Bowmanity

The recently concluded Robert Edward Auctions spring spectacular had a huge array of vintage goodies as usual. There were, scattered among the pages of their phone book sized catalog , a number of Saleman's Samples from Topps and Bowman.  I've shown Bowman samples from 1950, 1952, 1954 and 1955 recently and don't like to repeat myself if I can help it, so will focus on the lot of 53's that was offered.

Considered, of course, by many collectors as the best looking set of all time, 1953 Bowman Baseball is indeed gorgeous.  You can see that on the two strips from REA:

Unlike Topps, who put specific copy on the backs of their samples, Bowman usually just sent out strips of cards from their production sheets accompanied by a letter with some hyperbolic copy. The backs are straight from the printing press:

Since I actually can't help it, the auction had great 1954 and 1955 panels as well and since the scans I nicked are so much better than the ones I posted here a while back, I figured what the hey.  1954 came 2x2:

Bowman stuck a sticker on the backs of some.  They also use "Salesmen's" whereas as I have always used "Salesman's". Not sure if the top one lost it's sticker (probably not) or if it was never affixed:

  Blond or chestnut, take your pick (although some hybrids with both on the same panel exist):

For their swan song, Bowman finally went to a legit sample with ad copy on the back.Gorgeous ad copy, I might add:

The 20 years of leadership refers to their first issued set, when the company was known as Gum Inc., although the first cards appeared in 1933 and they were all non-sports.  Gum Inc. competed directly against Goudey and those were the two major issuing companies in the years leading up to World War 2.

I've always liked these samples; they are great little offbeat collectibles.
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Sales Force

Just a little detour before we get to the 60's Topps Salesman's Samples as intrepid reader Brad sent along a couple of righteous scans regarding Bowman's sales tools prior to 1954.

First up is an old auction catalog scan of an 8 card 1950 Bowman panel with an accompanying letter used by its salesmen. While the backs cannot be discerned, I would suspect the panel is cut from a production sheet and does not display any sales copy for reasons I will get into below:



The letter is addressed to the jobbers who acted as middlemen in the sales chain. The panel consists of:

3 Dom Dimaggio, 4 Gus Zernial
12 Joe Page, 13 Ferris Fain
21 Pee Wee Reese, 22 Jackie Robinson
30 Eddie Waitkus, 31 Del Ennis

The layout suggests a 36 card sheet arrayed 9 x 4 and I believe that is how Bowman printed these almost square cards, although as part of a larger sheet.

The street address was 4865 Stenton Avenue. It's pretty much abandoned now:


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Next is a 1952 panel and letter:



The letter has added the "Uncle Bob" tagline and includes the famous 5 star Bowman logo-nice! Uncle Bob was their Berry Crocker but he looked like Fred Mertz and made some appearances in a Bowman Collectors Newsletter that, while ahead of its time, was quite, shall we say, whitebread. I'll round a few newsletter scans up one of these days. I am aware of two issues but the 1952 connection is a couple of years past when I thought they issued the publication so they may have based an ad campaign around ol' Bob.

The cards on the panel are:

43 Bob Feller, 44 Roy Campanella, 45 Johnny Pesky
52 Phil Rizzuto, 53 Richie Ashburn, 54 Billy Pierce

Not a bad selection-four hall-of-famers and two others who were pretty close.

Once again Bowman used a 9x4 array for 36 card sheets (perhaps as many as three of the 36 card sheets would have been on a larger master sheet). We can surmise there were similar sales tactics used in 1951 and surely in 1953 as well. 1948 and '49? We'll see what turns up.

Since Bowman is officially part of Topps, the blog, as I opined recently, will reflect this going forward and we'll look at uncut Bowman sheets in more detail someday. We will be digging back to Gum, Inc. as well then and maybe some pre-war uncut sheets will turn up but next time out the 60's Topps Salesman's Samples will be discussed.

Do Blondes Have More Fun?

I have been playing around with ideas to expand the scope of the blog a little bit; nothing crazy just a little bit of contextual history here and a look at TCG's forebears there. The easiest way to feed this urge right now is to add a little more Bowman to the mix, which will in turn lead back to Gum, Inc. right at the start of FDR's administration.

I have been looking at three card strips of cards and salesman's samples of late and have discovered a couple of neat Bowman items out there, courtesy of Anthony Nex, who graciously let me lift about a bazillion scans.

The first known Bowman Baseball saleman's samples are from 1954; sadly there are none known from the classic 1953 color set. The 54's sample is arrayed 2 x 2:



There is another mix of players known and it would not surprise me one bit if quite a few more are out there. The back is neatly arranged:



1955 was the year of Bowman's Color TV cards and we get the classic 3 card variety now:



Unlike the 54's, the back does not even have a true facsimile of a 55 reverse:



They were really counting on the TV tie in. I wonder if they advertised on the boob tube? With Warren J. Bowman's history I would not be surprised, although the budget may not have been there. (NOTE: It turns out Warren J. Bowman wasn't there either-see Comments)

Now, the thing is that Bowman switched the faux wood grain to dark following the first 64 cards' display of blonde wood:



Perhaps the change was made due to production difficulties (brown wood grain would vex Topps in 1962) but they issued a salesman's strip with both grains during the transition:



Here is another:



I don't know the significance of the blonde version being upside down but it must have been cobbled together really quickly. They couldn't have printed both together, could they?

Back soon with a look at Topps saleman's samples from the 1950's. Stay cool kids!