2011 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects Baseball
Special thanks to Topps for this 2011 Bowman DP&P review box.
Hobby Configuration: 24 packs per box. 7 cards per pack.
Two Popular Brands In One Product – Bowman and Bowman Chrome! Highlighted by Top Picks from the 2011 MLB Draft
PLUS BRYCE HARPER Autographed and Autograph Relic Cards!
PRODUCT HIGHLIGHTS:
- One On-Card Bowman Chrome card per box
- One Team USA Baseball 16U Chrome Autograph Card Randomly Inserted as an Additional Hit!
- 92 Exclusive MLB Prospects found only in Bowman DP&P
- Bryce Harper On-Card autographs and relics
- Each pack contains 2 Bowman cards, 2 Bowman Chrome cards, 3 Future or USA baseball stars, 1 parallel
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION:
- 110 Card Rookie Base Set (2 Bowman, 1 Bowman Chrome per pack)
- Bowman Parallels: Blue #/399, Red #1/1, Printing Plate #1/1 (4 Colors),
- Bowman Chrome Parallels: Refractor (1 in 4 packs), Blue #/199, Gold #/50, Orange #/25, Red #/5, Superfractor #1/1, Printing Plate #1/1 (4 Colors), All New Canary Diamond #1/1
- 110 Card Draft Pick Base Set (3 Bowman, 1 Bowman Chrome per pack)
- Bowman Parallels: Blue #/399, Red #1/1, Printing Plate #1/1 (4 Colors),
- Bowman Chrome Parallels: Refractor (1 in 4 packs), Blue #/199, Gold #/50, Orange #/25, Red #/5, Superfractor #1/1, Printing Plate #1/1 (4 Colors), All New Canary Diamond #1/1
- 16 Bowman Prospect Autograph Cards
- 34 Bowman Chrome Prospect Autograph Cards
- Parallels: Refractor #/500, Blue #/150, Gold #/50, Orange #/25, Purple #/10, Red #/5, Superfractor #1/1, Printing Plate #1/1 (4 colors)
- 20 USA Baseball 16u Autographs
- Parallels: Refractor #/199, Blue #/99, Gold #/50, Purple #/10, Red #/5, Superfractor #1/1, Printing Plate #1/1 (4 colors)
- 6 AFLAC All American Autographs (1 in 1036 packs)
- 43 Futures Game Relics - from the 2011 MLB Futures Game
- 42 Futures Game Jumbo Patches - from the 2011 MLB Futures Game (1 in 7700 packs)
- 42 Futures Game Logo Patches - from the 2011 Futures Game
- Bryce Harper Autographs Relic #/69
- Parallels: Blue #/50, Gold #/25, Green #/5, Red #1/1
- Bryce Harper Bowman Green Autograph #/350 - new parallel of his 2011 Bowman card, autos are on-card
- Topps 60th Anniversary Autographs - 3 more players are added to the cross-brand set, each #/60
Here is what I pulled from our box of 2011 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects
Rookie Base Cards
The base Rookie set is a black bordered set with green trim, featuring real nice shots of the players in action. My personal favorites are some of the pitchers' cards. The shot catches them in their throwing motion, which makes their arms look as if they're not actually attached to their body. They're pretty awesome. The player name, team logo and position are in silver foil and each card is stamped with the familiar Topps/Bowman rookie card logo. The back of each card gives their stats from last season as well as a "Bowman Briefing" which features a few comments under the headings of "Resume", "Skills" and "Up Close". There are 110 cards in this half of the base set and in our box we pulled 47, or 42% of the set, with no duplicates.
Prospects/Team USA Base Cards
Also included as a base set this year are the 90 cards that are exclusive to this product and the 20 Team USA cards. The 90 exclusive cards are also black bordered, but with a white trim. The players' names and positions are in the silver foil and each card is stamped with the 1st Bowman Card logo. The majority of these cards feature action shots of the players, but there are some that are staged photos. Some of the cards feature facsimile autos on them. Those players are the only players in the set to have real autographed cards in the set. I'll say this about them, some of them look real enough that I thought a had gotten a couple extra hits in the box. The back of these cards features the same information as the Rookie base set. The Team USA cards all feature the facsimile autos and also feature the USA Baseball logo. The back of these cards feature no stats, but rather a longer Scouting Report on the player. In our box we pulled 72 of the 110 cards in this base set, also with no duplicates, for 65% of the set.
