Willie Mays did not play in 1953. He was in the Army from the end of May 1952 until March 1, 1954, and his most recent major league line was the thirty-four games and .236 of 1952. Topps made a card of him anyway, and put it near the end of the set.
The 1953 set is numbered to 280, though six numbers were never issued, which leaves 274 cards. Topps stopped colorizing photographs that year and had artists paint the players instead; one of them, Gerry Dvorak, was paid twenty-five dollars a card to sketch and paint. Each portrait sits above a colored panel at the bottom, red for the American League and black for the National. Mays's panel is black, and the painting above it shows him crouched on the outfield grass in his road uniform, fielding a ball with both hands.
Number 244 falls in the fourth series, the high numbers from 221 to 280, which were printed in shorter supply and distributed late in the season. Some cards in the 1953 set were printed twice on a sheet. This one was not, and Sports Collectors Digest has called it the most difficult card in the set to find.
A painting of a player who was not playing, issued late in a season he missed.
So it is an unusual thing to hold: a painting of a player who was not playing, issued late in a season he missed, from the scarcest part of the checklist. When he came home the following spring he hit .345 and won the Most Valuable Player award.
