Today I finished the final 2 missing cards to complete the 1952 Topps set. Part of me wanted to try it just to see if it could be done. Back in the early ‘90’s, an unknown collector attempted to do this, giving us the cards in the M & A (Masked & Anonymous) set. This set featured minor leaguers in addition to missing guys from the ‘52 set. Many of these cards were missing the facsimile autographs. Today, in the 2020’s with the internet, there are not only more workable images of players, but also pictures of their signatures. I had a number of websites that I used to research for picture and autographs. Baseball-Birthdays was a big help with photos, Worthpoint helped with finding a few autographs and photos, the former 1952 Topps Site was a big help with probabhly 50 or so missing cards that I didn't have to make, and I even found a few cards from the M&A set and some on eBay from a user who I’m 99% sure is the same guy who has sold some of my customs as his work in the past (and a guy who has stolen work from many other custom makers, including the late Bob Lemke). Fair is fair. I also would like to note that Playback.fm was a great resource to help me attempt to colorize at least 100 black and white photos.
Every card has facsimile signature on it, and anyone who played a game in the 1951 or 1952 seasons who was missing a card with a team they played with in '51 or '52 now (hopefully) has a card. If you have any corrections or a card with a cleaner picture/signature, please let me know.
I wasn’t a fan of ‘50’s baseball before finishing the set (and I still don’t really care for it that much. ‘90’s and ‘00’s with all of the HRs and milestones is my favorite era), but I learned a lot about the ‘51 and ‘52 seasons, and I suppose I will learn a whole lot more very soon as I will be starting the ‘51 Topps set next. That set features a good 3-4 sentence write up on every card, so at the very least I will have to come up with stuff to say about 800 or so players, many of them obscure ones
Without further ado, here are all of the missing cards from the 1952 Topps set
