Customer Reviews

300 Great Baseball Cards of the 20th Century: A Historical Tribute by the Hobby's Most Relied Up

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A great book, with plenty of stories focusing on the cards and the players pictured on the cards. Mike Payne's writing seems aimed at all levels of baseball fans -- a difficult task, but one he pulls off with relative ease. There's a lot of baseball books out there, but few surrounding the history of the game and the history of cards. This one captures both, and does it with style.

One of the things I like about this book is that the title, for once, is not overstated. "300 Great Baseball Cards of the 20th Century" does not profess to provide the 300 greatest cards and therefore provides exactly what the subtitle indicates, "A Historical Tribute by the Hobby's Most Relied Upon Source." Okay, so there is some promotion here since the book is compiled by Mike Payne and the staff of "Beckett Baseball Card Monthly."

Of course you will find the most famous (and expensive) baseball cards of all time, such as the legendary 1909-11 T206 Honus Wagner ($112,500-$225,000) and the 1952 Topps #311 Mickey Mantle (not his first card, which would be the 1951 Bowman #253), which are the respective Holy Grails for the first and second half of the century. You will find cards for most of the greatest players in the history of the game, from Ty Cobb (1909-11 T206 Green Background) and Babe Ruth (1933 Goudey #43) to Mark McGwire (1985 Topps #401) and Barry Bonds (1987 Fleer #604). Not surprisingly, it is Mantle, in whose honor Topps has retired card number 7 in their sets, who has the most baseball cards with 21. Ruth and Ted Williams have 13 each, Willie Mays a dozen, and Hank Aaron 10. Of course, within those you will find cards with Mantle and Mays, Mantle and Aaron, and Aaron and Mays.

While there are cards of famous players you might recognize, such as the 1914 Cracker Jack #103 with Shoeless Joe Jackson that served as the model for a card in "Field of Dreams," there are some that are included because of their oddities, like the 1954 Topps #139 which has the O'Brien twins, Eddie and Johnny, the 1957 Topps #20 Hank Aaron where the reverse negative has the Hammer batting left-handed, and 1976 Topps #564 Kurt Bevacqua "Bubble Gum Blowing Champ" (I swear that gun Topps had would break your teeth but also preserve your cards in the box). You will find rookie cards, combination cards (e.g., 1957 Tops #407 Power Hitters: Mantle & Berra), all star cards, World Series card, commemorative cards (e.g., 1959 Topps #550 Roy Campanella, "Symbol of Courage"), traded cards, update cards (e.g., 1984 Fleer Update #U43 Dwight Gooden), error cards (e.g., 1985 Donruss $424 Tom Seaver), and variation cards (e.g., 1974 Topps #250B Willie McCovey "Washington Nat'l League").

A lot of the cards represent baseball history, talking about what happened with particular players in a given year or what was happening with baseball card companies (e.g., 1955 Bowman #179 Hank Aaron talks about how Topps bought Bowman after its ambitious 1955 TV release). There are also entries from the collector's perspective, such as the 1990 Leaf #220 Sammy Sosa that everyone was pulling out of their commons and semi-star boxes when Sosa was chasing Roger Maris and Mark McGwire during the great home run race of 1998 (ironically, the card shows Sosa bunting).

The book, of course, is illustrated with photographs of all 300 cards, along with photos of ballparks and players, mostly from the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library. For the die hard collector or the knowledgeable baseball fan this is a great book to leaf through and walk down memory lane. For the record I have 135 of the 300 cards, although by the end I am pretty much back to where I am in the beginning in terms of seeing cards I have never really seen let along tried to own.