Thanks Larry - 1 vote for Bowman
Jeff - thanks for the compliment - I was a lurker for a long time enjoying other people's posts, so I try to pay it forward now.. I laughed when you said "painted by a four year old" - they are definitely an acquired taste - they used to look so strange to me, I guess I'm used to them now.
I'm leaning towards the Leaf set even though I really want to like the Bowman and go against the grain a bit. I hope not too many graded Leafs are trimmed. Really interesting about them being oversized. And thanks for adding a picture to the thread - can you balance it out with a Leaf scan?
One last thing I forgot to mention - the 48 Bowman Baseball cards are black and white too, but the Basketball cards are actually color - isn't that strange? I wonder if it would've put a dent in Leaf's popularity had Football been color too...