The 1947 season was a significant year for the Brooklyn Dodgers franchise and their fans. After over a decade without a championship, the Dodgers won the 1947 National League pennant behind stellar performances from Jackie Robinson and shortstop Pee Wee Reese. Robinson’s rookie season in 1947 helped break Major League Baseball’s color barrier as he faced intense racism but thrived on the field.
The 1947 Dodgers baseball card set was also groundbreaking as it was the first year that Leaf brand issued cards for every player on each of the 16 MLB teams. Previous years had often featured far fewer than a full roster of cards for each club. The 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers subset contained 33 baseball cards, each numbered from 1 to 33 to represent each player on the team’s 40-man roster.
Some notable Dodgers stars featured included #1 – Jackie Robinson, #5 – Pee Wee Reese, #9 – Dixie Walker, #11 – Eddie Stanky, #15 – Carl Furillo, #21 – Billy Cox, #22 – Joe Hatten, and #26 – Van Lingle Mungo among others. Robinson’s rookie card is widely considered one of the most iconic and culturally significant in the history of the sport. It was among the first to prominently feature an African American player during baseball’s period of segregation.
The 1947 Leaf brand design incorporated a color photo of each Dodgers player in their uniform along with their name, position, batting average from 1946, number of home runs and runs batted in from the prior season. On the reverse side was a paragraph with background information and stats. The cards measured 2 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches and had a green border and printing on high quality thick paper stock. They remained the standard size for baseball cards throughout the 1950s before gradually increasing in dimensions.
While production numbers for the 1947 Leaf set as a whole ran into the millions, high grade examples of especially the star Dodgers players have become exceedingly rare and valued tremendously over the decades. The Jackie Robinson rookie in near mint to mint condition has traded hands for over $500,000 at auction. Pee Wee Reese and Duke Snider rookies have also cracked the $10,000 mark. Other key rookies like Furillo and Cox can fetch thousands in top grades as well due to their significance in Dodgers history.
The 1947 season itself was one of the most impactful and revolutionary the franchise had seen up to that point. In addition to Robinson breaking the MLB color barrier, the Dodgers posted a 96-58 record to capture the National League flag. They went on to lose to the New York Yankees in a seven game World Series, but it marked Brooklyn’s first Fall Classic appearance since 1920. Momentum was building for what would become one of baseball’s most passionate fan bases in the late 1940s and 1950s.
While tobacco companies like Fleer and Topps would come to dominate the baseball card market in later decades, 1947 remained the high water mark for the Leaf brand. They were unable to maintain exclusive licensing deals and production levels to compete long term. Their release of the first true full team set in 1947 that established the iconic size and design template for postwar baseball cards cemented their place in the hobby’s history. The iconic Dodgers players featured have become treasured pieces of collectibles that still ignite nostalgia and fandom over 70 years later.
For serious Dodgers collectors, locating high grade examples from the scarce 1933 Goudey set featuring Babe Herman and Van Lingle Mungo remains the holy grail. But the 1947 Leaf issue serves as both a reminder of the team’s breakthrough season and a marker of the onset of the golden age of baseball cards in the postwar period. Key rookies like Robinson, Reese and Furillo take on even greater significance considering the sociocultural context of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. Their inclusion in the first true complete team set by Leaf was truly ahead of its time and helped usher in baseball card mania among fans young and old. Even three quarters of a century later, the 1947 Dodgers cards retain their power to astonish and inspire a new generation of collectors with their rich history and iconic imagery of one of the most legendary clubs in MLB.
