The Post War Cards Newsletter #73
1951 Bowman Uncut Sheet Surfaces in Heritage Auction
⚾️ 1951 Bowman Uncut Sheet Surfaces in Heritage Auction
Heritage is offering a really cool 1951 Bowman baseball uncut sheet of 24 overprinted cards in their September Sports Showcase auction that ends on the 27th.
They wrote that this particular panel is new to the hobby, discovered by their consignor while renovating his home, originally used as insulation within the walls. Heritage & REA have sold a handful of other 1951 Bowman baseball uncut sheets that share similar descriptions over the years, too.
Given that, I think the 24-card uncut sheet traces back to the “Philly Find” of uncut sheets that Mastro highlighted in their December 2001 catalog:
It always amazes us that, even in today's market, there are still significant "finds" in our hobby. We are proud to auction a very unique offering of 1951 Bowman uncut sheets. Every "find" has a story and this one is no exception. These sheets were discovered literally a few weeks before this catalog went into production. We received a call from a gentleman who had just purchased an old house and was starting to renovate it. Upon removing the flooring in one of the rooms, he discovered these sheets. The only year that was represented was 1951, which is ironic since we know of only one other 1951 Bowman sheet in the hobby... the famous ex-Copeland example which features Mickey Mantle. We have handled a number of 1950 and 1952 Bowman sheets but never a single example from 1951. The location of the house is none other than Philadelphia, the home of Gum Inc. and their Bowman card products. There is no doubt that this house was, at one time, home to an employee of Gum Inc. who had the seized the opportunity to take a few sheets for his own personal use. How they ended up in the house's floor no one knows. Luckily, this unusual storage space has preserved the sheets much better than other options as they have been laying flat for the past 50 years. The sheets have tremendous eye-appeal and are just waiting to be framed and displayed.
Here’s one of the 288-card sheets that Mastro offered back then.
And here are a few of the overprint sheets from 2001.
I’ll share the rest of them in the future on The Uncut Sheet Archive.
🔥 Reggie Jackson’s Rookie Card Plan That Went Up in Smoke
Over on Instagram, a few weeks ago, tj.isonline shared a nice write-up about the 1990 Upper Deck Heroes Reggie Jackson card, the hobby’s 1st pack-inserted autograph card. It’s a great card; I’ve got a piece up about it on the blog, shared the card he endorsed for Babe Ruth in NL #23, and graphed sales prices in NL #39, but tj.isonline’s IG post added a detail you may not have known. He wrote:
Even before retirement, Reggie became aware of the baseball card and memorabilia growth. He wanted to capitalized on it. For example, Jackson started buying copies of his 1969 rookie card. His plan was to autograph & number each up to 563 (career dinger total) . Then sell each after his 1993 HOF induction. However, this was never achieved due to a house fire when the cards were lost. He then dropped the idea after after he bagan work with Upper Deck.
P.S. Memory Lane Inc. sold a PSA 9-graded 1969 Topps Reggie Jackson card Saturday night for just over $100k; there’s just a single ten graded higher, and Heritage sold it for a million bucks back in 2021.
