Monday, February 17, 2014

1954 Red Heart Billy Pierce


I knew little about the 1954 Red Heart Dog Food set until I started looking for a Billy Pierce card a year or so ago. I found one in decent shape for $32 shipped. I think the dealer listed it wrong or something because I was the only bidder. As you can see it is suffering to breath in a plastic case and I'll be breaking it free soon enough. 

One reason I didn't know much about these is that there are no Orioles in the set and back in the 80s when I was on a mission to collect every known Orioles card I had no reason to pay attention to them.

PSA has a nice write-up on them (the fact that this one is PSA graded is just a coincidence) that you can access right here. It's a 33 card un-numbered set that you could acquire in 11 card chunks for four labels and a dime. And you could get a Stan Musial card which you couldn't do from packs of Topps or Bowman. If fact the checklist has quite a few Hall of Famers included. Exactly 1/3 of the included players are Hall enshrinees. Of course the 'chase' card is the Mantle. There is a listing on eBay as I type for a complete graded set, 8.5 overall with a Grade 9 Mantle. It's price? $26,500. I'll take two.

But I would like to find a couple more affordable ones, no graded versions needed. 


Here is the checklist with Hall of Fame members in bold.

  • 1 Richie Ashburn
  • 2 Frank Baumholtz
  • 3 Gus Bell
  • 4 Billy Cox
  • 5 Alvin Dark
  • 6 Carl Erskine
  • 7 Ferris Fain
  • 8 Dee Fondy
  • 9 Nellie Fox
  • 10 Jim Gilliam
  • 11 Jim Hegan
  • 12 George Kell
  • 13 Ralph Kiner
  • 14 Ted Kluszewski
  • 15 Harvey Kuenn
  • 16 Bob Lemon
  • 17 Sherman Lollar
  • 18 Mickey Mantle
  • 19 Billy Martin
  • 20 Gil McDougald
  • 21 Roy McMillan
  • 22 Minnie Minoso
  • 23 Stan Musial
  • 24 Billy Pierce
  • 25 Al Rosen
  • 26 Hank Sauer
  • 27 Red Schoendienst
  • 28 Enos Slaughter
  • 29 Duke Snider
  • 30 Warren Spahn
  • 31 Sammy White
  • 32 Eddie Yost
  • 33 Gus Zernial

2 comments:

  1. You had me at Musial. I'll probably never acquire one, but I've added this card to my eBay search.

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  2. Glad you found the Pierce. I had two Red Sox cards to go after. It's a nice looking set. Now you will have to track a card down from the Dan-Dee potato chip set from the same year.

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