The most collected must be a late 80s set. There are relatively few for sale on ebay ("1989 Topps" = 14k results) because they're worthless. But the baseball card boom, plus (as Sean noted) fewer sets than in more recent years, plus larger population, just has to lead to more collectors. US population in 1955 was about 171 million, it was about 250 million in 1989. Even if baseball cards were more popular in the 50s (doubtful, but let's run with it), if even a small portion of those extra 79 million people were collecting baseball cards it's going to swamp higher popularity in earlier decades.
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