2011 Bowman Baseball Cards

Product Review

2011 Bowman Baseball Product Review

Reviewed By Paul Lesko

Good: Great auto checklist and good card design. Thankfully, fixed the Bowman chrome “bends" problem from 2010.

Bad: You want to pull Bryce Harper, but you likely won't. But you're paying the Bryce Harper tax. Also, majority of each pack is the Bowman base set which while OK is not what you buy Bowman for. No Team USA cards this year.

The Bottom Line: Topps wanted to repeat the level of success it had with 2010 Bowman on the shoulders of Steven Strasburg and thanks to Bryce Harper, 2011 Bowman has largely done just that. But even without Harper, this is a very complete product that contains enough desirable high profile prospect autographs in the product to keep everyone happy.

Card Design: 4.2/5.0

The prospect set, chromes and autos are well designed, especially since the Bowman chrome bends have been fixed. While some like the base set, it's not what I buy the product for, so I believe too much of each pack is dedicated to cards I'll file awhile and likely never see again. The insert cards are mixed. The Topps of the Class and Bowman Brightest cards are decent, but the Bowman Best cards try too hard to be artsy, and just end up ugly.

While I understand the split between Bowman chrome autos in hobby and Bowman autos in retail, I would prefer the more high end autos to be confined to chrome (e.g., Harper and Pineda). Topps is likely saving the Bowman Chrome auto of Harper for its 2011 Bowman Chrome product (ala Strasburg), but I feel Topps missed out by relegating Pineda to retail packs.

Checklist: 4.8/5.0

I love the autograph checklist. Paul Goldschmidt, Dee Gordon, Jurickson Profar, Brandon Belt, Mike Pineda, Jeremy Hellickson, Stetson Allie, Jedd Gyorko…I could go on. There's even another Aroldis Chapman auto, for those of you who like following Cincinnati's Chapman experiment. Oh yeah, that Harper guy has an auto too. But I think I mentioned that thirteen times already.

The base set has everybody a base set collector may want, and I'm not sure if this was intentional, but I think the Manny Ramirez card with the towel on his head (throwing in the towel anyone?) may be the most collectable.

Value: 4.0/5.0

The hobby box price has leveled off to around $90 per box, which makes it less expensive that Bowman 2010, but still more expensive than previous Bowman products. Depending on which product you buy (hobby vs retail), you'll miss out on some autos. Harper and Pineda autos are only in retail, so for those loyal hobby box purchasers, you're pretty much relegated to hoping you pull a chrome (non-auto) prospect of Harper. And with retail odds worse than hobby box odds, the only place you'll likely see a Bowman Harper auto is on eBay.

At this price point, and unless you feel lucky (only one auto per hobby box), it almost makes more sense to spend your $90 on a couple good, chrome prospect autos (refractor preferably), and wait a year to buy a complete 1-110 prospect set.

The Fun Factor:

Who am I kidding? This is one of the premier prospecting products…it's beyond fun to bust these boxes. We're going to buy the hobby box betting that we'll hit a gold, orange or red refractor auto of Goldschmidt or Gordon, with the assurance of also knowing the odds are good that we'll at least get Harper's BCP1 or a Harper insert (case in point: I didn't hit Goldschmidt or Gordon, but I did get a Harper insert).

Then, we'll buy retail rack packs (from what I've heard, they have better odds than blaster boxes) in the hopes of getting a Harper or Pineda auto. And that's fine, because part of the Bowman product is the hope of hitting the big autograph. Everyone knows, it's better to dream about pulling a Harper auto from a pack, than to shell out over a hundred dollars on eBay for the same card.

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