1948 Bowman Stan Musial #36 RC

A gum company comes back from the war

Jacob Warren Bowman, a chewing gum salesman, founded Gum, Inc. in Philadelphia in 1927. Its Blony bubble gum became the top-selling penny bubble gum in the country by 1929, and in the 1930s the company began packing trading cards with it. Its "Play Ball" baseball sets ran from 1939 to 1941, until wartime paper rationing stopped production.

The company returned to cards in 1948, now under the Bowman name, and its 1948 baseball set was the first major baseball release after World War II. The same year it issued its first football and basketball sets. Collectors who build the set say it kicked off the modern era of card collecting.

The 1948 Bowman set is small in every sense. It has just 48 cards, each 2 1/16 by 2 1/2 inches, smaller than the cards that followed. The fronts showcase a black-and-white player photo; the backs give the player's name, card number and a short biography, along with an advertisement for Blony Bubble Gum. A pack guide cited by the grading service says the cards came in one-card, one-cent packs, while one hobby writer recalls penny or nickel packs.

The cards were printed on two 36-card sheets. The first held cards 1 through 36; the second repeated 24 of them and replaced 12 with the high numbers, 37 through 48. Those 12 replaced cards became short prints. Half the set's 48 players were New York Giants or Yankees, and six teams were not represented at all.

Stan the Man

Stanislaw Franciszek Musial was born November 21, 1920, in Donora, Pennsylvania, a steel and zinc town. His father, a Polish immigrant, worked in the zinc mines and at first refused to let his son sign a professional contract; his mother persuaded him. At 15 Musial pitched for the semi-pro Donora Zincs, and on the high school team one of his teammates was Buddy Griffey, father of Ken Griffey Sr.

The Cardinals signed him as a pitcher. In 1940 he badly hurt his left shoulder making a play in the outfield, which ended his pitching career and pushed him to the outfield for good. He debuted with St. Louis in 1941, helped win the World Series in 1942, and won MVP awards in 1943 and 1946, around a year in the Navy in 1945. His nickname came from Brooklyn, where Dodger fans groaned "here comes the man" as he came to bat.

He played all 22 of his seasons for the Cardinals and retired after 1963 with 3,630 hits, split exactly 1,815 at home and 1,815 on the road. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1969, his first year of eligibility, with 93.2 percent of the vote. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 and died January 19, 2013, at 92.

1948: the season of his life

Musial's rookie card was making the rounds in the spring of 1948, seven years after his debut, and he answered with his best season. He collected his 1,000th career hit on April 25. By June 24 he was hitting .408, and Brooklyn pitcher Preacher Roe joked that the best way to get him out was to walk him on four pitches and pick him off first.

On September 22 he had five hits in a game for the fourth time that season, tying a mark Ty Cobb set in 1922. He finished leading the majors in batting average (.376), hits (230), doubles (46), triples (18), total bases (429) and slugging (.702), and led the National League in runs and RBI. His 39 home runs were one short of the league lead. A home run he hit in a game that was rained out did not count; had it counted, he would have won the Triple Crown.

He became the first player to win three National League MVP awards. That same May, after a St. Louis newspaper criticized ballplayers for appearing in cigarette advertisements, Musial decided never to do one again.

Late that October, a deadly smog settled over his hometown of Donora. Days later Harry Truman beat Thomas Dewey for the presidency.

What to look for

The Musial is arguably the top card in the set, with the Yogi Berra rookie (#6) the other key. Both are widely found with print defects and centering problems. Because the Musial image is a tight head shot, any print flaw on his face is easy to see. The card is also known for border toning and rough cuts, though mild rough cuts are not generally held against it.

Its position on the sheet matters. An uncut 1948 Bowman sheet shows the Musial on the right edge, which left it vulnerable to miscuts and extra wear. That is why the card is hard to find in top grade, and why the PSA 7 in this entry, near mint, sits above most surviving copies: of the copies in the grading service's census as fetched, 89 are graded higher than PSA 7.

Collectors weighing the two Musial rookies usually favor this one. The 1948-49 Leaf #4 is in color and is harder to find in high grade, but the Bowman is more available in grades the average collector can find, and a hobby writer calls it "THE" Musial rookie card.

How the card has traded

In 2011 a grading service reported 882 copies graded, with one PSA 10 and 15 PSA 9s; a PSA 9 had sold at auction for $13,364.50 in December 2007. The lone PSA 10 came from the PSA 10 rookie collection of former major leaguer Dmitri Young, which went to auction in May 2012. It sold for $129,850.80 on a single bid. The grading service's price table now lists a later PSA 10 sale of $360,000, without a date on the page fetched.

