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

[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...

[bbcemporium]

For the series 2 virtual sheet, there are a few existig partial sheets that I used to confirm the layout, so I feel relatively confident in the layout. For the series 1 sheet, I'm not nearly as confident. There were no series 1 partial sheets that I was able to find, so I created these layout from scratch. Also there appears to multiple sheet layouts that Bowman used for the series 1 cards. The Crandall card is a good example to show this. You can see from the images, it appears to border the edge of the sheet, another dark grain card and a light grain card in different sheet layouts.

217 (2).jpg
217 (3).jpg
217 (4).jpg

I think there are at least a minimum of 3-4 different sheet layouts that were used, but this is just a guess. Here are some sheets layouts that I came up that I think could be correct, but I have no way of verifying them, there very well could be errors in them.

Series 1 Sheet A.jpg
Series 1 Sheet B.jpg
Series 1 Sheet C.jpg

With all my sheet layouts, I assumed all 224 cards on the sheet are unique and there were no double prints, but I question if this was truly the case. There were a few individual miscut cards I found that I couldn't get to properly lay out on the sheets.

Anyway, that was a fun rabbit hole to go down - I'm definitely open to critique or suggestions where my assumption may be incorrect.