1948-1955 Bowman - Series by Series breakdown and identification

[toppcat]

Steve, thanks for the two links. The sheet I recall seeing isn't among either unfortunately. Probably not a Teddy Z post then, adding to the mystery. Well, I will keep digging.

[G1911]

It should be possible to narrow down the 1955's using physical evidence, due to the change in border color starting at card 65, making even slight miscuts show the border type of the adjacent card.

Because there was a tiny 'margin of error' between miscut cards of a different color adjacent to each other, they are easy to find. Here are some of of the lower number cards showing dark brown TV borders to the left or right side (I don't believe I've seen one top or bottom). Minoso in particular seems to be very easy to find off center and showing this. Schoendienst is another one found this way, though my card is cut properly. I hope this shows up clearly, as this site's software caps image sizes at only a few percent of the original photo size.

[G1911]

The off-center cards in the light-colored numbers tell us that both color TV's were in that printing. Most likely, this would include at least 32 dark color TV cards, 65-96. However, going through my set, I found miscuts showing light TV cards, 1-64, must have been adjacent at much higher numbers. Pictured here are 121 Russ Crawford, 128 Mike Garcia, 218 Joe Adcock, and 222 Russ Kemmerrer.

These are hardly unique, other copies of these cards and others can be found easily on comc or eBay.

None of my high series cards show a light TV wood pattern border, as expected, since the scarcity difference between the high number and the other cards is readily apparent, even if they aren't tough.

It seems to me there are 3 possible explanations. A) all low numbers were printed together as one massive series, B) Bowman printed a light frame wood border around their sheets just because), C) Bowman released the cards in a skip numbered pattern until the high series.