Card front
Bowman printed two cards sets in 1953, one with color photo fronts (160 cards) and this back-and-white follow-up (64 cards). Popular wisdom holds that full-color proved so expensive to print, they couldn't afford to run all 224 players.
Card back
1953 Bowmans have a unique "This Year" stats column, which some young collectors filled in after the season. Adding a stat grid was one of 1952 Topps' biggest contributions and their competitors noticed it enough to immediately adopt the practice.
Value: Low-to-mid grade 1953 Bowman B&W cards like Dee run a few dollars. The series proved less desirable than the color set, but still includes HOFers like Johnny Mize, Casey Stengel, and Hoyt Wilhelm.
Fakes / reprints: Not many B&W reprints out there, since demand is higher for the color series.
UPDATE: Just for Chris, here's a 1953 Bowman with a filled-in stat line!
3 comments:
I still have yet to see a 1953 Bowman card where the blank stat line has been filled in. Seemed like a neat idea back when there wasn't an internet or even a Baseball Encyclopedia to get those sort of stats in no time at all...
Ah, interesting. I picked up a big box of 53s at the 2008 National and many of them included filled in stat lines. The collector even filled in multiples of the same player! (I've added a back scan to the entry.)
Cool, not just Steve Souchock, but Mister Steve Souchock. Impressive!
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