Nat Turner Shows Off His Favorite Pack
1948 was a big year for the new Bowman trading card company.
The first sets were released for baseball and basketball cards, but there was a stark contrast between those two sports at that time. Baseball was America’s pastime, while basketball was still picking up popularity. That was reflected in the print runs for the two products. Since more baseball cards were released than basketball cards, more have survived in the last 76 years.
Remarkably, only three packs of 1948 Bowman Basketball have reached the offices of third-party grading leader PSA. Two 8s and one 7 exist.
Nat Turner—CEO of Collectors, the parent company of PSA—has purchased both 8s in the past three years. Turner is a massive basketball card and pack collector, often showing off his eye-popping pieces from his impressive collection on his Instagram account.
Owning a pack from the first basketball—spelled as two words by Bowman back then—product is a little slice of basketball card history.
“It’s so cool,” Turner said. “It’s probably my favorite pack that I own.”
Collectors CEO Nat Turner
The ’48 Bowman Basketball packs are iconic. They are the start of modern-day basketball cards.
“Vintage basketball cards, in general, I think they’re incredibly undervalued and underappreciated,” Turner said. “There’s just not that many of them. If you look at ’57 Topps Baseball vs. ’57 Topps Basketball, there’s so much more baseball printed. They just didn’t print a lot of it, so there are not as many out there. Certainly, ’48 Bowman Baseball, there would be a lot more than ’48 Bowman Basketball.”
PSA has graded over 29,000 1948 Bowman Baseball cards compared to just over 14,000 1948 Bowman Basketball cards.
Tracking Down the Packs
Turner bought his first PSA 8 pack of ’48 Bowman Basketball in January 2022. The second PSA 8 was purchased at auction by a collector for $69,000 in July 2021. Turner then acquired that pack in July ’22.
“I bought the second one because I bought three packs from a guy. But I wanted the 1933 Sport Kings pack, which I successfully got,” Turner said. “He had that pack, the ’48 Bowman Basketball, and then a ’48 Leaf pack. I had to buy all three to get the Sport Kings pack.”
Turner—who isn’t sure of the owner of the ’48 Bowman Basketball pack in a PSA 7—recently ended up selling that second ’48 Bowman pack to a friend.
An Iconic Set
The ’48 Bowman Basketball set consists of 72 cards spread out into two series of 36 cards apiece. The most valuable card and recognizable name in the set is Minneapolis Lakers center George Mikan. The first true big man, Mikan’s rookie card has just over 400 copies graded by PSA, with one reaching a 10 status and four garnering 9s.
Mikan is card No. 69 in the set, meaning it appears in Series 2. Turner doesn’t know if his pack contains Series 1 or 2 cards.
According to Turner, every vintage pack that PSA encapsulates first heads to Steve Hart, owner of Baseball Card Exchange and the king of authenticating unopened product.
When Turner purchased his ’48 Bowman Basketball packs, they had already been graded. Prior to slabbing the packs, Hart could have checked to see which series the pack came from.
“I’m pretty sure that the way that they do it, Steve Hart and the team here, is that they flashlight them during the grading process,” Turner said. “I’m very nervous about shipping packs. I don’t ship any of these things because the gum inside can shift around and poke holes through the wax wrapper. It’s a super common, well-known thing if you collect packs.”
Keeping it Sealed
Pack grading has recently become more prevalent in The Hobby.
Turner’s unopened pack collection is unrivaled. He’s always looking for the coolest and scarcest packs. Turner doesn’t worry about the grades of packs, just as long as they are real.
Turner figures he has opened around 10 pre-1970 basketball packs in his day and never had much luck, either because he did not pull great players or because the cards had centering and production issues. He knows well that keeping a pack sealed will, in most cases, be worth more than an opened pack. Despite the possible desire to open a pack, Turner has enough willpower to keep it closed.
“I’ve learned my lesson on vintage pack opening,” Turner said. “That’s part of why I do get packs graded PSA, including modern, is it’s damn near impossible to crack those holders out. It’s obviously possible, but it’s not easy or fun, and it creates a huge mess, and you could damage the pack and the cards. Having it in the holders prevents pretty much all urge.”
Turner knows how important these rare, unopened packs are to The Hobby.
“As a hobby purist, I currently view myself as a steward of this pack,” Turner said. “There’s no way I’ll ever own this pack through its life because I won’t open it. I’m just the current person who owns it. I kind of view it like art. I think I would be doing a disservice to The Hobby if I opened it. These rare packs, where there’s like two or three of them, if it’s a 1975 pack, there’s a ton of those boxes, but I view this stuff as hobby history.”
