Joy of Inked Vintage: The Great Del-Ink Mystery

It's been a while since I posted about one of the vintage Bowman cards I picked up from my LCS. For those of you that don't know, they have a few boxes of '50s Bowman cards that are bargain priced because the guy they bought the collection from wrote in ink on the cards. But a little ink never scared this collector.

In fact, I love a little ink when it means I get an awesome 1950 Bowman card of catching great Del Crandall for 3 bucks. Not a bad price for an 8-time all-star and 4-time Gold Glove winner. Along with Tigers, I'm always looking for vintage cards of catchers in gear, and you get the full effect of the '50s gear here. The gear here is very cool, as is the background, and the signature '50s Bowman blue skies. This card just screams, "Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks."

What I can't really figure out is the writing on this card. Usually, on most of the inked cards, the guy wrote the name of the team the player was traded to. But what do we make of this? I'm thinking this is in reference to Jesse Flores, a mediocre pitcher from Del's era. But why write Jesse's name here? What do the letters after mean? It's like a Ginter crack-the-code kind of deal. Oh well. The point that matters most is that this ink allowed this card to fit into my budget.