Bowman Gum began to manufacture 'Play Ball' cards from 1939 to 1941.Due to the war, Bowman was forced to stop making cards in 1941.This was because resources such as paper were needed for the war effort.However, Bowman began producing baseball cards in again 1948 after the war ended. The 1951 Bowman Set was a set of 324 cards.

In the beginning, Bowman had a monopoly on baseball card production.Then in 1951, Topps began producing cards as well. Bowman created baseball and football cards, as well as non-sporting cards.The 1951 Bowman football set was another set of 144 NFL cards.The 1951 Bowman non-sporting cards included Jets, Rockets, Spaceman 108 card set as well as the Red Menace 48 card set.

This set also featured color-art reproductions of player portraits.The earlier cards were black and white, then black and white with added machine color.The sizes of the cards were increased this year.Previously they measured 1-1/16 X 2-1/2 in, and in 1951 they measured 2-1/16 X 3-1/8 in.

This is the most valuable Bowman set for collectors.It is one of the more valuable sets ever issued by any baseball card maker.This is mainly because of the rookie cards for Mickey Mantle and Willy Mays. This was the largest card set by Bowman to date.Regardless of Berk Ross and Topps, Bowman still outshined the competition.

The designs of these cards were very similar to the 1950 set.This set really just has larger cards than the 1950 set.Bowman still used hand-painted reproduction portraits.The only change in design was on the front of the card they added a small black box with the players name.

The card backs still had the player`s name, position, team, and a statistical write-up. The rarest cards are #243-324.They were printed in smaller numbers and are very scarce now.This set also had the rookie cards of Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays as well as Whitey Ford, Monte Irvin, Jackie Jensen and Jim Piersall.