Collector Stories | True Gems from the 1952 Topps Set

A Full Set Chase and Original Player Contracts

Date: Sep 23, 2025

Author: Greg Bates

Topics: 1952 Topps, Baseball, Cards and Culture, Collector Stories

Length: 939 Words

Reading Time: ~5 Minutes

As a vintage baseball card collector, Sean Kelly appreciates the impact the 1952 Topps set had on The Hobby. For Kelly, as for many collectors, the monumental 407-card masterpiece changed everything.

“Nothing before looked anything like it,” Kelly said. “They were all a lot smaller, a lot more basic.” He called out the specific format of that ’52 set for setting a new standard — “You’ve got the name, you’ve got the team logos, you’ve got the bios, and the stats on the back” — for adding dimension and depth to a medium that, previously, was much more simple. “This really set the mold for what a baseball card looks like moving forward,” Kelly said. “I think every card produced since has taken those items in some fashion.”

Kelly collects anything associated with the 1952 Topps set, ranging from the regular base cards to a three-card salesman sample to a rare advertisement in that year’s All-Star Game program. But it’s a piece that Kelly recently purchased that’s the rarest in his vintage collection.

Finding an Original 1952 Topps Player Contract

Somedays, Kelly will just surf the web looking for any sort of ’52 Topps items that might pop up. It was on one of these searches that he stumbled upon an eye-popping piece for sale — an original contract between Topps and St. Louis Cardinals catcher Del Rice to have his image used on a baseball card.

“Before I saw that, I didn’t know [contracts] were available to the public,” Kelly said. “As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it.”

The three-paragraph contract, dated June 24, 1952, starts out, “I hereby authorize the printing and use of my picture and biographical sketch to be sold as premium cards or in combination with the products of Topps Chewing Gum.” At the bottom, the contract includes Rice’s signature, his printed name, and his home address.

Kelly finds the piece — which is authenticated by Beckett Authentication — quite fascinating.

“It’s kind of a window into how Topps did business when they were first operating,” Kelly said. “It’s a really bare bones agreement. There’s not a whole lot to it, nice and simple. The other part that’s kind of neat is you’ve got the home address for Del Rice. And if you look it up on Google Maps, that place is still standing, and that’s exactly where he lived.”

Kelly doesn’t know if the agreement between Topps and Rice was actually reached on June 24, 1952, or if that’s just when the player’s contract was submitted to the company.

“What I’ve heard is that a lot of players would negotiate with Topps in advance and say, ‘Yeah, we’ll sign the contract, just have it ready next time we come to New York,'” Kelly said. “On the Del Rice contract, the Cardinals were in New York on the 24^th of June in 1952. Whether that was agreed to weeks or months in advance, I couldn’t tell you. But that coincided with their visit to New York City.”

Rebuilding the 1952 Topps Set

About four years ago, Kelly finished building a 1952 Topps low-number series, 1-310. However, he ended up trading it away. He later got seller’s remorse. Two years ago, he decided to start piecing together another set, this time including the high-number series cards, 311-407. That means purchasing the Jackie Robinson and Eddie Mathews cards, and, of course, Mickey Mantle’s coveted first Topps card.

The first 310 cards of the set are considered Series 1-5, with cards 311-407 being Series 6, the high series. The high-number cards are significantly scarcer than the five low-number series.

Kelly, who is 40 years old and lives in Ontario, Canada, knows finishing the entire set isn’t going to be easy.

“It’s a bit like trying to climb Mount Everest, I think,” he said. “It’s there. I want to give it a shot. I know it’s a real challenge. But I think with a long enough timeline, and enough patience, I think I can do it. I think it would be a really rewarding experience when I do.”

Kelly’s project is 83% completed, having 337 of the 407 cards. He is building the set in mid-range grades, and all but a handful of the cards are raw. The lifelong collector had a loose plan from the start to get going on the ’52 Topps set.

“I started off wanting to get the Hall of Famers,” Kelly said. “I also started off heavily targeting the third and the fifth series, because I knew those ones had real centering issues, and they were going to need a lot of time to put them together. Those were kind of my starting off points, then from there it’s just been filling in as I go.”

Kelly is close to finishing the entire low-number series. His goal is to have that wrapped up by the end of this year. Then it will be on to finishing the high-number series. He says he’ll will most likely save the Mantle to be the final card to complete the set. But that’s a huge financial commitment.

“I intend to get it,” Kelly said. “I hope to get it. I won’t be devastated if I don’t. It’s still an incredible set without it. But we’ll just kind of see how things go when I build out the rest of the set.”