Coffee Break:2021 Bowman Baseball Hobby Box

*Coffee is ready and now I will be hankering to prospect for some breakfast. Speaking of prospecting...*

One of my yearly must have products from baseball is Bowman.

Being a true rookie card chaser, Bowman is a product loaded top to bottom of them. So it always hits the spot when it comes to baseball rookie card chasing for me.

Today, I will be ripping a Hobby Box of it but I also lucked into some retail cello packs I will break on here as well at a later time.

But, enough is enough with my rambling. Let's do some breaking!

*takes a sip, begins to rip*

Every hobby box of 2021 Bowman baseball comes with 24 packs of 10 cards each. Each box has one autograph and currently boxes are running $250.

*takes another sip before moving on with the product*

Bowman offers a 100 card checklist filled with veterans

and all of the top rookies.

The design is okay and sticks to the Bowman feel. One fun thing I spot about the design is the "scroll screen" in blue that runs across the top and bottoms of the cards telling us if they are a veteran, rookie or prospect and I find that kinda fun. It's like watching the stock market which many may watch Bowman that way.

As always with Bowman, there are some parallels for the base cards. Here is this years offering, Sky Blue /499, Neon Green /399, Fusica /299, Purple /250, Blue /150, Green /99, Yellow /75, Gold /50, Orange /25, Red #/5, Platinum 1/1, and Printing Plates 1/1.

Here is what I pulled:

Anthony Santander Neon Green /399

Along with the base card rookies, Bowman also offers plenty of prospect cards which is a separate set from the base. There is both "paper" and chromed or as I would call it chromed and non chromed versions.

Up first, the paper versions.

This year there are 150 Prospects to chase and these are the key ones I found in my box.

There are also parallel offerings for the paper prospects which are the following. Camo, Sky Blue /499, Neon Green /399, Fusica /299, Purple /250, Blue /150, Green /99, Yellow /75, Gold /50, Orange /25, Red /5, Platinum 1/1, and Printing Plates 1/1.

Here is what I pulled,

Nick Yorke Neon Green /399

Now onto the chromed prospects.

The chromed prospects are just the paper prospect checklist chromed. It's that simple. But, everything chromed is better honestly.

I didn't pull many key rookies for the chromed versions. My better pulls were in paper.

As we all know, when there's chrome, there is refractors. There is also a good chance there will be plenty of them to find as well.

Here is this years offering,

Atomic, Refractor /499, Speckle /299, Purple /250, Fuchsia /199, Fuchsia Shimmer /199, Blue /150, Blue Shimmer /150, Aqua /125, Aqua Shimmer /125, Green /99, Green Shimmer /99, Green Mini-Diamond /99, Yellow Mini-Diamond /75, Yellow /75, Gold /50, Gold Shimmer /50, Orange /25, Orange Shimmer /25, Red /5, Red Shimmer /5, SuperFractor 1/1, and Printing Plates 1/1.

Here is what I pulled,

Speckle /299

Atomic

Refractor /499

Now I don't know if any of these prospect refractors are anyone or not, but that's the fun about collecting rookies and hoarding them. You just never know.

That does it for base, prospects and parallels. Now onto the inserts.

*takes a sip, gets ready for the inserts*

Futurist. This is a fun colorful design and I found my boy Jasson in this break. T
here are 20 cards in this set and they fall 1:6 packs.

Talent Pipeline shows all of the upcoming prospects for a team. These fall 1:12 packs and have 20 cards to collect.

 

Nothing better than taking an old Topps/Bowman design and chroming it and that's what we have here with 1991 Bowman. There are 25 of these to collect and fall 1:8 packs. This set features a mix of veterans and rookies.

Falling 1:4 packs, I bet you didn't guess that the Top 100 prospects have 100 cards in the checklist now did ya?

You will find Positional Promise 1:8 packs covering more of your rookie favorites.

Speaking of favorites, here are this years Rookie Of The Year Favorites. These fall 1:8 packs with 15 cards to collect.

