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| 1953 Bowman Color #64 |
If I had been a kid growing up in the early '50s, I'm not sure I would have been happy when Bowman disappeared following the 1955 season. I'm starting to think that if you match up the Bowman baseball cards to their Topps counterparts, year-by-year, from 1951 through 1955, the Bowman cards are actually superior.* I know some people may think that's crazy talk, but this 1953 Bowman Color Curt Simmons card is far more attractive than some of the cards included within the 1953 Topps set. Prompted by the innovative nature of the 1952 Topps cards, the 1953 Bowman cards are much larger than their predecessors and they feature small bios on the backs along with a few lines of statistics.
My Mom added this card to my collection via the
"Santa Brings Way Too Many Awesome Baseball Cards to Jim" magical Christmas shoebox. Simmons joins the
Del Ennis card as the only two cards to date that I have from this wonderful set.
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| 1950 Bowman #68 |
A few days after Christmas, a package arrived from reader John with Simmons' 1950 Bowman card. He had purchased the card inadvertently, not realizing it was already in his collection, and he e-mailed me to see if I would give it a good home. "But of course!," I responded, and I'm very happy to have the card in my collection.
*Maybe with the exception of the two company's 1952 sets.
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I featured Simmons' 1956 Topps card way back during the
first month of this blog. I had mistakenly thought I had met Simmons at a baseball card show back in the '80s.
Great cards. I still need my first '53 Bowman; they're just so pricey. But I definitely don't think you're talking crazy. Vintage Bowman was more innovative than early Topps, more interesting, more classy.
ReplyDeleteHey,
ReplyDeleteI just found your site by happenstance. I recently acquired some Phillies autographs that I'm sending into either PSA or JSA for authentication -- do you know where I could look to find Phillies fans that would be interested in them or would you be?
Two of the more notable ones are:
1951 Bowman Jim Konstanty signed in ballpoint
1980 Puddin Head Jones signed "Willie Jones" in black ballpoint.
My email address is brockw82@gmail.com
Thanks and great site!
I wish Topps hadn't turned the Bowman brand name into what it is today. When today's collectors think of "Bowman", they think of prospects and draft picks and chromey-ness. If I had been in on the decision in the early '90s to turn Bowman into the home of the rookie card, I would have at least tried to sway the people at Topps into using the Bowman name for the "more interesting, more classy" sets, just like in the good old days.
ReplyDeleteBrock - I'm not a big autograph collector, but your cards sound fantastic!