1965 Topps

FEATURES

The 1965 Topps set includes a combination of action shots and colored portraits. On a pennant in the bottom left-hand corner, the player’s team and logo is displayed, while the lower part of the card is filled with the player’s name and position. This colored portion expands and lines the entire card, forming a border. Cards in this set were designed in various colors, and therefore can be located in red, blue, light blue, orange, purple, gray, black, green, or light green. The card backs feature the traditional biographical information and statistics while also including a cartoon with a short player fact, all on a blue-green background. The statistics show each year for the particular player; because of this, certain cards have extra space while some have none at all.

SET SERIES

Series One: cards 1-88
Series Two: cards 89-176
Series Three: cards 177-264
Series Four: cards 265-352
Series Five: cards 353-429
Series Six: cards 430-506
Series Seven: cards 507-598

KEY CARDS

With a total of 598 cards, the 1965 collections a wide array of rookie cards, many of which are components of multi-player cards. Several of these are Hall of Famers, including Jim Hunter, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, and Steve Carlton. Other significant rookies of high value are Luis Tiant (145), Denny McLain (236), Bert Campaneris (266), Tug McGraw (533), and Mel Stottlemyre (550). The first-ever Japanese MLB player, Masanori Murakami (282) can also be found in this collection. Just as with other sets from previous years, the 1965 set was released in seven series and contains many subsets. The League Leaders can be found in card numbers 1-12, while World Series Highlights present the seven-game series played between the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals. There are also several multi-player Rookie Stars cards, with either two or four players on the card, characterized by team.

SET ODDITIES

Because of its low number of variations, the 1965 Topps set is deemed to be an easier set to collect. More than half of the seventh series was printed in a small amount, but it is the middle series that it is particularly hard to find for collectors. Along with this, the 1965 Topps collection has two insert sets; Topps Iron-On Transfers and Topps Embossed inserts are both an obstacle for collectors because it took years for these to be appreciated. As a consequence, finding these in prime condition is quite a difficulty. Within the sets released in the 60s, the 1965 set is more easily collected due to its lack of scarcities and variation cards. Despite this, it has also been stated that these cards were not as plentiful in card shops as were earlier sets; this could have been due to the time, as many of the young men who normally would have been purchasing these cards were being drafted to war.