I don't know if his estate is moving items after his death on June 18th of this year but I expect a bunch of Willie Mays' personal memorabilia to hit the market in the coming years. One such item is already upon us, although it could have come from a different source-his 1954 contract with Topps, which popped up recently at Mile High Auctions:
Mays started out with Bowman in 1951, was with both them and Topps in '52, then Topps only in 1953 before appearing in both company's 1954 and 1955 sets. He was in the military for most of the 1952 season and all of 1953, so Bowman probably didn't have him locked up on auto-renew like Topps did. Mays was also buddy-buddy with Sy Berger, and, I believe while unrelated to the events being described here, he holds the record for appearances in the most Topps sets (including inserts and supplemental issues) covering his playing days from 1951-73.
He's card no. 90 in 1954 and you can see he signed his contract on March 8th. Topps did something weird with the distribution of the set after the first series, so it's not clear if he's a second, third, or fourth series card (or possibly fifth but I'm not positive it went that far in '54) but given how late the date is, he probably wasn't locked up until the third array of cards was being composed. As a reminder, his 1954 card is one of the best ever issued of him:
The contract itself has enormous historical value of course, but I like how simple the language was. That would change, as would the methods used by Topps to retain players over the years but the other thing I like about it is the signature of Turk Karam, who was employed by Topps as a talent scout and all-around Sports Dept. guy before they had an official Sports Dept.
Mays would earn his only World Series ring with the Giants in 1954 and was the National League MVP to boot-Say hey!
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