1952 Bowman Baseball Project

[PowderedH2O]

Over the past forty years I've bought and sold so many things I can't even remember it all. I'm close to completing quite a few raw sets (wrapping up 1960 Topps baseball and 1956 Topps football probably by the end of the year in ex-mt). I had a fairly large collection of PSA graded football cards from the 40's, 50's, and 60's that I sold last year to pay for a wedding and honeymoon.

I've decided to put together some graded sets to go along with my raw ones. I love the old Bowman and Play Ball cards. So, I think I am going to tackle those. Now, that could take quite a long time, considering how many cards this is. But, I am going to give it a shot. I've decided the way to go about this is to grab good deals as I see them, but to concentrate on one set as my main focus. That set will be the 1952 Bowman baseball set.

Why 1952? Well, several reasons. For many of you, 1952 was a time when you were buying cards from packs. Not me. I was born in 1965, so I didn't start buying cards until 1972. For me, this story goes back to 1986. During the years 1982-1986 I was buying packs of cards to complete my Topps, Fleer, and Donruss sets. I kept all the extra stars and put them away. By the summer of 1986, I had thousands of stars. Eventually, I took this large group of stars to my local card shop (Lake Worth World of Baseball Cards in Lake Worth, Florida). The owner was a really awesome guy named Scott Winslow who gave me a good price in trade for the cards. Kids wanted current stars and Scott knew they would sell quickly. But, what I got in trade was about 65% of the 1952 Bowman set in Vg-Ex condition, including the Willie Mays.

Eventually, I had to sell those cards (ironically, back to Scott), but I never forgot how much I loved looking at them. I decided to tackle this project by starting with the ones I remember as a young man. The 1952 set is also manageable with a reasonable number of cards, and no super expensive rookies to chase. The high numbers are not too terribly expensive or hard to track down. The set is full of gorgeous artwork and lots of stars: Mays, Mantle, Musial, Campanella, Feller, and many more.

I am a high school chemistry teacher. I can't go after these cards in high grade. So, I'm going to go after the Vg-Ex cards that I had many years ago. I figure cards in the PSA 4-6 range will be about right. Of course, I'll be looking for cards that have appeal to me, so the numbers aren't really that important. I would like them all to stay in the same company, so I have decided to stick with PSA since there are a lot more cards on the market to choose from.

So, I decided to create a thread in which I will update this undertaking. This isn't something that I'll finish in six months. It will take me some time to get this done. I've purchased 17 cards so far. I'll start scanning soon, and I'll update as I go. Hopefully I can make some regular progress. Thanks for reading. Here we go....