Early Bowman Print Runs

[ngrow9]

I am currently reviewing some court documents from the Bowman v. Topps litigation, and came across the following info in a filing by Bowman. I'm not sure if these numbers have been reported before, but thought that I'd type them out here should they be of interest to anyone:

1939 Play Ball - 24,000,000 cards distributed (on sales of $82,000)

1940 Play Ball - 30,900,000 cards distributed (on sales of $99,000)

1941 Play Ball - 31,600,000 cards distributed (on sales of $43,000)

1942 Play Ball (presumably subsequently printed 1941 cards) - 15,700,000 cards distributed (on sales of $72,000)

1948 Bowman - 63,600,000 cards distributed (on sales of $361,000)

1949 Bowman - 76,000,000 cards distributed (on sales of $420,000)

1950 Bowman - 128,300,000 cards distributed (on sales of $716,000)

1951 Bowman - 100,000,000 cards distributed as of June 15, 1951, with another 100,000,000 in production for distribution the remainder of the season.

[BioCRN]

1951 confirmed for the new start time of the Junk Wax Era.

[JollyElm]

What a great (bit of a) peek behind the curtain! That is one heckuva lot of cards being distributed so long ago. Yowza!

[ALBB]

Im thinking ....safe to say...at least 75 % of that total are no longer around today

[brianp-beme]

Do those legal documents specify that the production numbers are for baseball cards only? If not specified, it probably indicates the total card production amounts for all sports and non-sports.

If they are just baseball card production numbers, I utilized a handy calculator to obtain the average production amount for EACH card in the baseball set that I have listed below. Of course each card could be quite a bit different from this amount, depending upon short prints and less printed, tougher series. I lumped the 1939 to 1941 Play Ball issues together, because the 1942 production numbers would seem to involve later distribution as mentioned, and this same time lag could have possibly occurred in the 1939 and 1940 sets as well.

1939 to 1941 Play Ball:

102 million divided by 473 total cards = 215,645 distributed per each card


1948 Bowman:

63.6 million divided by 48 in set = 1,325,000


1949 Bowman:

76 million divided by 240 in set = 316,667


1950 Bowman:

128.3 million divided by 252 in set = 507,396


1951 Bowman:

200 million divided by 324 in set = 617,284


What makes me think these distribution numbers probably include non-baseball issues is the relatively out of proportion per card numbers for the 1948 set, as this issue is definitely not as common as cards from the early 1950 baseball sets.


Brian