1953 Bowman series divisions and sheet layouts

[G1911]

The conventional story is that there are a number of short print cards interspersed in the later part of the set that were included in most/all catalogs for many years, and the standard catalog until the end. The method by which these SP's were assigned seems to be lost to time and not particularly academic.

The more modern rendition of the story is that there are indeed no SP's, and the set was issued in 3 series of 32 cards each. This is derived at as 32 is the divisible number for most of Bowman's large size sets. There are panels of 1953 Bowman Baseball Color known showing 32 cards together. 1954 Bowman football is said to be released in 32 card series as well, with the cards laid out in numbered sequential order, relying on the 128 cards being divisible by 32 and that #'s 65-96 seem to be genuinely more difficult than the others. By 1955 Bowman was using much larger sheets for the baseball set, though the football conventional wisdom that year is that they again are just 32 card sequential sheets.

I do not have in my archive any images of 1953 Bowman Football uncut material, and could not find any searching the web. If the cards were issued in 3 series of 32, with the small sheets laid out in number order, then card #96 of Little Billy Cross would be the bottom right corner, which should make this attached miscut impossible.

It seems to neither of the available explanations mesh with the evidence, of which there is not much. I'd love to see any uncut material folks may have images of, or other miscuts showing an adjacent card. With only 96 it should be pragmatically possible to piece together the series, if not a full layout.

[toppcat]

I think the press sheets were far larger than 32 cards. While a different size in terms of the individual cards, this 51 Bowman Baseball uncut sheet shows 288 cards in a 16x18 array, with 72 different cards repeated four times. The 32 or 36 card panels seem to be how Bowman cut them down for final cutting and packaging. It's too big to upload here but this link works:

https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball-c...umbnail-071515

[G1911]

Originally Posted by toppcat

I think the press sheets were far larger than 32 cards. While a different size in terms of the individual cards, this 51 Bowman Baseball uncut sheet shows 288 cards in a 16x18 array, with 72 different cards repeated four times. The 32 or 36 card panels seem to be how Bowman cut them down for final cutting and packaging. It's too big to upload here but this link works:

https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball-c...umbnail-071515

I am reluctant to make conclusions on the large size cards from the small size cards sheets, but I think this is right for the large size cards too. The story in football has never made much sense, and none of the sheets surviving show complete borders for the 32/36 segment panels that would suggest that panel was it's own sheet.

This 51 Bowman sheet is one of the reasons I went poking around here - although my expectation was to hopefully find that the panels are segments of a much larger sheet and that it was a 32 card series. I am not so confident that his the case now. The card below Cross does not appear to me to match any of the 65-96 cards.

[G1911]

And to illustrate, since I have never seen a football panel, here's two examples I saved photos of for the baseball cards that preceded this set.

[toppcat]

Some old speculation on the large 52's here:

[G1911]

Here's part of a sheet (in Ted's version, a whole sheet or half-sheet, with other sheets replacing the right column with the missing 4 cards on the left, 1, 10, etc.) of the 1952 Bowman Larges. He claimed that the ratio of the right column SP'd columns was 5:1 and the left most SP column was 2.5:1. A look at much larger sampler sizes than 1,200 or 3,000 cards of Bowman Larges will reveal some interesting populations that do not come even close to these claims and call the SP'ing into question. I note that none of these 'complete uncut football sheets' show any of the indica of a sheet edge that is normally seen.

There is quite a large gap between what has been stated and what can actually be shown. Ted was the parent source for pretty much all of the current claims about the Bowman football sheets/series of each year, which are difficult to reconcile with a miscut such as the one shown and uncut sheets of non-football Bowman's. He cited private conversations with Howard Moll as the source for the press sizes and the sheets. His claims and stated memories have not infrequently been found to contradict later discovered direct evidence.

We know non-football sets like the 1954 Navy and the 1955 Baseball issue used sheets that were quite large. It's rather difficult to believe that miscuts are wrong and that a special small sheet was consistently used for football and only for football.

I am hopeful there is more direct evidence out there to flesh out what was, instead of just identify previous falsehoods though. One day we will get there

[toppcat]

Ted talked with Moll late in the ad man's life, who knows what his recall was at that point. Ted had many theories, not all were fact-based.

Zabel was printing the Bowman cards from at least 1950 I believe, not sure/can't recall if they were used earlier. I blogged about them a few times, most pertinently here (make sure to read the comments):

https://www.thetoppsarchives.com/201...-contents.html

Two comments of note thereon:

From Doug Hall, who worked there in 1962 and was grandson of William Zabel. He commented regarding about Zabel's presses:

"The Bowman cards were printed on a German-made multi-color press (I think it was a Heidelberg)from zinc plates, one for each of 4 ink colors. Before printing actually began. the press ran a sheet through each color, one at a time. I once had a full set of sheets of the 1953 Bowman cards of 1 color each (yellow, blue, magenta and black I think)."

An anonymous commenter stated: "I think the two 58” 2-color Harris presses at Zabel came from the Topps plant in CT. For a time, Topps May have printed the backs and LBP the fronts. Zabel bought their 60” 5-color Miehle to print Topps fronts."

That Connecticut Topps plant closed around 1971.

[G1911]

And here are some examples of the Navy Victories (credited to 1954, but I'm not sure if that's researched or just a conventional date. Lots of the claimed dates for 50's non-sport are not quite correct) and a 1955 baseball. Both are not full sheets, just panels.

I could have sworn a full 55 Bowman Baseball sheet appeared a couple years ago and we had a thread about it but I cannot find it now....



1953 Bowman football is almost certainly a 1 series release. I suspect there may be DP sequences, not random SP's. This Cross miscut has the third group of 65-96 printed above the first group of 1-32, if these conventional print sequences are correct. PSA populations clearly trend higher for 1-32.