Bowman Chrome Base Cards
In every pack of Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects, you will find 2 Bowman Chrome cards, 1 from each of the 2 base sets. You'll also find refractor versions of the cards at a rate of 1 every 4 packs. I mention it in every Topps or Bowman review I do...the Chrome cards just always look so sharp, and this set is no exception. The players just pop off the front of these cards. In our box we received 27 of the 100 Rookie Base Chrome cards and 26 out of the 110 of the Prospect and Team USA base set. That comes out to 25% and 24% of the sets, respectively. And again, no duplicates. We did double up some of the base and Chrome, but only a small handful of those doubled up.
Parallels and Refractors
As most Topps products do, this set features several different parallel sets, most of which are numbered. In our box, we pulled 1 numbered Blue Parallel of St. Louis Cardinals prospect, Tony Cruz. This card has a blue border, replacing the black, and is numbered out of 499. As promised, we did pull 6 Refractors out of our box, 3 from each base set. We only pulled the base Refractors though. Nothing colored or numbered in this box. When Topps first started including Refractor cards in their product, you could barely tell them apart from the regular chromed cards. In recent years, that trend had changed as the Refractors became very noticeable. For this product, however, I had to look at the back of the card to see if they're Refractors. Don't get me wrong, they're awesome looking cards, but there just isn't much noticeable difference between the base chrome and the Refractor sets.
Relics and Autographs
As you can see, we only pulled one hit out of our box this time around. It's an autograph of Tampa bay Rays Shortstop prospect, Jake Hager. The card is just the same as the base, but the facsimile signature is replaced with an on-card auto in blue ink. Ours came through with a very slight smudge on the 'J', but I'd wager that's because ink will take a touch longer to dry on the chrome cards than on a regular base card. Our card has a nice signature and it's well centered.
Final Thoughts on 2011 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects Baseball[/center]
My final thoughts on Bowman DP&P are that it's a very sharp looking set. The Chrome cards are very nice and I love that all the autos are on-card this year. I'm not a big fan or collector of prospects sets. I'm not that informed on who the good prospects are and who are the career minor-leaguers. That being said, if I'm not going to recognize most of the names on the cards, I would have like to seen a larger selection of parallels. The set has a ton of parallels and we only got 1 out of the box, so that was a bit disappointing. Anyone who reads my reviews, though, knows that one of my biggest pet peeves is a ton of duplicates. That's my #1 irritant, I think. And in that respect, this box was stellar. No base duplicates or chrome duplicates out of either set. And when comparing the chromes to the base, there are few doubles there as well. So, kudos to Topps for continuing to make card collecting...collectible, if that makes sense. I could probably pick up another box of this and have the entire base set and most of the chromes. Also, and few people mention this, but most sets will randomly insert their checklists in packs and many times, you end up not getting the full set of checklists. In this case, we got all 3 checklists. The auto is very nice and Hager is a 1st round pick of the Rays. These boxes can be found online for $60, so the value is definitely there for this product.
Here's how I would rate this product:
Value = 5
Innovation = 4
Fun and Experience = 4
Rebuy Value = 5
I rate this product an "B+" for Topps! I'd have loved to see more parallels in the box. But you can't beat this for prospects and for set collectors.
NPN Information
NPN 2011 Topps Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects Baseball
PO Box 763
Pittston, PA 18640
Only 1 card per envelope, postmarked by February 22, 2012 and received by February 29, 2012.
I would like to thank Topps and Trader Retreat for giving me the opportunity to review this new product.
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Cards from this break will be in a contest on the Baseball Forums soon...so keep an eye out for it!
