Lou-- Dean Hanley's book offers some reasons. First Warren Bowman, an astute marketing guy, sold out at a peak time, 1952. The buyer was new to baseball cards and apparently had no one to match Berger's creativity.
They did go all out in 53 but their production cost were very high versus the colorization process used by Topps, and the set was only 160 versus 274 or so for Topps. So kids could get more players from their specific teams. And a nickel got you gum and 6 cards from Topps versus gum and 5 cards from Bowman
The book indicates Topps sales in 53 were 3 x more than Bowman.
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