Prior to WWII, the BOWMAN Gum Co. advertised their Sportscards by their "PLAY BALL" Trademark. When BOWMAN introduced their 1st BB card set
after WWII, they continued the "PLAY BALL" Trademark on their wax-pack wrapper.
Stay tuned for 1949 - 1953 issues.
1948 Bowman 1-cent wrapper
. . . .
The printing of the 1948 BOWMAN set is very interesting. The printers took their original 36-card production sheet and produced a 48-card set from it.
In their 1st press runs, they printed cards #1 - 36. For their 2nd press runs, they modified their printing plates by replacing 12 cards in the first group
of 36 with cards #37 - 48.
The 36-card uncut sheet displayed here represents the 2nd print run. Cards #37 - 48 are interspersed among the lower number cards. Therefore, this
process created Double-Prints of 24 low numbers....Single-Prints of 12 low numbers....and, another set of Single-Prints of the 12 high numbers.
TED Z
T206 Reference
.