Show us your 1952 Bowman (large) cards

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Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

Here's an example of why the 16 cards in this set, whose #s are....DIVISIBLE by 9....are very tough, as most were
printer's defects.
Charley Conerly is one of these, being #63, this one in this condition should have been rejected by Quality Control.

In order to compete with the very popular 1952 Topps BB cards, Bowman re-printed their initial issue of FB cards in
a larger size. However, being in a hurry to do this they used their 38-inch press (used in printing all their smaller is-
sues....1950-52). As a consequence, the 9th card on each row was mis-printed and usually discarded.

I show here Groucho Marx from Bowman's 1952 NBC TV stars set to illustrate that by the very end of 1952 they in-
creased the width of their printing press to 43 inches in order to accomodate the larger size sheets. Then, in 1953
Bowman produced their photographic quality 160 card BB set, a 64 card B & W BB set, a 96 card FB set, and a 96
card NBC TV stars set.

TED Z