Sets in my Collection #33: 1954 Topps Scoop

Here is another one of my all-time favorite non-sports sets. I just discovered it existed in 2014, and it's become a major favorite of mine.

As I've mentioned numerous times, I love history. My favorite time being ancient history, which is almost never on cards. This set includes ancient history and all kinds of other topics. Each card is done up as a newspaper clipping, with a drawing on front, a newspaper themed back and either a drawing or a black and white photo on the back to accompany the text.

Originally these cards came with some sort of black covering that you had to scratch off with a coin or some other similar object, I've read. None that I have seen have retained the covering.

Like the Wings and World on Wheels set, I cannot show only one card front.

As of this writing, (11/20/2015) I have 60 of the 156 cards in the set, or 38.5%, but I have a local source of these and I hope to get some more soon, perhaps before this post comes up in the queue- the last Sets in my Collection post I've published as of this writing is #9, and this is #33, so it may not see the light of day for some time. This is a set that I have posted about before, and the tag for it already exists.

The cards are smaller than standard size, no other cards in my collection utilize the same size.

#20

#52

#88

#89

#91

#118

#128

The cards that involve athletes are the rarest and most expensive cards in the set, with the baseball themed cards being the most expensive, of course. I don't have any of them. I had to post all the ancient subjects I have, and I think that I have all of those.

Updates for 2018- I now have 126 of the cards, or 80.8% of the set! I also have other cards using this size- It appears Topps was experimenting with this smaller scale as a standard card size as there were several mid-50s sets using it, before deciding on the current standard size in 1957.

I also recently ranked it #1 on my list of all-time favorite Non-Sports sets.