If you live outside of the Country, you might not be aware that the Detroit Tigers won their division this year, and they are now in the playoffs, to see who will advance to the 2011 World Series. They are battling the New York Yankees in the first round. So I thought this would be an excellent time to share some of my baseball cards with you!
And my all time favorite Detroit Tiger player was/is … Al Kaline! So I thought I’d pull out his cards and share them with you. I must first tell you that the first card, his rookie card from 1954, I do not own, but the rest I do. And to make the post begin with Al’s first card, I’m sharing a scan of his rookie card from the internet and not from my collection. The rest of the cards I own and will share with you, five or six with each post.
So here’s Al Kaline’s rookie card from the 1954 Topps card set. It is card number # 201. Next up is his card from the 1955 Topps set, card # 4. You notice that Topps used the same picture with the next years card design, though it’s horizontal rather then vertical.
The 1956 Topps set again used the same photo of Kaline that was used on his first two cards, just with a new design for 1956.
This card is # 20 in the set. Finally with the 1957 set, Topps used a new photo of Kaline. They also went back to the vertical card style, though in my opinion it’s a little boring or maybe bland. It could be the lack of color or the lack of the facsimile autograph. Something about just leaves me cool towards it. It is oen of my least favorite Kaline cards in my collection actually! It is # 125 in the Topps set.
For this first post, I’ll finish up with Kaline’s last two Topps cards in the fifties. Next up is his card from the 1958 set, # 70. Again it is a vertical card but the most notable thing is it features another new picture of Kaline. It also goes back to using a red back drop and that splash of color makes for a nice looking card.
And for the final card of this post, here is Kaline’s 1959 Topps card, it is # 360. It is again a vertical design, using yet again, a new picture and the popular red background. I think it’s the best looking card of the fifties. What do you think?
That’s it for this post. I hope you enjoyed my Al Kaline cards from the nineteen fifties and I’ll post Al’s cards for the first half of the nineteen sixties in the next post. Til then … be seeing you.
