Bowman Baseball Cards

For one brief shining moment, Bowman was the big dog in the world of baseball cards. The year was 1948, when Bowman published 48 black-and-white photographs of baseball players on card stock. Each card sold for a penny and came with a stick of bubble gum. This was not Bowman's first foray into the baseball-cards-packed-with-chewing-gum business. In 1941, Bowman's forebear, Gum Inc., issued its Play Ball Sports Hall of Fame set. Of course, World War II interrupted this budding enterprise (paper would soon be in short supply), making 1941 the last year gum cards were printed and packaged until a few years after the war. Initially, Bowman was not alone when it issued cards featuring photographs of Bob Feller, Enos Slaughter, Bill Rigney, and an incredible roster of rookies, including Ralph Kiner, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Warren Spahn, Stan Musial, Red Schoendienst, and Bobby Thomson, who, in 1951, as an outfielder for the New York Giants, hit a home run off Ralph Branca of the Brooklyn Dodgers to give his team the National League pennant (the homer became known as "The Shot Heard 'Round the World"). No, Bowman was forced to share 1948 with the Leaf Gum Company of Chicago, whose cards were a colorful contrast to Bowman's black-and-whites. In the end, Bowman elbowed Leaf out of the baseball-card business, and had to market to itself until 1951, when a tough competitor named Topps arrived on the scene. Despite the arrival of Topps, 1951 should have been a good year for Bowman. After all, its 1951 series of 324 cards (including rookie cards for Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle) was impressive. But Topps responded with the baseball-card equivalent of "Hold my beer" by issuing five sets of cards, including two 52-card sets, two diecut sets of past and present All Stars, and a nine-card set of popular teams. For the next couple of years, Bowman resembled a hard-ball hurler whose best stuff was suddenly being slugged into the center-field bleachers. Even so, Bowman did hit a few homers of its own. For example, its 1952 cards took photos of players and recreated them as color drawings or even watercolors, with the player's signature printed near the bottom of the card, often across the player's jersey. Its 1953 cards were widely admired for their clean design (no lettering disrupts the fronts of the cards), and are among the most collected vintage baseball cards today. Two sets were issued that year, one featuring 64 cards in black-and-white and another boasting 160 cards in full color, including the likes of Leo Durocher and Roy Campanella. And in 1955, Bowman issued its so-called "television set" cards, named for the rounded borders in the card's design that made them resemble TVs. By 1956, though, Topps had bought its rival, bringing the brief Bowman heyday to an abrupt end.