New vintage Bobby Thomson for the collection

Hi Folks.

A few posts back I wrote about a new card I picked up. I was very excited to get the card and wanted to show it off immediately so I used the scan from COMC and give it a little write up. Well yesterday the package arrived and I had the card in hand.

The card on the right is a sweet looking 1949 Bowman Bobby Thomson. I'm very pleased with the overall look of the card and was very surprised to how much better it looked than the scan from COMC.

The back of the card is interesting too.

Notice the lack of stats that you would normally expect to find. It also makes mention of his military service, which is interesting to see. There's also a small bit about his minor league and rookie year. They don't mention much about his 1948 season other than he slumped to .248 average. At the bottom of the card is an offer for a baseball ring. All you needed was three wrappers and 15cents and you would have been able to get an adjustable, durable metal ring with a white plastic emblem. I wonder how many of these rings are around now? Has anyone seen one?

Enough about the ring, back to Thomson. 1949 was a great year for Thomson. He had career highs in RBI's and BA. But no-one knows that stuff! I had to look it up online, thank you wikipedia. The Flying Scot is remembered mostly for one thing and that is the 'Shot Heard 'Round the World'. I'm sure you all know the story so I wont go over it again.

The picture at the top also features two other Thomson cards. On the left is the 1953 Redman that I wrote about a while back and the middle is a 1958 Topps that I picked up a few months ago. The reason I choose this picture is to show off the different sizes of the cards. The Redman is a Giant compered to the other two. The 58 is a standard size card and the 49 is tiny. I'm glad that cards nowadays aren't as big as the Redman because its a pain to store and takes up more that its fair share of the box its in. I'm a big fan of smaller cards so I quite like it but I'm not a fan of the shape, its too square as opposed to the regular mini cards from Ginter and T206 that have a more rectangular shape.

Overall the Bowman is cool! And its also the oldest card I own.