a perforation to take them apart. Both sets are pretty simple, and not all that interesting, besides the fact I didn't know about them until today.

1954 Dan Dee Potato Chips
Really nothing much to see here.

1954 Wilson Franks
This is actually a pretty nice design, but again the plain-color background on the player's face makes this one a bit out of reach. Excluded from poll.

1954 Red Heart Dog Food
A decent design for dog food. It has the plain color background, but not enough that you couldn't have a real background.

1958 Hires Root Beet
This is just an awesome design. May not want it for 100 years, but still... Pretty cool.

1959 Bazooka
A pretty nice, and attractive design.

[Tiesenberg]

I look forward to seeing the results of this poll, a handful of great cards were included in the list.

If it would be of any help, I've been working on the 1952 Topps Card off-and-on, more recently off, for a few weeks now. If it would allow for the boards to get two cards up from this group listed, I could go back and work on this card if it would be of some help on your end.

[PhillieFever]

The 1953 Topps set is to me iconic, and the best choice here.

[edm]

I like '51 and '53. You said 51 doesn't have stats. would you create them that way? or would you create something with a stat overlay?

[hawaiiansky]

Gotta go with the '59 Topps. It's the only set I ever collected every card! Of course, Mom threw it out!

[Jamee999]

Red Heart.

[DWK]

"51" is a awesome looking card even though it doesn't have stats

[Cooleyvol]

53 all the way.

[robster1225]

I agree with Cooley, 53 is great.

[BMW]

Ha ha! I can not believe that something as obscure as "Red Heart Dog Food" has three votes. Then again, it's not a bad design.

I'm not sure what I'd do with 1951. I try to be as faithful to the card as OOTP will let me be right now. Technically, the text in the lower left has a stat or two, but we lack the ability to filter on data. Which means it would look silly if you had some text bragging about how so-and-so was hitting .122 for the season as if it were an accomplishment.

Personally, I think I lean to 52 Topps, 53 Topps and 58 Hires. Not sure what I'd do with the 53 Topps backs, since many of the early Topps cards have "Last Year" and "Career" stats. 53 Topps is a card that just doesn't have a lot of stats on it.

As much as I love Tiesenberg's 79 Topps, I am hesitant to have trivia on the back of the cards for two reasons: 1) If you run a purely fictional league, MLB trivia may make no sense for your league. 2) It would look silly if you had trivia for the 72 Cubs on the back of a card that was "printed" in 1940. However, I can totally see that I'm being too ridiculous here, so please chime in and let me know what you think.

1. Do I stick to the limited stats that actually exist on the 53 Topps (or other 50s cards, since they are pretty common to most of them)?
2. Should I sweat the small stuff about trivia being out of time and place for some leagues?

I'm very interested in your thoughts.

Oh, by the way, does anyone 1953 Bowman B&W Andy Seminick card looks like he's holding a tommy gun when you glance at it real quick?

[pstrickert]

Originally Posted by BMW

Oh, by the way, does anyone 1953 Bowman B&W Andy Seminick card looks like he's holding a tommy gun when you glance at it real quick?

Yes.

[BMW]

Originally Posted by pstrickert

Yes.

I swear, I've seen it every time I glance at the card despite the fact that I know it isn't.

[BMW]

Looks like the clear frontrunners here are 52 Topps and 53 Topps. Good news is that Tisenberg is already doing some 52 Topps stuff, so we'll be able to do both 53 and 52. Unless further voting changes that.

[LFC1892]

'53 Topps is/was great, and also like the '52 Bowman for some reason.

[The Dook]

I'd say '53, it has a great classic look.

[PhillieFever]

Are any of these still on the drawing board?