I should also mention before I finish up the inserts and move onto the hits is that you can find insert parallels as well. Look for the following, Atomic /150, Aqua /125, Green /99, Gold /50, Orange /25, Red /5, and SuperFractor 1/1.

Now the final piece of my Bowman break, the hit.

*takes a sip before the big, well, not big reveal*

Luis Frias. Pitcher, Diamondback, ugh. Though it was nice to see a parallel /25. I forgot to look up the odds of pulling such a card but I am certain it is not easy.

*finishes up showing off Bowman break, time for some breakfast after I finish up this post*

Overall, I landed some of the good prospects and rookies and that makes me happy. Also landed a lot of the no-namers as well and those will fill in future rookie card parts of my collection.

Price is a little steep but what box isn't right now. I think if you are one who looks at value, right now this would probably be ugly. If you are a patient value collector, that's where Bowman pays dividends.

For me though, I prefer retail just to land some of the rookies I want. I don't care about the autograph piece as mine is usually a poor find and sometimes you are lucky to find an autograph retail.

Ratings (ratings based on 1-5 🍵 on this break. Ratings are not based on overall product run)

Design 🍵🍵
Photography N/A
Inserts 🍵🍵🍵🍵
Hits 🍵
Price 🍵1/2
Value 🍵🍵 1/2

The Better Experience

*coffee grounds in my coffee this morning, 2020 summed up in one cup. Guess I will have to brew another. In the meantime, let's talk about a real nice surprise Clark. Sorry inner Christmas Vacation coming out. I will cut it out with the early morning cheesy jokes and get onto a seriously good mail day*

 

The jury is still out on Trading Card Database for me, but, I recently had a very positive moment from the site that may give me some light about giving the website a second chance.

On my Set Help post for 1995 Fleer Prospects, I had a comment from Trading Card Database member jimetal7212 who said he had a couple of the cards for my set chase and just to contact him with my address. I was both caught by surprise, excitement and questioning it since I didn't remember ever having any interactions with him.

 

 (Steve Walsh understood my feelings)

 

But, I gave him my info and he sent me two cards for that set and so much more.

 

(if these don't scream 90's not sure what does)

 

Jack Jackson and Rob Johnson were the cards I needed for the 1995 Fleer NFL Prospects set. This is a set I am ever so creeping towards and only am 4 cards away out of the 20.

*takes a sip, gets excited to show off the rest of the mail day*

Not only did he send those two, but also sent a bunch more set help,

1995 Ultra Achievement

 

 

  

 1995 Pinnacle

 

 

 1995 Fleer Ultra Gold Medallion

 1995 Score Red Siege (I believe I am halfway there to this one)

 

1994 Fleer Pro Visions

 

I was blown away! Never had any interaction with this person but they took note of my bad experience on the TCDB website to make it better. Imagine if rest of the world did this in the hobby or in real life. What a world we could live in.

 

*drinking a fresh hot cup of coffee makes this post even better* 

 

That's the kind of experience I kept hearing others talk/blog about when it comes to using TCDB. It surely wasn't like my first time there. I guess it is like real life. You just have to meet the right people. Or even maybe like a cup of coffee. Sometimes there is some coffee with creamer and other cups with straight up cup grounds in it like my first experience.

With this moment that had me feeling like this I may go back again give the website another try to see if I can have other good experiences.

 

Maybe the more good people like jimetal7212 I meet, my circle can grow from there. Who knows, I think the most important thing is they've got to accept and take a chance on me and also realize I won't be posting any trade bait or doing collections. Like the meme that I see go around on Facebook all of the time, "Ain't nobody got time for that", I simply don't have the time to add in thousands of cards. I am a "what do you collect and let me see what I have type of trader" and do all of my cataloging on blogs which this one will be fully updated with soon.

Thank you again jimetal7212 for being a positive light in the darkness I felt on that website or in coffee terms, thanks for being the creamer and making my cup brighter.

*breakfast time with the next cup, coffee blogger out*