Need advise. Building a 1948 Leaf baseball set vs 1949 Bowman

radiationguy

I am almost finished with my 1955 Topps set and have been considering putting one of the above mentioned sets together. The Leaf set would be PSA 6-7 while the Bowman set would be PSA 7-8. Can you even put a complete Leaf set together? I was on the set registry site and there were 0 complete sets. Even the big boys had not finished it yet. I would appreciate any comments and or warnings from people that have thought or started trying to do the Leaf set. Thanks in advance for any info.

Billy

mikeschmidt

In PSA 6 condition -- the 1948 Leaf set should be doable, with a few PSA 7s and highers, if you are patient and have enough money.

TWINRON

I AM DOING THE 49B MASTER SET--LOTS OF FUN , BUT HARD TO FINE THE GREY AND WHITE BACKS ALTHOUGH THE REGISTRY DOESN'T CARE--- PROBABLY EASIER THAN THE 48-49 LEAF AND LESS EXPENSIVE--


I'LL SEND YOU MY ARTICLE ON THE 49 BOWMAN THAT TELLS YOU A LITTLE ABOUT THE SET. RON HOBBS

TWINRON

BILLY ---I NEED YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS

radiationguy

Ron, Thanks for the information regarding the 1949 Bowman set. I look forward to reading the article. I have sent my email address.

Billy

Vargha

They are both excellent sets to own. Ron bought my 49 Bowman set and has done an excellent job of upgrading it. Several of the high number 49's are tough to track down, even in PSA 7. The Leaf short prints are extremely difficult to get and tend to go for well over SMR in PSA 6 or better.

robr1967

Billy:

Just curious. I saw your posting about Leaf vs. Bowman.

Would you want to primarilly to do the Bowman set in PSA-7's or PSA-8?

Just curious.

I am also working on a 1949 Bowman BB set as well. I know of about 4 other sets being worked on presently, that are not registered as well.

Thanks
Rob Ruth

P.S. If you would care to drop me an email. rruth@comcast.net

Griffins

Billy-
I"ve been chasing down the '48 Leaf set for 4 years, and still haven't finished it. If you are trying to complete it in PSA6 -7 I suspect it will run you 25-40K- the bowman would be a fraction of that and much easier to find. Its often not a matter of money, you just can't find the Leafs. Best of luck in whatever you chose.
Anthony

helionaut

I've been looking into this very question for the past couple months. Because of the price, I went with Bowman and have quickly and easily assembled what would be the #8 set on the registry, including the first and last cards and a couple key rookies. While I think they are both wonderful sets, and very similar in design, they vary greatly in two other important aspects, namely checklist and availability/affordability.

Certainly Bowman is available in greater quantity. There seems to be not too much competition for Bowman on ebay, but that is subject to change. Ebay sees just a few Leaf cards every week, so you have to develop connections outside that forum to complete it within a few years, and that's if you are very lucky with finding SPs. For price, Bowman doesn't approach Leaf. With the SGC 88 Leaf Brecheen going for a ton of dough, the difficulty of obtaining the short-prints in good condition is highlighted again. Even in 6-7 I'd expect this card would be in the thousands. There are others similarly as tough, and there are several cards that go for four figures even in 6. For Bowman, though I've only been watching a short time, there seem to be only three or four cards that break the $1000 mark in 7, the Robinson, Mize, and Paige, and maybe the Musial, depending on the day.

The checklists vary in that the Leaf is, obviously, smaller but though Bowman is 2.4 times larger they missed (or were contractually excluded?) several contemporary stars that Leaf includes. So it's a question of the depth of Bowman versus the peaks of Leaf.

Both sets suffer from the same problem regarding condition, though. A high-grade card looks really sharp, but once you get down to 6s, the flaws that come under that grade really start to detract, moreso I think than from other sets. Some cards still look nice even beat down to 3s, but not these.

My opinion? If money isn't an issue, Leaf wins hands down. Having a set with Williams, DiMaggio AND Musial (I think this is the only mainstream set to contain all three from their playing days), not to mention rookies of Paige, Robinson, Ashburn, Rizzuto, Spahn and Mize, and a somewhat nicer design, is what I would prefer.

Of course, I balance this against sets like 1950-52 Bowman. I'm intrigued by the relatively crude printing of the 1949 Bowman cards, but I wonder why they did them like that when they put out other cards in '49 that had the full-color painted look. Apparently they had the technology. Maybe they were copying Leaf?