In the grade of this entry, a PSA 7 sold in an online auction in December 2022 for $4,605 on 33 bids. The same writer reported a PSA 8 with perfect centering selling for $16,059 on 65 bids, and said PSA 9 copies rarely appear but can reach $50,000 or more when they do.

Lower grades are more approachable. Online auction sales in 2025 included a PSA 6 at $3,305 in September, a PSA 5 at $1,857 in October and a PSA 3 at $1,002 in November.

The numbers

1948 season (card year)

155 G, 698 PA, 611 AB, 135 R, 230 H, 46 2B, 18 3B, 39 HR, 131 RBI, 7 SB, 79 BB, 34 SO, .376 BA, .450 OBP, .702 SLG, 429 TB. NL MVP; led the NL in average, runs, hits, doubles, triples, RBI, OBP and slugging.

Career (1941-1963)

22 seasons, 3,026 G, 10,972 AB, 1,949 R, 3,630 H, 725 2B, 177 3B, 475 HR, 1,951 RBI, 1,599 BB, .331 BA, .417 OBP, .559 SLG

MVP awards

3 (1943, 1946, 1948)

Batting titles

7 (1943, 1946, 1948, 1950-1952, 1957)

Honors

24-time All-Star; 3 World Series titles; Hall of Fame 1969 (93.2 percent, first ballot)

Timeline

1. Nov 21, 1920

   Stan Musial is born in Donora, Pennsylvania.

2. 1927

   Jacob Warren Bowman founds Gum, Inc. in Philadelphia.

3. 1940

   A shoulder injury ends Musial's pitching career in the minor leagues.

4. 1941

   Musial debuts with the St. Louis Cardinals.

5. 1948

   Bowman issues its 48-card black-and-white set; Musial is #36.

6. Apr 25, 1948

   Musial collects his 1,000th career hit.

7. Sep 22, 1948

   Musial's fourth five-hit game of the season ties Ty Cobb's 1922 mark.

8. 1948

   Musial hits .376 with 230 hits and 131 RBI and becomes the first three-time National League MVP.

9. 1956

   Topps buys Bowman for $200,000.

10. 1963

    Musial retires with 3,630 hits.

11. 1969

    Musial is elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

12. Dec 2007

    A PSA 9 copy sells at auction for $13,364.50.

13. May 20, 2012

    The only PSA 10, from Dmitri Young's collection, sells for $129,850.80.

14. Jan 19, 2013

    Musial dies at 92.

15. Dec 2022

    A PSA 7 copy sells in an online auction for $4,605.

The world in 1948

• Feb 21, 1948

  NASCAR is founded at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach, Florida.

• Apr 19, 1948

  The ABC television network begins broadcasting.

• May 14, 1948

  The United States recognizes Israel.

• Jun 24, 1948

  The Berlin Blockade begins, and the U.S. launches the Berlin Airlift.

• Jun 26, 1948

  Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" is published in The New Yorker.

• Oct 11, 1948

  The Cleveland Indians beat the Boston Braves to win the World Series.

• Oct 26, 1948

  A killer smog settles over Donora, Pennsylvania, Musial's hometown.

• Nov 2, 1948

  Harry Truman defeats Thomas Dewey and Strom Thurmond for president.

Daily price data

FLOAT reprices this card every day from completed sales. Last updated November 12, 2026.

No completed sale at PSA 7 is on record yet. The same card at other grades:

Every grade and recorded sale for this card

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, 1948 Bowman Stan Musial #36 RC is number 80 of 100 in the trading cards entries of the FLOAT 100. 97 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (16 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Musial missed the 1948 Triple Crown by one home run, and he hit one in a game that was rained out.
• His 3,630 career hits split exactly evenly: 1,815 at home and 1,815 on the road.
• In May 1948, after a newspaper criticized ballplayers for cigarette ads, Musial decided never to appear in one again.
• The 1948 Bowman set has no Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Browns, Washington Senators, Chicago White Sox or Chicago Cubs.
• Musial started as a pitcher; a 1940 shoulder injury in the outfield ended that career.
• His high school teammate Buddy Griffey was the father of Ken Griffey Sr. and grandfather of Ken Griffey Jr.
• The Musial card sat on the right edge of the printed sheet, which is why so many copies are miscut.