1952 Topps Bob Ross Rookie #298 PSA Gem Mint 10 - Pop Two! From the Lionel Carter Collection....

Description

1952 Topps Bob Ross Rookie #298 PSA Gem Mint 10 - Pop Two! From the Lionel Carter Collection. His Major League career would ultimately consist of 47.2 innings pitched, but this card assures a different kind of baseball immortality as one of just two at the highest possible grading level. One of the very few PSA graded cards to be pedigreed as once belonging to Lionel Carter. Graded PSA Mint 9.

More Information: The Lionel Carter Collection.

Jefferson Burdick laid the foundation: he was the founder of the Card Collector's Bulletin and author of the American Card Catalog, from which all modern card designations (e.g., T206 Honus Wagner) and checklists are drawn. Some of his contemporaries were also noteworthy: Charles Bray, Frank Nagy, Richard Egan, Buck Barker, Preston Orem, John Wagner, and Lionel Carter. Of these, only cards from the collections of Nagy and Carter were preserved with their pedigrees. Lionel Carter's sets were especially distinctive since he was one of the first to concentrate on those baseball cards that were especially well-centered and in the highest grade. Most of them went straight from wax packs into his albums where they remained until 2007 when they finally saw the light of day.

Many of Lionel Carter's cards were the best of the best: His 1933 Goudey Napoleon Lajoie was in Mint condition. So was his 1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle, some of his 1938 Goudeys, and a considerable number of his 1948-49 Leafs including Babe Ruth. As a result of the remarkable untouched state of many of his cards, Carter and his collection were featured in many local and national publications over the last half century.

In 1971, Carter became one of nine collectors to be voted into a Card Collectors Hall of Fame by "Who's Who in Card Collecting." The others inductees were Jefferson Burdick, Walter Corson, Charles Bray, Preston Orem, E.C. Wharton-Tigar, Robert Payne, Buck Barker and John D. Wagner. Carter was the last surviving member of that club; he was the one innovator who lived and collected long enough to effectively bridge the gap between the earliest years of baseball card collecting and the beginning of the modern day hobby as we know it.

Lionel Carter's 1952 Topps collection was remarkable and perhaps one of the two or three best ever. His meticulous storage and exacting attention to detail had produced a voluminous array of Mint and Gem Mint cards--likely the largest that a single collection had ever yielded. Short of opening 1952 Topps 5-cent wax packs, a collector might never again see the same spectacular qualities that lie within Carter's magnificent set. In particular, all cards feature sharp corners, bright white borders, beautiful surface gloss, crisp edges, vibrant colors, and most importantly, every single one is 100% original as issued by Topps in 1952.


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