Bowman gave Willie Mays his first card in 1951, in a set of 324. For 1952 it cut the checklist to 252 and kept the small size, 2 1/16 by 3 1/8 inches, a little card in the year Topps made everything bigger.
The fronts are color artwork painted from photographs. Bowman dropped the name box it had used the year before and printed a facsimile signature across the picture instead. Mays stands at the plate in his Giants uniform, watching a pitch come in, under a clear and empty sky.
Number 218 is in the last part of the set, the high numbers from 217 to 252, which were scarcer than the series before them. The back carries his vital statistics above an advertisement offering a team cap for wrappers, and its write-up already mentions his Army service.
The back already mentions the Army. The front shows him at the plate, under an empty sky.
That service is what gives the card its place. Mays played thirty-four games in 1952 and hit .236 before he was inducted on May 29. He spent the rest of that season and all of 1953 at Fort Eustis, Virginia, and by his own estimate he missed about 275 games. The two 1952 cards, this one and the Topps, are the last of him before the gap.
The 1952 Bowman set is known for off-center and miscut cards, and gum stains turn up as well. On a card this small, a centering error takes up a visible share of the border.
