Posted By:
Ted Zanidakis1st.....Barry, just tell Hal to take the "corked" bat and
stuff it; thats old-tech. The neo-technology is "STEROIDS"
then you too can be an instant 200 lb slugger.
ADAM
Sorry, but I am a skeptic when it comes to "myths" in this
hobby purporting to explain why certain sports cards in the
hobby have become scarce. A perfect example of this is the
old "broken printing plates" theory. During the 1970's (and
into the early '80s) the story explaining the scarcity of
the 1954 Bowman Ted Williams (#66) was exactly this.
In 1985 I de-bunked this myth. A dealer from South Jersey cal-
led me to look at a bunch of tin printing plates that he had
acquired. I was amazed to see original 1954 Bowman printer's
plates. All 7 of this set's 32-card plates were in excellent
condition. And sure enough on the 3rd plate was a clean
impression of the Ted Williams card. Furthermore, he had an
an extra printer's (32-card) plate; and, guess what ?
It was a perfect duplicate of the 3rd plate. Here we were
staring at two sets of plates with Ted Williams image on them.
He had acquired them from an old Bowman Gum Co. employee.
So, why is this card (#66) rare, I have a good theory on it;
but, I will save it for another discussion. Incidently, these
plates went into the Barry Halper collection. I could not af-
ford to buy them then and I knew Barry, so I called him.