1948-1955 Bowman series divisions and sheet layouts

[G1911]

Originally Posted by toppcat

Topps finalized the deal to buy Bowman on January 20, 1956 and announced it on February 18th. The effective date of the sale was April 1st and it included contracts in force, production machinery and all trademarks. They paid $200,000 and I believe it strapped them for most of the rest of the year.

I think a couple of Bowman designs went into sets Topps produced for other parties but my notes are scattered on those right now.

Do you know Mike Thomas? He's pieced together virtual sheets which just recreate the 32 player blocks but also collects miscuts he uses to ID sheet positions. He's not as active as he used to be but does seem to update his website still; he was pretty focused on grabbing miscuts back in the day. You may want to give him a shout:

https://www.footballcardgallery.com/set/55b/1955-bowman-football-cards/?cat=bowman

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense. The 1956 footballs are very close in design to the last bowman set and use a ton of the same pictures even, feels very hastily thrown together from Bowman's material, as do a lot of the 1956 Topps issues. I figured you would know the details sir. A couple Bowman designs were used for other parties; off the top of my head the 1958 Hires Root Beer cards Topps produced use one of the three 1956 Bowman Baseball prototype designs that I believe Mr. Olbermann has. I'm sure there are others I do not realize.


I posted the same OP on a football board too, where Mr. Thomas was upset that I did not privately contact him instead of sharing information publicly, and believed my counter evidence disproving Ted's theory, the 'more modern rendition of the story', was a cheap shot insult to himself because his site reposts Ted's theory for each Bowman set. I like when research is only about showing facts and not who found what.