2014 Bowman Baseball
24 packs // 10 cards per pack
1 chrome auto in every box
Just for sake of clarity, I am a Bowman collector and Bowman (and Bowman Chrome) is my favorite issue of the year!
I received these in this hobby box:
127 unique paper base cards - 58% of the 220 card set
This year's design is a bit different than year's past, but still is clean and simple. The front has the action shot and a foil team logo middle of the bottom of the card (is that as clear as mud?) The reverse has personal stats and a Bowman Briefing of their career - Resume, Skils, and Up Close. Also included are 2013 stats and MLB career total stats.
Paper Prospects
Received 47 - 42.7% of the 110 set
These cards have the BP designation - Bowman Prospect. The best part of this issue / set is going back 5 years or more and attempting to determine who made it to the bigs and who is languishing in obscurity.
Chrome Prospects
45 Received -- 40.9% of the 110 set
Chrome has a designation of BCP.. Bowman Chrome Prospect. The chrome cards are much thicker than the paper and have a mirror-like finish.
Inserts
Ok - there are refractors - blue, red, black, green, gold, orange, (both mini and regular), there are die cuts, die cut auto'd superfractors, mini refractor autos, regular chrome autos, refractor autos of all colors, and I probably left out several. In the paper version, - blue, gold, yellow, orange, black, silver versions - along with flag versions.... and again, I probably missed one or a dozen.... i.e. there is something for nearly any type of collector in this issue.
Afterthought - silver ice, blue wave, red wave, ....
1 blue #ed to 500
Jordan Paroubeck
1 orange #ed to 250
Jason Heyward
1 Chrome refractor - Brandon Trinkwon #ed to 500
1 Silver (paper) - Andrew Cashner #ed to 75
4 mini chrome refractors
1 Black mini chrome refractor - Alen Hanson #ed to 15
Silver Ice - 1 - Salvador Perez
Flag parallel - 6x - both in the prospect and base set
'89 Bowman parallel - chrome - 1 - Bogarts
Top 100 chrome - 2x - Lee, and Bradley, Jr.
Gabriel Encinas
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Most if not all of the above mentioned inserts are in the hobby boxes... I don't know what other parallels will be in the retail (Walmart, Target, etc) versions.
Bowman is an iconic issue. It has players pictured in the Prospect set, that will probably only have one card in their playing career and that's one of the aspects of this issue that I enjoy the most. The set builder, the player collector, and the rookie collector should be very pleased with this issue - the master set builder - not so much - waaaaaaay too many inserts and parallels to collate.
The autos are all on card autos (at least I have not seen any stickers - even on the 'bay) and they look great!
The '89 Bowman chrome - the autos on these cards look real. I know that they aren't, but several of them - one nearly has to look the second time to see that they are printed on the card -- well done!
Overall grade A - maybe too many parallels/inserts (did I just type that?)
Go buy a bunch of boxes and send the Rays chrome parallels to me!
Duane
