Uncut Sheets of 1948 Bowman Football Cards

The pictures below show how 1948 Bowman football cards were arranged on the three uncut sheets. As a model for the first one, I used a photo of a real uncut sheet that appeared in a 1984 Sports Collectors Digest article by Ted Zanidakis. From the simple numbering pattern of the first sheet, it is easy to guess what the other two sheets looked like.

If you hold your cursor above any of the cards below, your browser should show you the name of the player and the number of the card. Clicking on a card will bring up the full-sized scan. (A real uncut sheet would not have lines between the cards--that's an effect of scanning them individually.)

Ted notes in his article that only New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, and Washington Redskins players appeared on the first 1948 Bowman sheet.

1948 Bowman #1: Joe Tereshinski 1948 Bowman #4: Ray Poole 1948 Bowman #7: Steve Van Buren 1948 Bowman #10: Chris Iverson 1948 Bowman #13: Hugh Taylor 1948 Bowman #16: Tommy Thompson 1948 Bowman #19: Art Faircloth 1948 Bowman #22: Sammy Baugh 1948 Bowman #25: Pat McHugh
1948 Bowman #28: Paul Governali 1948 Bowman #31: Salvatore Rosato 1948 Bowman #34: Bosh Pritchard 1948 Bowman #37: Len Younce 1948 Bowman #40: James Peebles 1948 Bowman #43: Al Wistert 1948 Bowman #46: Skip Minisi 1948 Bowman #49: Dick Poillon 1948 Bowman #52: Neill Armstrong
1948 Bowman #55: Frank Reagan 1948 Bowman #58: Robert Nussbaumer 1948 Bowman #61: Alex Wojciechowicz 1948 Bowman #64: Joe Sulaitis 1948 Bowman #67: Paul McKee 1948 Bowman #70: Jack Ferrante 1948 Bowman #73: Tex Coulter 1948 Bowman #76: James Hefti 1948 Bowman #79: Bucko Kilroy
1948 Bowman #82: John Cannady 1948 Bowman #85: Bill Gray 1948 Bowman #88: Ben Kish 1948 Bowman #91: Jim White 1948 Bowman #94: John Adams 1948 Bowman #97: Joe Muha 1948 Bowman #100: Bill Miklich 1948 Bowman #103: Tom Farmer 1948 Bowman #106: Ernie Steele

The following table shows how the cards on the first sheet were arranged by number. There is an obvious pattern to the numbers: at the upper left is card number 1, you add 3 to get the number of the next card, you add another 3 to get the number of the next card, and so on. (The cards in green are among the scarcest in the set in high grade--see below.)

1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25
28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52
55 58 61 64 67 70 73 76 79
82 85 88 91 94 97 100 103 106

Following the same numbering pattern, but starting with card number 2 in the upper left, we get the second sheet. This sheet contained only players from the other seven teams: the Green Bay Packers, Chicago Bears, Boston Yanks, Pittsburgh Steelers, Los Angeles Rams, Chicago Cardinals, and Detroit Lions.

1948 Bowman #2: Larry Olsonoski 1948 Bowman #5: Bill DeCorrevont 1948 Bowman #8: Kenny Washington 1948 Bowman #11: Jack Wiley 1948 Bowman #14: Frank Seno 1948 Bowman #17: Charley Trippi 1948 Bowman #20: Clyde Goodnight 1948 Bowman #23: Don Kindt 1948 Bowman #26: Bob Waterfield
1948 Bowman #29: Pat Harder 1948 Bowman #32: John Mastrangelo 1948 Bowman #35: Mike Micka 1948 Bowman #38: Pat West 1948 Bowman #41: Bob Skoglund 1948 Bowman #44: Paul Christman 1948 Bowman #47: Bob Mann 1948 Bowman #50: Charles Cherundolo 1948 Bowman #53: Frank Maznicki
1948 Bowman #56: Jim Hardy 1948 Bowman #59: Mervin Pregulman 1948 Bowman #62: Walt Schlinkman 1948 Bowman #65: Mike Holovak 1948 Bowman #68: Bill Moore 1948 Bowman #71: Leslie Horvath 1948 Bowman #74: Boley Dancewicz 1948 Bowman #77: Paul Sarringhaus 1948 Bowman #80: Bill Dudley
1948 Bowman #83: Perry Moss 1948 Bowman #86: John Clement 1948 Bowman #89: Herbert Banta 1948 Bowman #92: Frank Barzilauskas 1948 Bowman #95: George McAfee 1948 Bowman #98: Fred Enke 1948 Bowman #101: Joe Gottlieb 1948 Bowman #104: Bruce Smith 1948 Bowman #107: Sid Luckman

