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You are here: Home / Sports Card News / Vintage Sports Card News / Old Baseball Card Sets / Woof! Decades Later, Red Heart Baseball Card Set Still Barking

Woof! Decades Later, Red Heart Baseball Card Set Still Barking

July 1, 2020 By Rich Mueller

It seems like an odd combination.  Baseball cards might be a natural to tie into the promotion of breakfast cereal, hot dogs and snack cakes.  Dog food?  Seems like you’d be barking up the wrong tree if you were the marketing guy who came up with that idea.  Thankfully, someone at John Morrell Company decided it was a solid plan and 60 years after they became available, collectors still love the 1954 Red Heart Dog Food baseball card set.

1954 Red Heart baseball card advertisementWhile it isn’t known how the Morrell folks, makers of Red Heart, figured the mail-in offer would boost sales of whoever in the family was buying Rover his eats, we do know that 33 cards were made in three different series and that 11 of them would eventually be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

1950s Red Heart Dog Food adUnlike its larger Topps and Bowman cousins, the Red Heart set is a pick of the litter type of issue. Cards from “The Big League Dog Food” are avidly collected by vintage card fans, especially those looking to build a high grade set since doing so is actually an attainable goal.

The mail-in offer for the 1954 Red Heart cards was advertised in Sunday newspaper comic sections in the summer of 1954.  All you had to do was buy two cans of Red Heart, stick a dime in the envelope and wait for one of the three series of 11 to arrive in your mailbox.  

Hobby legend is that cards and sets were available by mail years after the promotion had ended, but we’re not sure if that’s actually true.Mickey Mantle 1954 Red Heart

Made of sturdy card stock, they weren’t stuck to the cans or dropped in bags and that’s another reason why today, many Red Heart cards survive in outstanding shape. 

The cards were designed to be simple but there’s a beauty in that simplicity.  Morrell’s artists used photographs of the 33 players and hand colored the portrait type images, usually shot from the chest up.  Some of those photos were sold at auction several years ago with the Spahn photo selling for $3,286, while others brought under $400 each.

Each series of 11 cards in the Red Heart set carried its own specific color background:  blue, red or green.

The checklist includes Mickey Mantle, Warren Spahn, Duke Snider, Ralph Kiner, Nellie Fox, Billy Martin, Ted Kluzewski, Richie Ashburn and some guy named Musial, who wasn’t in either bubble gum set that year, having refused to sign for what Topps and Bowman offered players. Musial, in fact, was the advertising spokesman for the set.  Getting him had to be a major coup for the Morrell/Red Heart people and a face palming moment for the gum executives who couldn’t afford him.

The downside of a set that is packed with high-grade Hall of Famers is that it can be pricey.  A near mint set can often run $4,000 and up but you can still own a respectable looking set without paying that much.  The condition of the Mantle card is key.

You can see 1954 Red Heart baseball cards, both graded and ungraded, on eBay here.

1954 Red Heart Baseball Checklist

SP=single print (more scarce)

1 – Richie Ashburn SP

2 – Frank Baumholtz SP

3 – Gus Bell

4 – Billy Cox

5 – Alvin Dark

6 – Carl Erskine SP

7 – Ferris Fain

8 – Dee Fondy

9 – Nellie Fox

10 – Jim Gilliam

11 – Jim Hegan SP

12 – George Kell

13 – Ralph Kiner SP

14 – Ted Kluszewski SP

15 – Harvey Kuenn

16 – Bob Lemon SP

17 – Sherman Lollar

18 – Mickey Mantle

19 – Billy Martin

20 – Gil McDougald SP

21 – Roy McMillan

22 – Minnie Minoso

23 – Stan Musial SP

24 – Billy Pierce

25 – Al Rosen SP

26 – Hank Sauer

27 – Red Schoendienst SP

28 – Enos Slaughter

29 – Duke Snider

30 – Warren Spahn

31 – Sammy White

32 – Eddie Yost

33 – Gus Zernial

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About Rich Mueller

Rich is the editor and founder of Sports Collectors Daily. A broadcaster and writer for over 40 years and a collector for even longer than that, he's usually typing something somewhere. Type him back at [email protected].

Filed Under: Old Baseball Card Sets, Popular Stories, Vintage Sports Card News Tagged With: 1950s regional sets, 1954 Bowman, 1954 Red Heart, 1954 Topps, Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial

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