In December 2005, Mastro auctioned off the original photo archive used to create the 1950 Bowman baseball set. Most pictures were described as 7-1/2” x 10”, with a few smaller and odd sizes, mainly in EX/MT condition.
The lot comprised 252 photos representing 251 of the set’s 252 cards. Al Kozar (card 15) was missing, but a photo of Phil Marchildon (Philadelphia Athletics) was included. Marchildon was bumped from card number 140 for Pete Suder.
When I first shared the photo on Twitter, Keith Olbermann replied with the following photo and wrote, “Here’s the other shoe. I got this about 15 years ago: it’s a painting clearly designed for the 1950 Bowman set – except the team the guy is on, is Buffalo of the International League. And the player is…the bumped #140 Phil Marchildon. The assumption was Bowman had prepared some kind of IL set to match its 1949 PCL effort. Now I doubt it – though I wonder why they prepared Marchildon in a minor league uniform (albeit an accurate one). Surely if he’d made the set he would’ve been shown with the A’s.”
