1954 Red Heart Baseball Cards

Product Details

Baseball cards have been issued with a wide assortment of products over the years, but 1954 Red Heart Baseball is one of the few issued in conjunction with a brand of dog food.

The set is best known for the Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial cards.

1954 Red Heart Baseball Set Details

The Red Heart set was available beginning in 1954 as a mail-in offer for labels of the different flavors of Red Heart Dog Food, and was apparently still available through the company as late as the early 1970s. While there was less demand for these cards in the hobby for a while, that has eased considerably. The set is now considered to be one of the classic releases of the decade.

In total, the 1954 Red Heart Baseball checklist has just 33 cards. Issued in three separate series of 11 unnumbered cards, each series was given a distinctive solid background color behind the player's picture, in either blue, green or red. Of this trio, the red background cards are the toughest.

For the design, a diamond-shaped box appears below the player with the player's name, and his team name is listed at the bottom. Backs feature the player's full name, position and team name, as well as biographical info. Statistics for 1953 and his career are shown, as is a Red Heart advertisement.

Considering the small size of the set, most cards feature stars of the era. The two biggest names are Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial. Neither player is found in 1954 Topps Baseball. Musial wasn't in 1954 Bowman either, which makes this card especially prized. The fact that Musial is one of the red background cards makes it even more special.