2013 Bowman - Baseball
24 packs - 10 cards per pack
'One auto card in every box'
I received the following:
106 base cards (220 total) or 48% of the base set
and 46 Bowman Prospect base - (110 cards) or 42% of the base set
NO DUPLICATES! - very good.
This is the hobby box. The Bowman set is very similar to previous years issues. The prospect cards have a different design on the front and the reverse is in white - while the reverse on the veterans cards is in grey. The reverse again has the Bowman Briefing - consisting of Resume, Skills, and Up Close along with personal and pro (minor league/college) stats.
Numbering of the cards is relatively easy to read and as far as I can tell - each number is unique - no double numbers and no skipped numbers!!
INSERTS
Parallels
One should receive golds, blue or 2, orange, and an ice parallel or 2.
I received 24 gold - both vet and prospect
2 silver ice
1 Blue
1 Orange
Mini/Chrome
One refractor and 4 mini-refractors
The mini refractors have 5 -player cards per MLB team - total of 150 cards. There are also colored parallels - red, blue, etc....
I received 38 chrome prospects.
Flag and Refractor Parallels
The refractors also have colored parallels - gold, blue, orange, red, and black.
Retro Chrome and Top 100 Chrome prospects
I received 6 Flag parallels and 2 Top 100 chrome prospects
Auto
Dorssys Paulino
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If you have been reading any of these reviews, one should know that I am a Bowman collector. I have probably 98% of all Bowman sets issued since 1991 and waaaaay too many extras to count. This issue is no different. Yet, this issue so far is one of the most expensive base products ever. Hobby boxes are going for $75 - $90 and jumbos are $140-$170 each. Jumbos have 12 packs and one receives 3 autos per box - getting pretty steep for the average collector.
I still like and collect Bowman. I believe that this issue is good for the set collector and the player collector - not so much for the master set builder (way too many parallels to chase!)
The autos - very well done! All are on-card in blue Sharpee. They look fantastic and are done the way auto'd cards should be done!! Thank you Topps!!
I like the Top 100 prospect insert set - but only receiving 2 per box is rather slim and makes building the set pretty challenging. There are also die cut versions and auto'd versions (if I am not mistaken.)
The mini refractors are cool and look great. Again, 4 mini's per hobby box makes the 150 set rather daunting - but doable, if one has the time and the deep pockets to chase them all down.
Overall grade A
Go buy several boxes and send the Rays parallels to me!!
Duane
