Couple of questions on 50's football

[Bunker]

Hello-

I have not posted much, but I do lurk a lot and thought who better to ask then you guys :)

I have collected baseball cards since 1973 and in all that time I have only put together a few football sets, all raw and mainly from the 80's. Lately I have been looking at some of the 1950's issues and I am finding myself being drawn in.

I really like the 55 Topps All American, 1950 Bowman and 1951 Bowman. I have given myself a budget of $5000 +or- spread out over a years time. I would also like to put it together using SGC graded cards which leads in to my first question.

I have put 1960's and up PSA graded BB sets together and there is normally no issue finding the cards that I need. I know SGC is prefered by a lot of guys (I also love they way cards look in their holders) for vintage cards T206, Goudey, etc, but what about 50's football?

Is it possible to do a 100% graded SGC set or will I have to submit raw to finish off the set? I ask because I did a quick ebay search to compare the number of graded cards available:

1950 Bowman PSA ~ 378 all grades
1950 Bowman SGC ~ 126 all grades

1951 Bowman PSA ~ 504 all grades
1951 Bowman SGC ~ 50 all grades

1955 Topps All American PSA ~ 408 all grades
1955 Topps All American SGC ~ 38 all grades

I realize that this is only a snapshot in time and over the course of a year or so more will become available. I would like to build a NM set if possible (budget wise) so that makes it even more challenging and unless I settle for anything, waiting for centered cards to come up is going to make it even more difficult. I may have to throw my one year estimate out the window.

That leads to my second question, for those of you who have built these sets or who are working on them, is it possible to do a NM set on my budget? It cetainly helps that these are smaller sets:

1950 Bowman ~ 144
1951 Bowman ~ 144
1955 Topps AA ~ 100

I was considering one other possibility. Instead of building a set from one particular year, I thought it would be fun to put together a RC/HOF set from the 50's. I have not done any research on this, so it may not even be possible on my budget/time frame although both are flexible.

I would have considered a team set, but my home team did not exist in the 50's. (Sometimes I wish they still didn't exist...Bengals :( )

Thank you for any advice/suggestions


Rick

[jtschantz]

I can answer a portion of your question...yes I think you can put together a 50 or 51 Bowman in NM for around 5K...I put together the 51 set in less than a year and without really concentrating on it am just a few cards short on the 50 Bowman set in the same time frame...There are a few cards in each set that you have to be patient on if you are going to stay in your budget..by being patient I mean trying to risk the temptation of hitting "buy it now" on an overpriced card that you need...Card #1 in the 50 set of Doak Walker is a good example of a card you will have to wait on to find in an auction format.

As far as the SGC cards go, I think you will probably have to submit some ungraded cards or go the crossover route. There just isn't alot of 50's football graded SGC as compared to PSA. Crossovers will add to your expense, but on the positive side, if you do find cards you need in sgc holders, my guess is that they will be a little cheaper than if they were in PSA holders. Good luck!