The second sheet was numbered like this:

2 5 8 11 14 17 20 23 26
29 32 35 38 41 44 47 50 53
56 59 62 65 68 71 74 77 80
83 86 89 92 95 98 101 104 107

Again following the same numbering pattern, but starting with card number 3 in the upper left, we get the third sheet. This sheet contained players from all ten NFL teams.

1948 Bowman #3: John Lujack 1948 Bowman #6: Paul Briggs 1948 Bowman #9: Nolan Luhn 1948 Bowman #12: Charley Conerly 1948 Bowman #15: Gil Bouley 1948 Bowman #18: Vince Banonis 1948 Bowman #21: Bill Chipley 1948 Bowman #24: John Koniszewski 1948 Bowman #27: Tony Compagno
1948 Bowman #30: Vic Lindskog 1948 Bowman #33: Fred Gehrke 1948 Bowman #36: Bulldog Turner 1948 Bowman #39: Russ Thomas 1948 Bowman #42: Walt Stickel 1948 Bowman #45: Jay Rhodemyre 1948 Bowman #48: Mal Kutner 1948 Bowman #51: Gerard Cowhig 1948 Bowman #54: John Sanchez
1948 Bowman #57: John Badaczewski 1948 Bowman #60: Elbert Nickel 1948 Bowman #63: Pete Pihos 1948 Bowman #66: Cecil Souders 1948 Bowman #69: Frank Minini 1948 Bowman #72: Ted Fritsch Sr. 1948 Bowman #75: Dante Magnani 1948 Bowman #78: Joe Scott 1948 Bowman #81: Marshall Goldberg
1948 Bowman #84: Harold Crisler 1948 Bowman #87: Dan Sandifer 1948 Bowman #90: Bill Garnaas 1948 Bowman #93: Vic Sears 1948 Bowman #96: Ralph Heywood 1948 Bowman #99: Harry Gilmer 1948 Bowman #102: Elmer Angsman 1948 Bowman #105: Bob Cifers 1948 Bowman #108: Buford Ray

The third sheet was numbered like this:

3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27
30 33 36 39 42 45 48 51 54
57 60 63 66 69 72 75 78 81
84 87 90 93 96 99 102 105 108

In Ted's article, he recalls that cards from the first sheet were released early in the season, cards from the second sheet were released in the middle of the season, and cards from the third sheet were not distributed at all in his neighborhood. So, though I have not read it in any price guides, Bowman apparently released the 1948 cards in three series, and the three series corresponded to the three sheets. By skip-numbering the cards in each series, the company fooled kids into buying more cards, in search of the cards with the missing numbers. (Leaf employed similar dirty tricks in their 1949 football card set--but Leaf never did fill in the gaps!)

According to the price guides, 1948 Bowman cards with numbers divisible by 3 are short prints, meaning that the third sheet was printed in smaller quantities than the other two. As I said in one of my blog articles, however (see B is for Bowman), I don't believe that the disparity was as great as the price guides indicate. My Beckett catalog puts the divisible-by-3 commons at about four times the price of the other commons, but PSA's population report shows that PSA has graded only about third fewer of them. The last time I looked, the scarcest 1948 Bowman cards in high grades (PSA 8 or better) were card numbers 9, 18, 27, 69, 90, 99, 103, 106, and 108. I marked those cards in green in the tables above. As you can see, seven of those are from the third sheet, but numbers 103 and 106 were in the bottom right corner of the first sheet. This again shows that a card's position on the sheet affects its scarcity, because cards on the corners and edges of the sheets tended to get damaged in production.

For more virtual uncut sheets, see the Gallery's master uncut sheet page.

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