Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Last week I added virtual uncut sheets of 1955 Bowman cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I have not seen an actual sheet of 1955 Bowmans, but I presume they followed the same numbering pattern as sheets of older Bowman cards. I believe that the 160-card set was printed on 5 sheets of 32.

Bowman apparently printed the fifth 1955 sheet in smaller quantities than the other four, because most of the scarce cards in the set are from the fifth sheet.

(Click on the image to see all five sheets.)

Yesterday I added virtual uncut sheets of 1954 Bowman cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. I have not seen an actual sheet of 1954 Bowmans, but I followed the numbering patterns on sheets of older Bowman cards and made an educated guess as to what the 1954 sheets looked like.

Bowman apparently printed the third 1954 sheet in smaller quantities than the others, because most of the scarcer cards are from that sheet.

(Click on the image to see all four sheets.)

Dan Tester (thanks, Dan!) sent me a link yesterday to a picture of a four-card panel of 1953 Bowman football cards. That small panel was enough to show that 1953 Bowmans were printed in numerical order on the uncut sheets, as the earlier Bowman cards were. That bit of knowledge prompted me to go ahead and assemble virtual uncut sheets for the 1953 Bowman set.

One thing I don’t understand is why the price guides show short prints in the 1953 Bowman set. It looks to me as if the 96-card set broke evenly over three sheets of 32. If Bowman had printed fewer copies of one sheet than the others, that would have resulted in short prints, but the price guides’ short prints don’t match up with a single sheet. Maybe some reader can explain it to me.

Anyway, check out the new sheets!

I noticed this week that eBay seller bmw_cards2 has a bunch of 1948 Bowman wrong-back cards for sale. Pictured here is one of them, a Joe Muha card with a Harry Gilmer back.

I was curious about how the cards got the wrong backs, so I looked at where they were positioned on the uncut sheets. (See my 1948 Bowman virtual uncut sheet page.) It turns out that the fronts of all of BMW’s cards are from the first sheet, and the backs are all from the corresponding positions on the third sheet. (The Muha card is fourth from the right in the bottom row.) I don’t know much about printing, but it looks to me like the printer printed the front of the sheet, then used the wrong plate when printing the back.

Searching eBay further, I found a 1948 Bowman Art Faircloth card with a similar problem, only the Faircloth card has both the correct back and an incorrect back printed on it. Again, the front of the card is from the first sheet, and the incorrect back is from the corresponding position on the third sheet.

I have never seen uncut sheets of 1951 Bowman football cards, but I am guessing that they were configured like 1950 and 1952 Bowman sheets. Yesterday I put together 1951 Bowman virtual uncut sheets and added them to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Click on the image to have a look!

This week I added virtual uncut sheets of 1948 Leaf and 1949 Leaf football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. From a picture of a 1949 sheet, I think I have also figured out what the 1948 sheets looked like. The 1949 Leaf set is basically a subset of the 1948 Leaf set with the card backs and card numbers changed, and it appears to me that the sheets would have been similar. Take a peek, and let me know what you think.

Last week I added virtual uncut sheets of 1952 Bowman Large football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. From what I have read, Bowman simply enlarged their 1952 Small sheets to get the 1952 Large sheets, and when they printed the Large sheets, some cards on the edges of the sheets were truncated. The cards on the edges of the sheets thus became the short prints in the set.

Click the image below to see all of the 1952 Bowman Large sheets. Also, for an overview of the topic, see an earlier blog article, U is for Uncut Sheets.

Yesterday I added virtual uncut sheets of 1950 Bowman football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. There are 144 cards in the 1950 Bowman set, and they were printed on 4 sheets of 36. Compared to the other virtual sheets I have done, these were relatively easy, because the cards were arranged on the sheets in numerical order. The price guides don’t say that any of the 1950 Bowman cards were short prints, but it appears to me that the fourth sheet was printed in somewhat smaller numbers than the others.

Also see U is for Uncut Sheets for an overview of the topic.

The 1966 Philadelphia football card set contains 198 cards, and it was almost certainly printed on a single, standard 264-card sheet. This means that 66 cards were repeated on the sheet, and so there are 66 double prints in the set. The price guides have not identified the double prints, however.

By comparing an uncut half-sheet with PSA’s population report, I believe I was able to identify the double prints in the set. I added an explanation to my 1966 Philadelphia virtual uncut sheet page and marked the cards I think are double prints in the Vintage Football Card Gallery.

I haven’t seen the second half-sheet, so I could be wrong. Those who collect the set know, though, that some cards are much easier to find than others, and the cards I have chosen as double prints match up pretty well with cards that are easy to find.

The Gale Sayers rookie card, shown here, is one of the double prints. PSA has graded nearly twice as many examples of this card than of Dick Butkus’s rookie card, which is also in this set.

Yesterday I added a virtual uncut sheet of 1962 Topps football cards to the Vintage Football Card Gallery. Looking at the sheet–and having looked at numerous other uncut sheets–I convinced myself that the price guides have misidentified many of the short prints in this set. I would be interested in your feedback.

(Click the image to see the uncut sheet page.)