November 17, 2022: Fall Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 11/17/2022
Presented is an attractive mostly Fair to Ex-Mt near set of the elegant 1955 Bowman Football issue, an important 1950s pioneering offering that features many of the great stars of the postwar National Football League. This is a nice accumulation of these difficult cards that is found in a relatively wide condition range that is quite typical of how these cards are encountered in mature collections; a listing of the 13 missing numbers appears at the end of this entry. This is a particularly important issue from an historical context, the final Bowman Co. card set that the Philadelphia-based firm produced prior to selling out to Topps at the end of the year. The offered near set is pretty evenly divided between several grades, with only a handful of cards below the range to Poor. It comes out to 14 percent Ex-Mt, 18 percent Excellent, 34 percent Very Good, 20 percent Good and 14 percent Fair. The breakdown: No. 1 Walker – Very Good, 2 McCormack – Excellent, 7 Gifford – Good, 8 Ameche – Fair, 25 Matson – Good, 32 Van Brocklin – Ex-Mt (st), 42 Johnson – VG, 43 Fears – VG-Ex, 44 Perry – VG-Ex, 52 Summerall Rookie – Ex, 59 Ane – Fair, 62 Blanda – Fair, 70 Ringo – Fair, 71 Layne – Ex o/c, 75 McElhenny – Poor, 101 St. Clair – VG o/c, 104 Nomellini – Fair, 112 Creekmur – Fair, 119 Gatski Rookie – Fair, 121 Robustelli – Ex-Mt, 134 Stautner – VG-Ex, 139 Trippi – Fair, 152 Landry – Fair, 158 Bednarik – Good and 160 – Good. The missing numbers (13): No. 20, 37, 63, 66, 72, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 89, 125 and 136.
1955 Bowman Football Near Set (147/160)
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