If you owned a dog—or knew someone who did—you had a chance to add to your baseball card collection in relatively painless fashion back in 1954. The John Morrell Company, makers of Red Heart Dog Food, produced three series of cards that year, each available for two dog food labels and a dime. Today, the 1954 Red Heart set is one of the most popular sets of the era and we are now breaking up one of the best sets of these cards around. One of our fantastic consignors offered us the chance to break up a high quality set and we jumped at it. We have several PSA 7 (near mint) graded cards on eBay right now that are proving very popular with bidders. The remainder of the 33-card set will be offered starting next week. Fully one-third of the Red Heart set consists of Hall of Famers including Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial, Duke Snider, Warren Spahn and many others. Topps and Bowman didn’t have Musial in ’54 because of a dispute over compensation but Red Heart did. There’s no ’54 Topps Mantle either, so this unique little ‘food issue’ set fills in some gaps for collectors. The Red Heart set is nicely done, with great head and shoulders photos, nice write-ups and a quality cardboard stock. While some cards seem to be a little tougher to find in high grade than others, it’s not a difficult set to piece together with a little time and a reasonable investment. Far easier that putting together a mainstream set and outside of Willie Mays, it’s a pretty solid representation of the players on the ‘favorites’ list from the era. Right now, in addition to Stan the Man, you’ll find Snider, Richie Ashburn, Billy Martin, Ralph Kiner, Carl Erskine, Ted Kluzewski and others among our listings. It’s easy to see why this set is highly collectible and if you’re looking for some high quality examples that will still be affordable, check them out.
