Auction #14 - June 2023
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 6/25/2023
The Topps Astronauts set is a (55) card set picturing astronauts from the different space missions of NASA. The cards were issued in 1963 which was right in the crossover period between the Mercury Program and the Apollo Program. The card pictures and names many of the famous early astronauts like John Glenn, Schirra, Cooper, Slayton and Carpenter. The final card in the set is the checklist. As with all checklists, many were used for their intended purpose of checking off cards as they were collected, so few clean checklists survive.
In 1963, two years after the first man was launched into orbit, Topps issued a 55-card set
to commemorate the American space program. A year later, it issued an expanded version of the
series, with 99 cards. The fronts feature glorious color photos of the US space program, with the
backs have 3D images (red scanning paper not included). This set is overall quite a high grade,
with many NM cards, and above-average centering. Three graded cards are included, #12 (PSA-
8.5), #43 (PSA-7) and #45 (PSA-7). The #55 checklist is unmarked, a stunning NM card off
center to the right. The #1 card is a great card, perfectly centered. All cards impressively mounted
in Cardsaver 1 plastic holders displayed in plastic pages inside a sturdy looseleaf binder.
Magnificent, and tough to duplicate!
Originating in the collection of a very advanced PSA collector, this set and a number of others in the auction are high mid-grade sets mostly free of creases and individually sleeved in semi-rigids housed in 4 pocket pages in binders. As with this set, many of the sets are mostly ungraded with some nice or key cards graded as noted.
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