What a Mess!

For a fairly long period of time in the hobby, print freaks, miscuts and whatever else you want to call them, were generally shunned by collectors.  There were exceptions, particularly those that crept into the old guides like the 1957 Topps Gene "Bakep" or their 1958 Pancho "Herrer" error, which were really just printing hiccups. These days a small but growing cadre of collectors is actively searching out such oddities and lobbying the grading companies to recognize more and more of them.

Some of these misfit cards hail from discards of full and partial scrap press sheets.  When Topps had their main plant in Brooklyn, several dumpster divers would score such prizes and take them home for distribution to their kids, some of which were later introduced into the hobby recycling stream - shallow as it was back then - usually as singles that looked very much like they had been hacked by an eight year old (which they often were!).  Topps scrap does pop up here and there (and will be looked at down the road) but when it comes to scarp sheets, Bowman is (was?) where it's at.

The black and white inaugural Bowman Baseball issue in 1948 was, well, kinda blah and Football followed in the same manner, but it was Basketball that brought color to their sports offerings in '48.  Here's a look at a fully printed card of good ol' Speed" Spector:

Now take a look at the second card from the left in the third row to see Speed with a missing red color process. It results in a striking slate gray background:

The reverse is fine (that's a wire to hang the framed sheet) and suggests it was printed first:

That's a "neat" error and it was carried through to their 1949 Baseball set as things got fugly fast.  This 1949 Baseball 3rd series remnant was posted by Ted Zanidakis over at Net54 Baseball a few years ago.  Ted also wrote an excellent article on these in an early issue of Baseball Cards magazine.

There were other production issues too that year. The front of the '49 Murry Dickson isn't so bad despite a missing pass:

But the back-yeeeesh!

Their move to larger, illustrated cards also had some hiccups.  1951 saw this beauty roll off the presses:

I'm not positive but don't think the backs should also be printed on the fronts! Also, in case you thought all Bowman cards were printed on smaller sheets of 32 or 36, the above remnant disproves that. My thought is this particular sheet, if full, would have an array of 18 x 12 and hold 216 cards. That gives you 36 cards in six iterations on a sheet, or 72 in three.

Here's six high numbers that are a bit more clear on how the reverses were applied to the fronts, courtesy of REA (as is the above); Ramsdell seems to be from an entirely different sheet than the other five cards below:

And to be fair, these types of misprints and sheets were likely produced on purpose to get ink rolling before a full run.  The sheets could also be used on the tops and bottoms of stacked sheets on pallets to absorb the damage that shipment, warehousing and other handling would deliver. Bowman's rejects seem more prevalent due to "paper dealers" buying such things by the pound in Philadelphia from the garbage and refuse haulers in that city back in the day. I'm not sure such monetization existed in Brooklyn back then.

Leaf Of Absence

An interesting short article crossed my transom the other day and while I have managed to misplace the name of whoever provided it (possibly Lonnie Cummins or Keith Olbermann, sorry that I lost the handle gents!) it makes for an interesting read, despite its brevity:

I found several other sources for the article and all were dated May 4, 1949, so the suit against Leaf Brands by 272 players was filed smack dab in the midst of the baseball (and baseball card) season.

The Leaf Baseball set of 1948-49 defies easy conclusions.  98 cards were issued in skip-numbered fashion, ending at #168. 49 cards are far easier to find than the other 49, which are fiendishly difficult and could even be considered infamous for their scarcity. The biographical detials on the cards make it clear the set came out in 1949 but cards from both the easy and difficult sections can be found with a 1948 copyright or a 1949 (but not both, there's no 1948/49 variants).

Here's a card with a 1948 copyright, detailing Hermanski's 1948 season; there is a version of this card without the last letter of Hermanski's last name that is scarce and expensive and he's a perfect mataphor for this set, which had very little quality control but some really bizarre color arrays:

Here's a 1949:

There is no real cohesion between 1948 or 1949 copyrights and the various short prints scattered throughout the issue, it's a real mish-mash. The set is a riotous mess: there's print errors, color mishaps and the whole thing looks like it was designed by a fifth grader, but it's loaded with Hall of Famers and very expensive cards, including rookies of Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige. It's an important set in the scheme of hobby things.

Getting back to the suit, the six named players are in both the 1948-49 Leaf and Bowman sets:

Leaf #        Player        Bowman#

   31           Brissie            41

   26          Chapman        112

   22            Evans            132

  128           Rosar            138

   32            Spahn             33

   29             Valo               66

The interesting plaintiff to me is Buddy Rosar, who is a short print in the Leaf set. If you need a reason for half the set to be short printed in the extreme, a lawsuit or restraining order vs. Leaf could be the reason.

Two other things that jump out at me from the article:

1) The inclusion of PCL players in the suit.  I think this indicates the Bowman PCL set had already been issued by the time the suit was filed, seemingly in early May. If not, it was certianly something that was imminent.  Was Leaf planning to include PCL players? It might explain how they planned to fill in some numbering gaps but I'm not sure of any impetus other than that Bowman was signing up Coast League players.  The "open" classification for the PCL wasn't granted until 1952 so that wasn't the key factor but the league did draw well in 1948, so maybe it was just related to natural expansion of distribution to the west coast.

2) Jack Bendon, who may have been an agent of Capital Sales on behalf of Leaf, was domiciled in Philadelphia.  There is a strong connection to that city among the three 1951 Topps Major League All Stars that are extreme short prints (and key postwar rarities) which were likely never issued in packs.) Of those three, Konstanty and Roberts were Phillies and Stanky was born in Philly. I assume Bowman, also domiciled there, was hyper-vigilant and possibly assisted the plaintiffs in the Leaf suit.

City of Brotherly Love?  Not when it came to Bowman and their competitors!