1948 Bowman #4 Johnny Mize ROOKIE PSA MINT 9

1948 Bowman #4 Johnny Mize PSA 9 - Big Jawn in Mint Condition

The 1948 Bowman #4 Johnny Mize comes from the set that helped reintroduce baseball cards to a postwar generation, and it features a slugger who had already established himself as one of the game’s most dangerous hitters. Known as “Big Jawn,” Mize entered 1948 in the heart of an extraordinary power surge with the New York Giants. The year before, he had blasted 51 home runs, becoming the first Giant ever to reach the 50-homer mark. Bowman captured him here not as an emerging prospect, but as a fully formed superstar at the height of his offensive powers.

What transforms this particular card is the grade. At PSA MINT 9, this is an elite example from Bowman's landmark 1948 baseball issue. The set's compact black-and-white photography gives its cards an unmistakably early-postwar character, and seeing a Hall of Famer like Mize survive at the Mint level creates an entirely different collecting proposition. This is also Mize's recognized Bowman rookie card, giving the card an important place among the earliest mainstream postwar issues of baseball's established stars.

Mize's career deserves far more attention than his name sometimes receives. He finished with a .312 lifetime average, 359 home runs, and 1,337 RBI, leading his league in home runs four times and RBI three times. Remarkably, he also became the only player to hit three home runs in a game six different times during his career. After starring for the Cardinals and Giants, Mize joined the Yankees and added five consecutive World Series championships from 1949 through 1953 to his résumé before eventually reaching Cooperstown.