2023 Bowman: Insights and what to expect going forward.

 

Its been 2 and half weeks and Bowman does not fail the hobby with its gamma of the newest and hottest prospects per collectors choice! We will highlight so far the favorites and respective early prices. Names like : Lazaro Montes, Cam Collier, Josue De Paula, Junior Caminero, Gabriel Gonzalez, Justin Crawford and Spencer Jones among others have been the leaders of this set. The clear 5 star general price wise has been no other than Drew Jones.

We can expect in the coming months a market correction on prices, as the product will slow down and more product is opened up. As with other Bowman releases this current product has shown us many new parallels that for many new collectors are enjoyable, not so much for Bowman purists collectors. Blue lunar, Rose Lava , Green grass and Pearls are born in this historic release and to my knowledge not many collectors are happy on the introduction of more parallels. Pearl has been widely accepted  and more so with autographs been limited to only /10! Hobby boxes has a new feature added, and that is a 1 per box Pearl pack with the possibility of a Pearl auto out of /10! This is a plus in my book for collectors on a budget and not willing to spend on the jumbo box. 

This years release has been a little ruff on breakers, have seen many instances of they not been able to fill the breaks as many of the teams have either good prospects or just do not have any autos as the case for the Washington Nationals. My impressions so far are that many new collectors have joined the ranks of Bowman collecting and that many people out there are not studying or prospecting correctly when it comes to buying autographs in the open market. This will leave a lot of early investors in a loss of capital when market corrects it self in the coming weeks.

Top ten players on eBay and private market are for regular autos are taken into consideration here:

1. Druw Jones $530 Average - After Market Correction Prediction $275

2. Junior Caminero - $261 Average - After Market Correction Prediction $225

3. Spencer Jones - $240 Average - After Market Correction Prediction $200

4. Cam Collier - $195 Average - After Market Correction Prediction $150

5. Matt Mervis - $185 Average - After Market Correction Prediction $160

6. Lazaro Montes - $105 Average - After Market Correction Prediction $80

7. Justin Crawford - $95 Average - After Market Correction Prediction $75

8. Gabriel Gonzalez- $76 Average - After Market Correction Prediction $55

9. Josue De Paula - $61 Average -  After Market Correction Prediction $50

10. Gabriel Gonzalez- $76 Average - After Market Correction Prediction $55

All of the samples reflect current market prices and will eventually depend on prospects productivity and injury factors as you may already know. Color autos have been much more active and very volatile as it is a common thing with new Bowman releases. Pearl Autos are commanding premiums as they have taken a liking to collectors out there and been a new parallel. My advice is if your going for true colors autos and low serial number parallels you should buy with extreme carefulness. Remember always invest what you are willing to loose!

Bowman Twitter Cards and Autographs - The Marketing Genius of Topps - Bowman Oddities #4

Welcome to the 3rd Episode of Bowman Oddities. We will be talking about this 2 year Topps promotion that was set as a marketing program set to create more promotions towards collectors following Topps on Twitter and create  engagement on their part, growing more on the social media giant.

2015 Bowman Twitter Packs

The Beginning:

 Topps was experimenting a sense of loss on market share, prospecting on the 2010-2016 years was suffering as collectors were more focused on other hi end products that were based of the stars of back then, also the "Trout Era" was in full effect and collectors wanted more the chase of this future star than to prospect and chase the next gamma of prospect stars. In order to get collectors back into the "Prospectors Bandwagon" Topps team formulated a formula to get collectors involved once again on Bowman products by enticing people to follow them on Twitter and to share or retweet their promotion in order to enter a random drawing in order to get the special Twitter Blue cards, with the surprise on the end of the days you had chance to enter that there were in fact going to be live autos the the special packs. Rules to get one of 150 Twitter packs was to stay tuned to their Twitter account for news on the drawings and what you had to do in order to qualify , you had to follow them at @bowmancards. Each pack had 9 cards in total, all limited to /10 and 1 Autograph per pack limited to /3! The promotion was for 2 of the 3 principal Bowman products, these were Bowman and Bowman Chrome from each year, Bowman, Bowman Chrome and Draft. Promotion on 2015 started on September 17th until November 7th. That was the window you had to enter the contest to see if you got lucky with one of the most awaited free packs ever from Topps!

2016 Bowman Chrome Twitter Auto Fernando Tatis Jr. /3

Back of the card

2016 Bowman Chrome Twitter Juan Soto Auto /3

Back of the card

In conclusion this cards were a treat for everyone using social media back then and to all Bowman collectors out there, It is my opinion that Topps should bring back this kind of contests more now that the hobby is in a all time high and with the integration of new enthusiasts it should be a every year option so people can have a nice chance to win a unicorn or at least win some joy into their collecting. 

2020 Bowman Draft 1st Edition - The Continuation and New Format - Bowman Oddities #3

 

Welcome to another Bowman Oddities Episode, in this one we will discuss the 2020 Bowman Draft 1st Editions, this prospect class without a doubt is epic and big on great and elite prospects. 

After Topps saw the reception on the inaugural 1st edition Bowman issue, they took to heart the online chatter about the QA/QC issues involving the past autographs from that edition. The decided to make it simple, less of a checklist for autographs and create a new rainbow of colors and serial numbering for this autographs. Topps also added a new logo for the Autographs, in this case the were a printed logo, not a stamped foil logo as their ancestors. 

Refractor Autograph /30

Blue Refractor /20

Red Refractor /5

Rose Refractor 1/1

Reception was mild to the hobby as many collectors back then experienced the ordeal with the "Smudged Autos Gate" and most of them waited on buying the packs or boxes until they had confirmation that quality by Topps was up to standards. Little by little people were pulling them, and seeing the new format and that the quality was improved immensely, making this product a successful one by hobby and collectors. Checklist by Topps had the autographed cards list, something missing from the past 1st edition Bowman, this release had only 17 players with autos.

Heston Kjerstad

Spencer Torkelson

Zac Veen

Robert Hassell

Cade Cavalli

Max Meyer

Reid Detmers

Asa Lacy

Zach DeLoach

Patrick Bailey

Nick Bitsko

Jarred Shuster

Justin Foscue

Jeff Criswell

Carson Tucker

Casey Schmitt

Bryce Jarvis

This cards shouldn't be underappreciated, the do not lack of anything! Nice checklist, checked, Beautiful design, checked, great quality condition wise, checked! This was the hail Mary for Topps to regain the interest of collectors fans of the Bowman 1st edition releases, and to my knowledge it worked with flying colors. The also stated the serial numbers, so collectors would know in reality how many were made, introduced a 1/1 parallel with the Gold Rose and produced a proper checklist, things the predecessor issues lacked off. With out a doubt as time passes by this cards will be highly sough after and my guess is that many of them will remain in private collections or hoarded as we like to call it in the hobby universe. This is another not entirely understood Topps issue a long with many others, remember the phrase "Invest early or you will regret it" , well don't wait on it or be misguided by the hobby hype of new issues, rare is rare, and no one cant take that fact out of the equation! 

Bowman Chrome X - ( The Underestimated Topps product parallel) Bowman Oddities #3

 

In a wide range of Topps products there are always some of them that are long lasting and with a lot of following in the collectors universe. Enter Bowman Chrome X! Topps introduced this product with the intention of offering the xfractor treatment into the Bowman Chrome household, Xfractors are a exclusive parallel always known to be out into the Topps Chrome issues for the longest of times. The introduction came in 2019 in the form of the Bowman Chrome checklist, online exclusive and only 1 card per box.  On October 28th 2019, Topps partnered with the company StockX with them offering it as an "IPO" (Initial Product Offering) were they were auction off on the StockX website.

2019 Bowman Chrome X Box

There were 1,100 boxes available and the structure of getting one was that the customer was going to set the price in the application, a blind bid if you can say that. After the IPO was established people would pay based on the 1,100 bid price. They only took 1,100 bids based on production for the boxes, last bid would stated the price that selected bidders would pay per each box or case. For case bidding the were only 400 cases available in the same bidding frenzy. A total of 100 cards for the set, 65 1st Bowman prospects and 35 MLB rookies. Green prospects and rookies were serial to /31. All of them were PSA graded and Topps guaranteed you could get no lower than a PSA 9 and with some of them been PSA 10's. There were no autographs in the 2019 edition of this boxes.

2019 Bowman Chrome X Pete Alonso Rookie /31

2020 Bowman Chrome X release promotion.

2020 Bowman Chrome X were same as 2019, no autographs and sold on StockX online exclusive, same as the year before this release. Checklist was composed of 39 rookies and 61 prospects for a total of 100 cards for the complete set. Same green parallels were /31 copies per each player, the new twist to this was the newest Gold Xfractors /3 copies per player and the Red Xfractors witch were 1/1's.Changing from 2019, the DropX release has tiered pricing with a certain number of boxes/cases allocated at each level. This means those buying first get the lowest price. That should be $70 per box and $350 per case on the low end and up to $110 per box and $550 per case on the high end.

2021 Bowman Chrome X Promotion.

2021 Bowman Chrome X ,These boxes are now sold directly from the Topps store. Whereas 2020 and 2019 had PSA-graded cards, the 2021 edition only mentions "encased" cards. Although the box received a price increase , these were not graded. In addition to Red (#/3) and Gold (1/1) X-Fractor parallels, one new addition is the limited Bowman Chrome X autograph insert, numbered to just five copies. To me this was a huge addition as we are always in the hunt for ink on our chrome cardboard. Checklist included 47 rookies and 53 prospects, making this a very rookie loaded product in comparison to other years.

2022 Bowman Chrome X Promotion.

This last released in my opinion was largely passed by a lot of collectors, not that the checklist is bad, I think the overload of Topps products killed what ever fan this product had in my honest opinion. This product was once again Topps online exclusive and matching the same price as the 2021 edition it came with a $149.99 price tag. Parallel color configurations changed, Orange new comer is /5 copies, Red to /3 copies and Gold 1/1's were all randomly inserted. Autographs stayed the same with only 5 copies per prospects with the difference that the color was green, 2021 featured Purple as the color for the signed prospects cards.

To my conclusion, I do think this cards are way unappreciated and the refractor pattern is part of the global Topps refractor line that should not be excluded for been an new introduction to Bowman since 2019. As time passes by I could see a cult following for this issues as they are that rare! Quality issues have played a part of these cards the last 2 years, have seen many autos from 2021 with corner issues and surface as well, people like to get their money's worth for something new, clean and without any damage. Since Fanatics took over, there is talk they are going to cut a lot of products to make way for new and improved ones, this one is one of those that I saw in a Topps memo that would not survive the cut. Hopefully Fanatics reconsiders and makes improvements to it, it would be a shame if this goes to the Topps graveyard without giving the tender care it sorely deserves!

2023 Bowman Preview and Insights

Welcome to a new story of the insights into the new 2023 Bowman release from Topps!

We will discuss prospects that you should look into, prices for this boxes and overall review of this long anticipated product that always causes the hobby to shake the ground and create an utopia among the old Bowman collectors guard and the new, sometimes misguided collectors trying to enter a complex world of prospecting and Bowman Collecting.

2023 Bowman comes out rolling with a new design, witch in my opinion look lovely, For what I have seen comment related to the design you either love it or do not. Design reminds me of an earlier Bowman release of back in 2013 in some aspects of the design. For sure the checklist is loaded of prospects we as old guard of bowman collecting were waiting for lots of these players back in 2022 Bowman products, making the checklist rich in nutritional prospect value and a highly interesting Bowman product. With Topps/Fanatics selling them via online orders the suggested retail price is roughly $279 for a hobby box witch includes 1 autograph and $379 for the jumbo box with 3 autographs included. This product will release by Topps on 4/26/2023.

2023 will feature Drew Jones, as its ambassador of the product, he was the #2 draft pick on the 2022 MLB Draft. Expect this prospect not to be cheap, I do expect his regular auto to be on the range of $300 - $500 out the door on release day, certainly not cheap. But there are a lot of value to be found in other prospects in this product, they will not be cheap, but not that high valued as Jones. Top ten prospects with their 1st autograph that will be hunted as collectors see the proper tools in them and a bright future are in no specific order;

1- Lazaro Montes (Seattle Mariners)

2- Spencer Jones  (NY Yankees)

3- Junior Caminero (Tampa Bay Rays)

4- Dyvison De Los Santos (Arizona Diamondbacks)

5- Cam Collier ( Cincinnati Reds)

6- Jacob Berry (Miami Marlins)

7- Emmanuel Bonilla (Toronto Blue Jays)

8- Manuel Beltre (Toronto Blue Jays)

9- Josue De Paula (LA Dodgers)

10- Alex Ramirez ( NY Mets)

Those prospects will be highly sought after and market on them with be very volatile, so please bid and buy with caution, In my opinion old Bowman prospectors go out the first week to buy the rare colors and low serials, not so much on the basic and high serial numbered stuff, so my recommendation is always study the market before making a purchase. For what I can see on the checklist there are a lot of super young guys in there (17 year old's) but also there are a lot of way mature prospects ages ranging from 23 to 25 year old's. 

Conclusion on this product is that for sure it is very discussed in the hobby circle that it is a rich checklist with lots of potential to be one of the best releases in some time for Bowman, meaning that if you really study the players and checklist, you will find lots of hidden gems in there for buying and holding very long term, as most of this players are very young and still very raw tools wise. There is other players that are further along into the minors, making them more eye candy for collectors as they are closer to the major leagues. In any case this will be an interesting release and a fun one for the ages, enjoy and properly calculate your spending, as the say goes; Only invest what you are prepared to loose!

Here is a chart for all of you guys hitting the break scene. This chart will guide you and help you out for teams rich in good prospects:

Checklist:  2023 Bowman Checklist

Please follow us: Instagram @bowman_chrome_society and Twitter @BCSociety01

Special thanks and credits to: Instagram / @ wax_junkie_muser for the charts

                           

                       

2020 Bowman 1st Edition Autographs ( The Beginning of a legacy) - Bowman Oddities #2

Episode- 2 (2020 Bowman 1st Edition Autographs)

2020 Bowman Jasson Dominguez Green Shimmer /99 Autograph

The Beginning:

Welcome to Episode #2 of Bowman oddities, I will discuss the highly rare and filled with conspiracy theories 2020 Bowman 1st Edition's Autographs that were inserted in the inaugural release of 1st Edition Bowman Baseball. During 2020, Topps released this issue with a lot of hurdles as we as a civilization were fighting against a world wide COVID 19 pandemic at full scale. This event cause a lot of businesses to be short handed in personnel in every respective industry, does making it hard in so many production areas that many of these products were not the quality we would expect sadly. Going by assumption and not facts, Topps released this product online exclusive in their Topps online shop on April 22 to April 24 2020 with various offers, this included you buying any amount of packs or the box witch was 24 packs per.

2020 Bowman 1st Edition Yordan Alvarez Rookie Autograph

The suspense: 

During those days,Topps Online site collapsed as everyone already had the checklist and with information and rumors that there were inserting live autographs people we more aggressive to buy this product with hopes of getting at least one autograph or a Jasson Dominguez color parallel as he was the highlight of the product back then. At a wrapper stated odds of 1:310 packs to get that anticipated autograph people went on the hunt to buy and break packs and boxes. First weeks of release autographs were not been pulled so often or collectors were not letting social media know that they in fact had pulled one, possibly waiting on how market were going to value this cards or simply just with plans of keeping them. Many online forum boards chatter was over the roof on if they had seen one on the wild or fueling rumors about them, for sure it was interesting times, we all were stuck home enjoying the hobby way more as COVID-19 was raging over the world sadly. Years after release this cards remain an enigma to many collectors, many thinking this were Topps rejects with a stamped 1st edition logo. Others think that the stamp process with heating destroyed most of the ink of those intended released autos on them.

2020 Bowman 1st Edition Autographs from collected samples around social media.

The Facts: 

Many of these issues were not color oriented, meaning that Topps simply took random colors to stamp and to insert randomly in packs. Many players have 2 or 3 colors autograph cards, colors that I have personally seen are; Regular non Refractor, Refractor, Purple, Sparkle, Green, Green Shimmer, Gold Shimmer, Orange Shimmer and True Orange. All of them have the original serial number out of the regular sheets when Topps printed them, meaning that they picked estimated 1 or 2 of each player to be stamped and inserted into packs. Not all of them have all the colors, this is very random, Some have just one or two issues, while others have 3 or 4 color variations, this is the case with Jasson Dominguez which I have personally seen 4 colors on sale over the years. People were pulling them, and with the autograph smudged they preferred to keep them than to try sending them to Topps, as they were aware that Topps did not guarantee the same replacement with the 1st edition logo. Many collectors were angry as these issues were so damaged in some cases, damages ranges to hard scratches on surface to smudge autographs the more common damage theme on them. Also, to add to the rarity and difficult fact,Topps never released information on them, no checklist, no information on how many per each player.

2020 Bowman 1st Edition Refractor Jasson Dominguez Autograph

The Conclusion:

These autographs will forever remain special in the sense of questions of; How many were stamped and inserted? Were all the players in the autograph regular bowman issue inserted with that stamp? Why Topps inserted this damaged cards into the production? Were all the colors of the Bowman Spectrum inserted? Questions that we will never know, and can only assume sadly, in my opinion this cards will be remembered in a not distant future as "Pandemic Card Issues", my thinking leads me to believe that people will start to focus more on those 2020 card issues just because of the world significance it had on a mark of historic world event, this was the year that people woke up to revive their lost passion for collecting, the world was uniting into something never experienced before by our generation. This sad events surely generated the interest and popularity we as collectors enjoy today in our hobby. Nonetheless, these cards are supremely rare, and it leads to my conclusion that Topps knew that even with the QC/QA issues on those autographs that they were to succeed on the business end, but do not believe they would create a culture of avid hobby enthusiastic collectors searching for smudged and damaged cards, but hey, that's us as a collective culture, we at the end love the rarity and mysterious ways of these industries. I guess we all are in the quote of Forrest Gump's mom in the movie, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get.”

Credits for Pictures and Information:

Pictures/ Twitter

@coast_cards

@OldTownCards - @CardsDerby - @HitKingsSC

@RipCityCards

@DreadKong

@BreaksGold

@GmMariners

@BigShepsCards

General Information:

www.prospects1500.com/baseball-cards/2020-bowman-1st-edition-online-exclusive-prospects-release/

Twitter: @Scotty_Ballgame - Scott Greene / Writer of Article 

Thanks for reading and your anticipated likes on this article, please share with your collector friends or Bowman hardcore collectors a like! Please Follow me on Twitter: @BCSociety01 and Instagram: @bowman_chrome_society

2013 Bowman Scouts Autographs - ( A Tribute to the Bowman Scouts ) Bowman Oddities #1

This is the start to hopefully large series of Topps Bowman oddities issues along the years of the Bowman trademark. We will highlight and explain every aspect and detail surrounding this issues and how rare they are to the Bowman collectors.  

2013 Bowman J.P Schawartz and Jeff Katofsky /25

This cards were randomly inserted and serialized to 25 issues per Scout, only 3 scouts cards were made and all of them were autographs, no parallels or single cards, all were autographs. Back in 2013 Topps used this as a gimmick and to honor their must valuable scout staff, this would be the start to Bowman introducing gimmicks and more so autographs. This year marks the 10th year anniversary of Topps introducing this and I can attest 80% of the collectors out there do not know this issues even exist! Sadly upon release back in 2013 Topps inserted them unannounced and they were left for dead sadly!  

Back of the cards with serial numbers.

Freddy Baroski 2013 Bowman Scout Autograph

Family and Friends Variation with no serial numbers.

Many of this issues were given from Topps to the respective scouts as "Family and Friends Issues" so they could gift them among their people and such. This issues do not have serial numbers in the back, many of them were personalized by the respective scouts as well.

Back of the Family and Friends Variation.

In conclusion, this cards are neat, not expensive and fun to search for them, maybe we as collectors will start a trend to collect this oddities just for the real fun of the hunt! I do hope we return to that mentality and leave the investing just when needed, lets be kids again and enjoy the pleasure we developed as kids!