1959 Topps baseball set

[Koufax32fan]

You might get some grief for posting this in the pre-war area, but not from me. Let me start by saying that I have collected 1954-1958 Topps sets, raw and card by card. I loved the experience. I met some really great dealers through the mail and in person at shows. I thumbed through thousands (and thousands and thousands) of cards. I learned how to spot a card that was trimmed (not many for me!).

1959 - well, as you read, I stopped at 1958 and then moved on to 1939 Playball, 1948 and 1952 Bowman, T cards, etc. Why? 1959 marked another significant increase in the size of the set - to 572 cards. That means that there are that many more commons. It also isn't my favorite design of the 1950's Topps sets.

To your specific question, if you are looking to buy a complete set then the price will be highly dependent on the key cards - Mantles, Gibson RC, Mays, Clemente, Koufax, Aaron, etc. There aren't many key rookies - just Gibson.

For me, I enjoyed building the sets card by card so I could work on getting consistency with centering, corners, etc. What do you look for in cards? What will you do with the set? Will you put it away as an investment (you may do better with TBills....), or will you put it in sheets and 3 ring binder to flip through from time to time?

If you buy the set, it should cost less than if you bought each card separately over time. But, and this is a big but, you may lose that efficiency if you decide to upgrade any/some/many of the cards - so, if you decide you are going to buy a complete set I suggest that you look through the whole set online and not just at the "key" cards.