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1959 St. Louis Hawks Busch Bavarian Basketball Card Set and Checklist

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1959 St. Louis Hawks Busch Bavarian Specs

Year: 1959

Title: St. Louis Hawks Busch Bavarian

Size: 4″ by 5″

Number in Set: 5

1959 St. Louis Hawks Busch Bavarian Overview

Busch Bavarian Beer sponsored this set of the five St. Louis Hawks key starters. The black and white photo cards show the players in a posed action shot with a blank background. The player’s facsimile autograph is included along with the words “Compliments of” and the Busch beer logo in the upper left corner. The cards are blank-backed.

1959 Busch Bavarian Clyde Lovellette – Front
1959 Busch Bavarian Clyde Lovellette – Reverse

1959 St. Louis Hawks Busch Bavarian Example and Sales

PSA has graded 95 cards from this set, and SGC has graded 34 with grades pretty normally distributed around 5s (same above as below).

Steve Novella auctioned off a high-grade set individually in June 2025, with the result being the five highest indidvual sales in the history of this set: the PSA 8 Pettit went for $3,938, the PSA 9 Green sold for $1,613, the PSA 8 Lovellette sold for $1,313, the PSA 8 McCarthy went for $1,147, and the PSA 7 Hagan sold for $897. Here are each of those cards.

1959 Busch Bavarian Bob Pettit PSA 8 – eBay
1959 Busch Bavarian Sihugo Green PSA 9 – eBay
1959 Busch Bavarian Clyde Lovellette PSA 8 – eBay
1959 Busch Bavarian John McCarthy PSA 8 – eBay
1959 Busch Bavarian Cliff Hagan PSA 7 – eBay

1959 St. Louis Hawks Busch Bavarian Key Cards

It’s such a small set that one could argue every card is “key,” but the Sihugo Green is considered a short print. Bob Pettit is an NBA legend, and Cliff Hagan is a Hall of Famer, too, so the set is challenging to put together, particularly in good condition.

1959 St. Louis Hawks Busch Bavarian Checklist

Sihugo Green

Cliff Hagan

Clyde Lovellette

John McCarthy

Bob Pettit