Quote:
Originally Posted by G1911
I’ll dig through my scans, but from what I’ve seen in 1954 Bowman was not using 224 card sheets. I believe there’s a 1954 Navy sheet showing the full half-sheet was 96 cards printed once. I haven’t seen a full football sheet from 1954 or 1955, just some blocks of a 1954 that indicate they were 32 card series but an unknown number of slots on the sheet. That’s a bigger sheet than what others were doing too (Topps has 100 to each half-sheet in 1955, for example) unless Bowman didn’t do half sheets. Releasing so many at once is also a large break from the past for them, and doesn’t seem to have been done with their next issue. I hope these possible 55 baseball sheets still exist and weren’t destroyed so they can eventually be seen and photographed.
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Two 96 subject half sheets does make some sense. 224 (not 244, suspect a typo in the Lemke piece) not so much. Topps went from 100 to 110 card arrays in 1955 and 1956 (EDIT-also 1954) but I believe they used Lord Baltimore Press where Bowman probably had theirs printed by Zabel Brothers, right in Philly. I think the divisors have to make some sense and 96/192 does, although as noted, they may not have done the half sheet shenanigans like Topps did.