[G1911]

I love the Bowman TV cards. The conventional wisdom is that large Bowman's were printed on 32 card sheets and issued in fairly small series of 32 or 64 cards. 1954 Bowman Football (the set preceding the 55 Baseball's; I'm not sure when Power for Peace and US Navy fall into the timeline of 1954) probably was done this way, 4 series of 32 cards. 1955 Bowman Football (the set printed after the 55 Baseball's) was probably 5 sets of 32 cards by the conventional wisdom (I think the first series probably had 2 sheets worth).

Anyways, this seems to be very wrong to me. 1955 Bowman Baseball seems to only have 2 series, 1-224 and 225-320. Cards 1-64 have a blonde wood border, 65-320 have a dark wood. 225-320 are clearly extant in significantly reduced numbers. Cards numbered from 65-224 show evidence when miscut of bordering cards 1-64, and cards 1-64 show evidence of bordering higher numbered cards on the sheet.

Here's #27 Preston Ward clearly bordering a card numbered above 64. And here's #217 Crandall with a 1-64 next to him (other miscuts show a second 1-64 card was adjacent to Crandall to top [with the sheet oriented so that the cards are facing the viewer correctly]).


I think the evidence strongly suggests the common narrative is, like so many of them repeated in card land, false. A sheet of 220 cards would be awfully massive considering what Bowman was usually working with. It may also have been a skip numbered issue. I don't know, all I know is that the evidence doesn't support the story I've always heard.

Anyone have 1955 Bowman uncut material? Miscuts like these to show? I'd love to be able to eventually have enough public material to settle some of the questions about this issue.