Jim Otto 'OO' - AUTOGRAPHED University of Miami Hurricanes License Plate

Competition was raging between Topps and Bowman in 1953 and 1954 leading to problems with both companies sets. Bowman caused Topps to missing 6 cards in 1953 with Topps getting revenge by signing Ted Williams to an exclusive contract in 1954. Bowman then had to pull Ted Williams card #66 from their set shortly after they started printing, replacing it with Jimmy Piersall, who also was on card #210 making the 1954 Bowman Ted Williams #6 one of 50's scarcest cards.

Perhaps distracted by it's competition with Topps, the 1954 Bowman set was filled with errors and variations. Nearly 20% (40/224 cards) had some sort of variation, with some having more than 2.

The St. Louis Browns recent move to Baltimore also made things interesting. Bowman's artists had no idea what an Orioles jersey would look like - so they just madeone up.

1948 Bowman Football takes it's place in the early history of football cards. While not as flashy as the 1935 National Chicles football issue the 1948 Bowman Football set had great players in real photographs !

The set was tiny (in both card size and number of cards) containing only 108 smallish 2-1/16" x 2-1/2" inch cards. The honor of top rookie in the set is easily Sammy Baugh and there appear to be no variations in the set.

Auctioneer Guernsey's went thru Topps offices gathering over 3,000 items for the auction. Topps spokesman reported auction sales of OVER $1.5 million !!! Additional sales were made from a mail-only auction. Collector Keith Olbermann, at the auction, described it as an archaeological dig.

Topps archive material continued to accumulate after the auction ending up with another treasure of over 250,000 transparencies, uncut sheets, color separations, art, photos, slides, proof sheets & wrappers, canceled checks, contracts and one-of-a-kind items to sell.