1952 Bowman Baseball Picture Cards

[Volod]

Originally Posted by thatkidfromjerrymaguire

Thanks for the response! So it sounds like the gum WAS a big, card size rectangle (not like the thin, brittle pieces I grew up opening in my 80's Topps packs).

As for the number of wax stains, I guess that might come down to how many 5 cent packs were sold as opposed to the 1 cent packs. I know there were two types of packs (as I've seen both wrappers for sale). Sounds like you were opening 5 cent packs, but I *THINK* I read somewhere that 1 cent packs were more common (1 cent = 1 card). So EVERY card in the 1 cent pakcs would have been touching the back of the wrapper. I feel like at least 50% (if not more) of the 1952 Bowmans have wax staining...so the 1 cent packs being more common would make sense.

I also appreciate you clearing up that Bowman and Topps gum pretty much tasted the same

This did get me thinking about the 5 cent packs with 6 cards. To my knowledge, the 5 cent packs only contained one piece of gum...so by 1952 the cards were DEFINITELY the main draw for buying packs (as opposed to the gum). In the 30's, I don't think Goudey had any 'multi-card' packs...so I wonder if kids in the 1930's still were mostly after the gum (and it was cool that they also got a card), of if they still would have put down a nickle for multiple cards, but only one piece of gum?

Agree with most of your points. Since my pack-opening days were as an eight to ten year old kid, I have to think there may be some gaps in my recall, as well as some subjectivity in what I do recall. Agree that by the '50's, the gum was no longer the main attraction in a pack of cards. The advent of television had made the games and the players much more alluring to kids than bubblegum. Personally, I think I only chewed the gum because it was there and quickly discarded it. I am of the opinion that both Topps and Bowman used different marketing strategies based on population density. In my small town, I only saw five-cent packs and was surprised to learn many years later that there were one-centers. Perhaps the one-cents packs were mainly distributed in larger cities, and rarely found in smaller markets. However, I find it difficult to believe that the reason for the stain prevalence is that so many more one-cent packs were produced than five's, with most of the surviving cards having come out of one-cent packs. Seems doubtful that anyone has ever thought of doing an actual analysis of the stains on cards. Perhaps guys working in the production facility back then simply moved quickly from pouring wax to collating cards and gave no thought to washing their hands. Seems as plausible to me as any other theory.