The 1959 baseball card season was one of transition and new beginnings in the hobby. For decades, the main producers of baseball cards had been the three largest American tobacco companies – Topps, Bowman, and Fleer. In late 1956 Bowman stopped producing cards altogether due to declining sales. This left Topps as the lone major producer of modern baseball cards for a few years.
Topps had the baseball card market largely to itself in 1959. They produced their standard size set of 524 cards that year. The design featured a color photo of each player on a white background. At the bottom was information like the player’s name, team, batting and pitching stats from 1958. Topps continued their tradition of including a “Traded” subset of cards showing players who had switched teams in the offseason.
One of the most notable rookies featured in the 1959 Topps set was future Hall of Famer Willie McCovey of the San Francisco Giants. McCovey had a phenomenal rookie season, bashing 13 home runs in only 52 games and finishing third in Rookie of the Year voting. His iconic rookie card would become one of the most valuable from the entire decade.
While Topps had the baseball card market cornered in 1959, another company was making moves to get back into the business. The Fleer Corporation, best known for their football cards at the time, decided to produce their first modern baseball card set since 1953. The 1959 Fleer baseball card set totaled only 96 cards, but it marked the company’s return to the baseball card scene after a six year absence.
The 1959 Fleer cards had a much different design than Topps. They featured black and white player photos on a colored cardboard stock background in team colors. Stats were printed directly on the photo rather than on a label. Distribution was limited compared to Topps, making many of the 1959 Fleer cards quite scarce and valuable today. Rookies like future Hall of Famer Nellie Fox were featured in the set.
One of the biggest stories in baseball during the 1959 season was the debut of the Milwaukee Braves new stadium, Milwaukee County Stadium. To help promote their first season in the stadium, the Braves made arrangements with Topps to include a special photo subset in that year’s card set. The “Milwaukee Braves Stadium Club” subset featured color action photos of Braves players at their new ballpark. These exclusive cards highlighting the team’s relocation are considered a landmark in the hobby.
While the 1959 baseball card season was dominated by Topps as the clear market leader, it was also a year of change. Fleer re-entered the baseball card scene after years away. Iconic rookies like Willie McCovey had their first cards produced. And special subsets like the Milwaukee Braves Stadium Club helped teams promote themselves in a new way through photography on trading cards. The seeds were planted for greater competition and innovation that would truly explode the baseball card hobby in the following decade.
