The 1948 Bowman Baseball Set’s Short Print Puzzle

The 1948 Bowman baseball set isn’t just one of the first significant post-war releases. It’s also one of the hobby’s most debated. Collectors have long puzzled over which cards are true short prints and whether the so-called “high numbers” are actually any rarer.

The set features 48 black-and-white cards printed on gray stock, with player photos on the front and basic biographical details on the back in black ink. Key cards include Stan Musial, Warren Spahn, Yogi Berra, and Phil Rizzuto. Historically, major publications have claimed there are 12 short prints within the first 36 cards, followed by 12 high numbers (cards 37–48). But some collectors have argued that the high numbers are just as rare as the short prints, if not more so.

Why short prints existed in the first place

In vintage issues from the 1950s through the 1970s, short prints typically resulted from sheet layouts that didn’t divide evenly by the number of cards in the set. For instance, if a set had 55 cards and Bowman or Topps printed on 132-card sheets, certain cards might appear twice per sheet (“double prints”), while others appeared once (“short prints”).

Imagine an eight-card set printed on strips seven cards wide. One strip might read 1–7, while another might read 1–6 and 8. Assuming equal runs of each strip, cards 7 and 8 would each be printed in half the quantity of the others, making them short prints.

As Topps developed multi-series sets in the 1950s, true “high number” scarcity emerged when fewer total sheets were printed late in the season.

Bill White’s 1978 explanation

One of the best early analyses of the 1948 Bowman printings came from collector Bill White, who wrote a letter to Lew’s Corner in the September 1978 issue of The Trader Speaks.

According to White, Bowman’s first print runs consisted of cards 1–36. Each sheet contained 144 cards made up of four complete sets of 36 (4 × 36 = 144).

Later, Bowman expanded the checklist to 48 cards. When they inserted the 12 new high numbers (cards 37–48) into the 36-card format, they dropped 12 others — creating the short prints.

The 12 short prints in the 1948 Bowman set are: 7, 8, 13, 16, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 29, 30, and 34. On known uncut sheets containing the high numbers, none of these short prints appear. So far, I haven’t found any uncut sheets that include them.

What the uncut sheets show

Commonly seen 1948 Bowman sheets are 36 cards in size, though their arrangement can differ depending on how they were cut from the 144-card full sheet. Each horizontal strip of cards is consistent, but the vertical order varies.

White concluded that the 1948 Bowman set ultimately consisted of 24 cards printed across all runs, with 12 short prints from early-season sheets that were later replaced by the 12 high numbers. He speculated that the short prints were scarcer either because fewer early-season sheets were printed or because uncut high-number sheets survived in greater numbers.

The consensus is that:

1. Bowman’s first print runs included cards 1-36.
2. Sheers were 144 cards, made up of four 36-card sets.
3. Cards 37-48 were added later.
4. To make room, 12 earlier cards were dropped from the sheet layout and became the recognized short prints.

The counterargument

Not everyone agrees with White’s conclusion. Both PSA and Dean’s Cards have published articles suggesting the short prints are no more scarce than the high-number cards. Importantly, both sources still agree with the basic sheet structure.

PSA quoted a collector who said he was “really surprised that the entire high-number series isn’t listed as short prints,” because some high-number cards seemed tougher to find than traditional short prints. Dean’s Cards noted that its inventory showed roughly equal numbers of short-print and high-number cards, leading to the conclusion that half the set may have been printed twice as often as the other half.

What the PSA population report suggests

To see whether a pattern emerges, I compared PSA population counts for the 12 short prints and the 12 high numbers (June 2026 data).

The totals are surprisingly close:

• Short prints: 5,291 graded examples
• High numbers: 4,635 graded examples

That doesn’t prove equal scarcity, but it does suggest the two groups may exist in roughly similar quantities today. It’s hard to argue that collectors are dramatically more likely to grade short prints than high numbers, especially when both groups are relatively difficult cards.

There are significantly more graded cards in the population report of the 24 cards that were in both printings.

So what’s the best conclusion?

The reality is that nobody knows the exact production numbers, and we don’t know precisely how Bowman distributed the different printings. But the evidence points to a more nuanced answer than the traditional catalog labels suggest.

It may be most accurate to think of the set this way:

• 24 cards were printed in both runs (“double prints”).
• 24 cards were printed in only one run – 12 early short prints and 12 later high numbers.

If that’s true, then the high numbers and short prints are both scarce, just scarce for different reasons tied to Bowman’s evolving sheet layout.

Happy collecting!