Sometimes those “unclaimed property” announcements from your state government can be worth looking into. A St. Louis area man who thought he’d lost part of his sports card collection for good got a nice surprise this week. Kevin Kelly accumulated a sizeable collection but stashed some of it away about 20 years ago inside a safe deposit box. Eventually, he forgot … [Read more...]
Photo of the Day: Bowman Gum’s Right Hand…Woman
“No, it’s not my terrific personality. They know I come bearing gifts—contracts, checks and immortality of sorts.” Joan Crosby had a pretty good handle on her job when she was interviewed for the production of a wire service photograph in the summer of 1953. Crosby was Bowman Gum’s representative, a woman responsible for not only acquiring player agreements … [Read more...]
2019 Bowman Heritage Releasing as Online Exclusive
Collectors have been buying the Topps version of Heritage by the pack and box for a long time now, but 2019 Bowman Heritage are only being sold through the company's website. The cards are designed as a throwback to the striking 1953 Bowman set but the content and distribution are decidedly modern. An unknown quantity of Bowman Heritage was offered to Topps … [Read more...]
1953 Bowman Black and White Set Complemented the Company’s Color Release
In 1953, Bowman continued its run of collectible baseball card sets with an impressive 160-card offering. Like the company's previous issues, that set included full color cards of players. But also in that year, the company issued a shorter, complementary set of black and white cards. Because of that, this is referred to as the black and white set while the other issue is known … [Read more...]
Notes: Leonard Finals Shirt Brings $48K; Olympic Gold Medal Sold; Bowman Color Box; Funny Video
Kawhi Leonard’s jersey from Game 4 of the NBA Finals has sold for $48,240. NBA Auctions offered the Toronto Raptors’ red “North” jerseys as part of an ongoing sale of memorabilia from this season’s playoffs. Leonard also wore the jersey in one game of the Eastern Conference Finals. Kyle Lowery’s Game 4 Finals shirt sold for $12,100 while the one donned by … [Read more...]
A Look at the Evolution of Early Bowman Baseball Cards
After World War II, the Bowman Gum Company quickly became a viable competitor to Topps. Both companies produced sets early in the postwar era but Bowman would eventually get swallowed up by its rival. Topps, of course, ceased printing cards under the Bowman label after 1955 until reviving the brand back in 1989. But while Bowman's first run lasted only from 1948 through … [Read more...]
Ranking the Population of Early Mantle Cards
If you're assuming the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle is the rarest of his standard Topps and Bowman cards, you're correct. It's a statistic that most collectors are familiar with. However, a comparison shows the difference in the number of graded Mantles from his first three seasons isn't quite as startling as you might think. The infographic below tallies the population … [Read more...]
Vintage Buy of the Week: High Grade Bonanza
Before shows were prevalent. Long before eBay and Amazon and COMC and dealer websites. Before the average collector could even dream of something called the Internet…there was a small fraternity of baseball card dealers who put ads in the back of sports-related magazines, rudimentary collector publications and newspapers. An even smaller group, primarily in the nation’s … [Read more...]
Vintage Set of the Week: 1953 Bowman Color
In 1952 Bowman issued a baseball card set featuring colorful artwork of some of the game's greatest stars. It was their fifth consecutive year of production, an accomplishment no other baseball card manufacturer had been unable to achieve. Unfortunately that same year Topps released a set that was much larger than Bowman, in terms of both the actual size of the cards and the … [Read more...]