As I always say, prospects are the most volatile and highest risk/reward part of the hobby. I have broken down these “1st” prospects into four tiers based on a combination of my perception of hobby interest and my own personal long term hobby outlook. If I had to pick the one I am most interested in, it would probably be Jaylen Palmer, for whatever that’s worth. The exception here is for players that only have a Paper 1st Auto in Bowman, which can only be found in retail configurations, with no base cards - none of them are considered as potential every day MLB regulars and would all fall in my Tier None. Thus my focus will be on the players that do get their 1st Bowman Card* in this product. I think most of us already have good ideas and formed opinions on those players. There are various other vets, rookies, and prospects who have had 1st Bowman cards in previous releases. What I am going to focus on for my preview of the checklist is any player that has a 1st Bowman base card and/or 1st Bowman autograph in this product. Only one of three products each year will carry the cards with the 1st Bowman logo - Bowman Baseball (sometimes just called “Bowman”), Bowman Chrome, and Bowman Draft and all their associated “editions” (1st edition, Sapphire, etc.). Those denote a prospect’s very first Bowman card, which should be their first officially licensed card in their major league uniform. The most desired prospect cards are going to be the ones with the “1st Bowman” logo on it. Topps did sell direct a sealed Retail box last year as well which was 24 retail packs with no guaranteed hits. Loose packs, Cellos, Blasters, and perhaps a Mega box. While Topps rarely if ever announces retail formats, there will likely be all of the various configurations you would expect. Hobby boxes are running in the $300 - $350 range and Jumbos are around $600+. Hobby boxes will have one guaranteed auto while Jumbo boxes will have three guaranteed autos. There are two hobby configurations - a “Hobby” box and a “Jumbo” box. Bowman inserts tend to not be my favorite, and it seems like that will be the case again this year. The other subsets we’ve seen are the Futurist and Positional Promise inserts, and I am not really a fan. The die-cut gold nugget design is fun and supposedly short printed, so they will be likely selling for a lot. I like the throwback design, as always, which is using the 1991 Bowman design. There are various inserts all with various degrees of good to bad designs. I like the full border and I like the readability of everything, which I never really considered until we saw this year’s flagship design. The first time I saw the cards, my immediate thought was this looks a lot like 2016 Bowman with the Bowman and team logos swapping sides from 2016. The question a year later is will that level of hype carry over into 2021 Bowman Baseball? The Design His coveted “1st Bowman” card is in 2020 Bowman Baseball and he has had hype like no other prospect in recent memory. There were a couple of reasons for this, but the overwhelming reason was one Mr. 2020 Bowman Baseball was one of the hottest prospect products ever released.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |