It's 1953..and you have a nickel..

[darkhorse9]

I'm curious as to people's thoughts on this.

Imagine it was 1953 and you were eight years old. You had seen a couple of the cards from both Bowman and Topps that your friends had and finally got a nickel to buy your own pack.

You run to the store and see boxes of both Bowman and Topps sitting there. Which one gets your nickel?

Remember...at this time there were no checklists so you had no idea which players were in which, and you certainly had no idea about future value since they would go into your shoe box.

Which one would you pick and why?


For me..I'd probably go with Bowman. Big clear color photos were quite a change. Also, that other one was just drawings. Boooring.

[Vintagevault13]

Interesting thread. Taking away current knowledge/preferences, I would probably have gone with Bowman and not the "new upstart" in 1953 since color photography was relatively new to cards at that time. Having said that, if I could go back in a time machine I would buy all the Topps I could get my hands on (Paige, Mantle, etc.).


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[Brianruns10]

'53 Topps in the hopes of scoring that Mantle card. Not to mention I'd be interested in finding out for myself if some anecdotes are true about the first series of '53s have some high number '52s added into the mix.

[GasHouseGang]

Knowing what I know now, and with my current prefences, it would be the 1953 Bowmans. However, when I was 8 I probably would have chosen the Topps cards since they are so colorful, and I liked the drawn cards. I'm thinking of the Batman cards that were out when I was a kid. I bought the "Black Bat" variety that were like comic book drawings, and I didn't like the photo's from the actual T.V. show nearly as much.

[KCRfan1]

I would go for the Bowman. In 1953, Topps is the new kid on the block and Bowman is what I am familiar with ( in all of my 8 years hypothetically ). Even at my pretend 8 years of age in 1953, I would hope that I would recognize the 1953 Bowmans as the most beautiful set ever produced at the time, and now, to date IMO.

[Republicaninmass]

53 topps, because (supposedly) they could hold 52 hi numbers!