Night Owl Cards

This card has lived in my scan folder for several months. It turns out it was waiting for the right time. It's now going to serve as the jumping off point for two posts. You'll see the other one later this week. It has to do with Rance Pless' position in the 1956 Topps set. At card No. 339, it is the penultimate card in the set. But Pless is also part of a group of cards in the 1956 Topps set that has long fascinated me. When my brothers and I received that treasure trove of mid-1950s cards -- the vast majority being 1956 Topps -- from my father's co-worker when we were kids, I began to notice when first going through the '56 cards that there were precious few cards numbered in the 300s. I had looked up the set in one of those early '80s Sport Americana baseball card price guides (by Dr. James Beckett and Dennis W. Eckes) and discovered that it totaled 340 cards. I didn't know anything much about sets being issued in series at the time, but why so...