Quote:
Originally Posted by samosa4u
Steve,
G1911 (what's your name, dude?)
I found this interesting paragraph in the Zanidakis article posted above:
Usually, the later series were not printed or sold in as high a quantity as the first few series, because the novelty of the new set would have worn off by mid-summer OR the cards would be competing with football cards on the store shelves.
Zanidakis has listed two possible explanations as to why Bowman would short-print their high numbers. This takes us back to my earlier question, and that is how early did Bowman start printing their football cards? Bowman started printing their baseball cards during the same month the 51' baseball season started, which was in April, but it looks like they did not do this with their football cards. In other words, Bowman issued their football cards way before the football season even started.
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I'm Greg. I think the more likely explanation is the first; sales of baseball series at retail (Hobby isn't really comparable, I think, as an investment based product) even now fall off independent of football. At the time, the baseball series would have always had competition from other card sets by Topps and Bowman, they released several other sets every year, some of which appear to have been issued during the same time periods. There doesn't seem to me to be any reason to think only one set from a manufacturer could be in development or release at one time. I think the Football explanation that is oft-repeated stems more from what we tend to focus on today; baseball sets first, football sets second, everything else relegated to a footnote if ever mentioned at all, than it is fact.
Going off memory - the 51 Bowman Footballs almost all have a "[Name] was on blank team/did [achievement] in 1950" and most of the rest of the text is about the few years before 1950, less of a 'live update' type approach that is on some of the baseball cards. I have near sets of the 54-55 Bowman and 56 Topps football issues I can scour the backs for to see latest/earliest possible dates.