The 1960 Topps baseball card set is most notable for being the first year the cards featured players from the Los Angeles Dodgers after the franchise relocated from Brooklyn following the 1957 season. The Dodgers’ move to LA brought about many changes, including a shift in how players were depicted and marketed on their baseball cards.
The 1960 Topps set contains 520 total cards, including 500 player cards and 20 manager/coach cards. Some of the biggest names on the Dodgers roster at the time included MVPs Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, slugger Duke Snider, third baseman Charlie Neal, and fan favorite Wally Moon. These Dodgers stars received prominent placement in the set, with Koufax and Drysdale each getting their own iconic rookie cards in 1960 as they began to emerge as two of the best pitchers in baseball.
In terms of design, the 1960 Topps cards featured a major change from previous years. Gone were the vertical-style cards of the 1950s, replaced by a horizontal format that highlighted action shots of players over headshots. This allowed for more dynamic photography showing the players in game situations, which made for better marketing of the sport. It was an innovative design choice that would become the standard for baseball cards going forward.
The Dodger cards in particular took advantage of LA’s aesthetics with outdoors photography at locations around Southern California. For example, Koufax’s card featured him mid-windup at the LA Memorial Coliseum, while Moon’s showed him at bat framed by palm trees at Wrigley Field in South Los Angeles. These vibrant background scenes sold viewers on both the players and the sunny locale of Dodgers baseball on the west coast.
On the production side, the 1960 set marked the first year Topps contracted photographers to shoot players rather than using existing action photos. Topps sent photographers like Gene Herskowitz and Art Rust Jr. out to spring training camps and Dodger Stadium to capture fresh images specifically for the card set. This elevated the photography quality compared to prior years when cards often reused stale shots.
In addition to distinctive player photography, the 1960 Topps design also included team logos printed directly on the fronts of each card for the first time. For Dodger cards, this placed the famous interlocking “LA” logo proudly up front as the franchise’s early identity took shape in its new hometown. The team logo addition was a sharp vertical blue bar that framed the left side of each Dodger player photo.
When it came to the Dodger roster featured, the star power was topped by Koufax with his intimidating windup on card #76. He was already developing into an ace but hadn’t quite broken out as the future Hall of Famer he would become. Other top players included Drysdale on #177 with a shot from behind home plate, Snider on #227 launching a home run, and Neal fielding grounders on #287.
Rookies like Willie Davis and Frank Howard also received cards as they got their MLB starts. Fan favorites like Moon on #389, John Roseboro on #412, and Don Zimmer on #463 rounded out the Dodger representation. In total, the Dodgers occupied cards numbered 76-463, encompassing the bulk of the set devoted to a single franchise.
While the iconic 1961 and 1962 Topps sets that followed are usually remembered as the premium vintage Dodgers issues due to including Koufax’s prime years, the 1960 set was still notable for commemorating the franchise’s first season in Los Angeles through innovative horizontal design and flashy location photography. For Dodger fans and baseball card collectors alike, reliving the early LA years remains a treat through viewing these pioneering early cards that helped establish the team’s California brand.
The 1960 Topps baseball card set stands out for commemorating the Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles through modernized horizontal design and photography highlighting the team’s new sunny west coast locale. Featuring emerging stars Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale along with Duke Snider and others, the set sold collectors on the excitement of Dodgers baseball on the west coast during the franchise’s early identity-forming years in Southern California.
