1951 Wheaties Premiums

[Volod]

Could be missing the forest for the trees - Mantle and Mays were both in the 1951 Bowman set as rookies with little to support them except that they were highly touted as prospective players in New York. Were there any similarly hyped farm products for other cities in the '51 Bowmans? I dunno, but even MacDougal and Ford are in there, while players for other teams generally had to be proven vets to get a card. The card companies were biased toward major markets, just as media is today.
As for that Mantle photo, he does appear to me to be older than in most of his rookie images, so it very well could be from '53 or '54.

[whiteymet]

Originally Posted by Volod

Could be missing the forest for the trees - Mantle and Mays were both in the 1951 Bowman set as rookies with little to support them except that they were highly touted as prospective players in New York. Were there any similarly hyped farm products for other cities in the '51 Bowmans? I dunno, but even MacDougal and Ford are in there, while players for other teams generally had to be proven vets to get a card. The card companies were biased toward major markets, just as media is today.
As for that Mantle photo, he does appear to me to be older than in most of his rookie images, so it very well could be from '53 or '54.

Steve:

Thaks for the input. I understand Mantle and Mays being in the 51 Bowman set. But that set has 324 cards in it. Why would Wheaties include Mantle in a 8 "card" issue? Even though Yankees are major market as you say, there are plenty of other NY players they could have chosen.

I agree he looks older in the photo than in ther images from his rookie year, but until we can date the photo we will not know for sure. Hopefully someone will be able to do that conclusively.

Fred

[Volod]

You have a point there, Fred, which kind of supports your theory that the photos are from a later year. I think there were a number of articles in the media about the Yankees' and Giants' young phenoms in 1951, however. So, it still seems feasible to me that Mantle might have been in an eight-card set based on nothing more than his early celebrity status in NY in that year. Look at it from the perspective of card issuer trying to maximize profit - do you want a good-looking kid that everyone (in NY anyway) is raving about as the next Joe D., or do you want Hank Bauer? In that discussion, stats and experience don't really matter. On the other hand, I agree with you that other factors point to a later year for the set.

[Zach Wheat]

Originally Posted by whiteymet

Steve:

Thaks for the input. I understand Mantle and Mays being in the 51 Bowman set. But that set has 324 cards in it. Why would Wheaties include Mantle in a 8 "card" issue? Even though Yankees are major market as you say, there are plenty of other NY players they could have chosen.

I agree he looks older in the photo than in ther images from his rookie year, but until we can date the photo we will not know for sure. Hopefully someone will be able to do that conclusively.

Fred

Fred,

Thanks for the input. Mantle was considered a rookie phenom by most of the sportswriters of that day as evidenced by this article in the NY Times from April 6, 1951 (partial copy of headline):

MICKEY CHARLES MANTLE, the new 19-year-old right fielder for the New York Yankees, is, in the opinion of most sports writers, the most promising young man to enter big-league baseball since the ascension of Joe DiMaggio, who thinks, without any editorial equivocation at all, that Mantle is the greatest rookie he has ever seen. "Greatest" is a word used....

Great info & very good discussion guys. One of the reason I love this board.

Z Wheat