How many to a series? Let's see some 1955 Bowman miscuts and uncut material

[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.

[G1911]

33 Fox with a 65+ card to right.

34 Courney with a 65+ card to right.

31 Temple with a 65+ card to left.

[G1911]

#2 Dark with a 65+ to right.

#25 Minoso with a 65+ to left.

[G1911]

#8 Hacker with a red stripe at bottom and left. A thin red stripe sometimes separates a 1-64 blonde card form a 65+ dark card, but it's usually very thin.

[G1911]

#40 Wertz with a 65+ card below and to the right.

And then one with a blue and black bottom

[G1911]

222 Kemmerer with a 1-64 left

223 Jeffcoat with a 1-64 left.

[Zach Wheat]

Originally Posted by G1911

.....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 is a #67 Larsen dark border next to a light border card.

[jiw98]

21E077EC-29A6-4043-B43F-55B117FD1A2F.jpg

980B4221-279F-4D60-8879-7C70CEBE6C48.jpg
Gene Baker #7
Bill Tutle #35
Toby Atwell #164
Jim Busby #166

[mrreality68]

some interesting looking cards. They remind me of watching tv on the early wood/panel style TV's.

I am not sure if i like them or not.

[Zach Wheat]

Here is a #263 E Joost with an adjoining brown edge miscut

[Vintageloz]

Just finished this (last card #257 on the way). I enjoyed it, good mix of Hofers, high numbers, variations and stars. Some neat umpire cards which can be tougher. Only flaw is no rookie power, although the presence of Mantle makes me like it better than Topps. Also looks pretty good in high grade although the backs are really tough to find not miscut, even with a perfectly centered front.

[Gr8Beldini]

I always thought it was odd that the famous 55B pack break a few years ago contained both, Ernie Banks (a high #) and Mickey Mantle (not a high number). If these were from different series, they shouldn't have been in the same pack. I think.

[JollyElm]

I'm just depressed that my thread-reactivating, hoytstanding discovery was nothing. Bummer.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

I'm just depressed that my thread-reactivating, hoytstanding discovery was nothing. Bummer.

Hoytstanding, I see what you did there! It’s not nothing, just a different something. I’m not clear on the colored bar lines on some borders, I’m not sure if it denotes the edge of a sheet. It’s recurring on a ton of the cards. There’s definitely clues into all the layouts with them

[bbcemporium]

A discussion arose on a Facebook group regarding short printed cards in the 1955 Bowman set. In an effort to prove or disprove the claim, I tried tracking down some uncut sheets for this set, only to discover that only a few partial sheets exist. I was unable to find any full sheets or virtual sheet layouts. In fact, no one really seems to know the sheet size or layout for this set. However, I did stumble across this thread and by far was the best source of information. Utilizing all of available information, I decided to try and piece together all of the information and try to recreate the uncut sheets for the set.

Here is a quick recap on the set:

Total cards in the set: 320
Series 1: 1-224
Series 2: 225-320

Series 1 has light and dark wood grain backgrounds. The light wood grain are cards #1-64

According to Bob Lemke's article, for the 1st series distribution, cards #1-224 were printed and distributed. For the 2nd series printing, Bowman removed cards #1-96 and replaced them with the high series cards #225-320.

Card printing and layout observations

As discussed in this thread, there are many "miscut" cards in the set which show many light grain cards border dark grain cards on the sheet. Also, there are cards that show sheets edge print lines, which indicate border cards on the sheet. In addition to the cards shown in this thread, I identified several other summarized below:

Dark grain cards #s that border light grain (L-R): #65-72,121-128,161-168,217-224

Dark grain cards #s that border light grain (T-B): #161,169,177,185,193,201,209

Dark grain cards #s that border sheet edge (L-R): #129-136,195-192,217-224 (I didn't find example of every # listed)

Dark grain cards #s that border sheet edge (T-B): Every 8th card starting at #72

Light grain cards #s that border dark grain (L-R): #25-40

Light grain cards #s that border dark grain (T-B): #1,9,17,25,33,41,49,57

Light grain cards #s that border sheet edge (L-R): #1-6,25-32,58-64

Light grain cards #s that border sheet edge (T-B): Every 8th card starting at #8

As I went though the information, it became pretty obvious that the sheets were laid out in blocks 4x8 (4 cards wide by 8 tall). Between these blocks, there is a thin white line dividing the blocks. Below the vertical line can be seen on this partial sheet and the horizontal line can be seen on the Zimmer

Continued in next post....

[bbcemporium]

Sheet Size & Layout

With the assumption the cards were laid out in 4x8 blocks and the total cards distributed in each series was 224, I determined an overall sheet with 16 cards tall and 14 cards wide was the most logic sheet sized Bowman would use as it would contain 224 total cards. The US Navy sheet posted earlier in this thread was 16 cards tall x 7 cards wide, which would is most likely a half sheet, but backs up my theory of the sheet size Using all of the miscut information and existing partial sheets, I started attempting to recreate a virtual sheet. Having no luck, I went back and started searching through cards images I had and came across these 2 cards (see below).

177 (2).jpg
185.jpg

Using the assumption that upper half of the sheet had the cards laid out updside down, I came up with following layout for the 2nd series sheet.

Series 2 sheet.jpg

The cards in rows 1-8 are upside down and the numbers in orange are the hi-series cards. My current theory is that this sheet layout is the only sheet layout Bowman used to distribute the 2nd series cards. For the 1st series, this isn't the case

continued below...