1948-49 Leaf Stan Musial #4

the card

notes

Stan Musial reached the Cardinals in 1941. By the time a card company got around to him he had won the National League MVP twice, in 1943 and 1946, and three World Series. He was 28 years old and had no baseball card, because between 1941 and 1948 the war had taken the paper, the ink and the gum, and nobody was making any.

So he has two rookie cards, both from 1948, and this is the second of them. Bowman put out a black and white card in its 48-card set during the 1948 season. Leaf followed with this one, in colour, distributed during 1949. Both are recognised. The Bowman is the more collected of the two; this one is the harder to find.

What sits between them is the best season Musial ever played, and one of the best anyone has.

In 1948 he led the National League in eleven categories. He batted .376 with 230 hits, 135 runs, 131 runs batted in, 46 doubles and 18 triples, reached base at .450 and slugged .702 with 429 total bases. He struck out 34 times in 611 at-bats. His 39 home runs were a career high and left him one behind Ralph Kiner and Johnny Mize, who tied for the league lead at 40. One more and he would have taken the Triple Crown. He won his third and last MVP.

The Bowman came out before all that happened. This card came out after it.

The nickname arrived around the same time, and it came from the opposition. Brooklyn supporters at Ebbets Field, watching him walk to the plate again, started saying "here comes the man." Cardinals fans took it up. He finished with 3,630 hits, split exactly in half between home and road at 1,815 each, a .331 average, 475 home runs and 24 All-Star selections, and went into the Hall of Fame in 1969.

The population is the poorest of the set's five famous cards. Of 1,135 copies PSA has graded, none is a PSA 10 and two are PSA 9. Beckett has graded 114 copies, SGC 604 and CGC 18, and none of them has awarded a 10 either. Just 2.6 per cent grade PSA 8 or better - worse than the Ruth at 3.2 per cent and the Ted Williams at 4.5.

This card has a specific defect on top of the set's usual problems. Alongside the wandering colour registration and the drifting centring that affect everything Leaf printed, the Musial is known for print lines - visible streaks in the ink that are original to the press run. They are the single most common reason a copy that looks clean does not grade.

population

PSA

graded elsewhere

recorded 29 aug 2026. figures are a snapshot on that date, not a live count.

recorded sales

dated past results, not an estimate of what a copy is worth today. figures published by an auction house normally include the buyer's premium, so they are more than the seller received.

where to buy one

Two rookie cards means a real choice, and they are not the same purchase.

The 1948 Bowman is black and white, more widely collected, and easier to find in higher grade. This one is in colour, better looking, scarcer, and grades badly. Collectors who want the card usually end up here. Collectors who want the recognised rookie usually end up at the Bowman. Buying both is a legitimate answer and plenty of people do it.

Within this card, set your expectations to the set. PSA 3, 4 and 5 together account for 549 of the 1,135 graded copies and that is the market. A PSA 6 is a good example. A PSA 7 is scarce at 57 copies. Above that there are 27 PSA 8s and two PSA 9s recorded.

Look at print lines before anything else when comparing two copies at the same grade. Two PSA 4s can look very different depending on where the streaks fall, and the grade does not tell you.

Reprints of this set exist. Buy graded and verify the certificate number with the grading company.

what to check before you buy

Look for print lines. They run through the image as fine streaks and they are original to the press, not damage. They will not be described in the grade, so two cards at the same number can be very different objects. On this card specifically it is the first thing to look at.

Do not read misaligned colour as a fake. Registration wanders across this whole set and a halo around the figure is how these cards were printed.

Check centring on both sides.

Read the label for a qualifier. 62 copies carry one, five and a half per cent of the graded population.

Check which rookie you are buying. Both the 1948 Bowman #36 and this card are recognised Musial rookies, and listings sometimes claim he has only one. He has two.

And check the size before buying pages. These are 2 and 3/8 by 2 and 7/8 inches and will not sit in a standard modern sleeve.

sources