2018 Bowman Baseball Cards

This is a solid product. I have opened a box of hobby jumbo and mostly retail blasters. I pulled a dj peters refractor auto out of the hobby box and some nice numbered refractors. In the retail i pulled a luis robert green refractor auto redemption and kieber ruiz green shimmer auto. Not to mention alot of nice numbered cards and inserts. Also pulled a few paper prospects autos as well. Its luck of the draw but people need to remember that in retail you can pull ohtani green refractor autos numbered out of 99 and better yet all the prospect chrome players have 99 green refractors and 99 green shimmer refractor autos in retail. Enjoy the hunt.

Me and my friend bought a case of Super Jumbo. NEVER AGAIN.

An entire case of garbage. We had one card worth more than a $100 and the rest of the autos were $1-5 cards.

$2300 on absolute garbage.

NEVER AGAIN.

The best.

Looking forward to the Chrome and Draft versions.

I just bought a hobby box of this Bowman and I am quite disappointed in the quality of product. The product is really overpriced for what you get. The sterling inserts and the bowman birthdays and the bowman trending inserts are all junk. Hardly any colored or numbered cards. only 1 autograph per box. Its just an Otani hype product. Nothing more.

Hmmm. Worth buying a Hobby box right?

How’s that ohtani hype now….lol but seriously bowman has probably never disappointed me this much since I’ve been busting wax as early as i can remember in my dad’s shop. Well maybe in 90 and then the next year. But definitely not since the chrome years started. I’d almost say I like this yers base set more than the entire rest of the master set, minus the pipeline insers, the rest have become way to redundant and this year’s Roy faves set is a joke. Bowman trending insetrts? You know which baseball players care about social media….none of them. Packs have become almost predictable in recent years and the parallels have gotten way out of hand in this product as well as every other. In recent years I’ve limited myself to only bowman and heritage was and it looks like next year it might only be heritage. I live this hobby, eat, sleep, and bleed it, fight with the wife about it but yet it keeps my late father right next to me, with that being said all the nostalgic aspects of it are missing these days. If Topps wants to continue to think they can print money without anyone noticing than anyone else is welcome to spend there hard earned money on it, I’m already to the point where I can’t bring myself to collect any active players at it is, but still was having a hard time resisting the thrill of opening pack after pack. So thanks, Bowman, I think.

bought some blasters at Target. Nothing new from previous years. Inserts are decent but not enough to say i’m amazed.

the card design is the same traditional approach and photo shots are in the safe zone without anything edgy or different.

card value for right now? Not worth it and not buying into the frenzy that is so artificially created by wholesalers and topps company.

Biggest waste of time and $$$ EVER. Burning $100 bills and posting it on Youtube would be a better use of your time.

I have opened 10 of a 12 box case of 2018 Bowman….No autos in any boxes, I have 2 left but No hope of finding any. This is what can make you rethink your card passion

The distributors are hurting this product. I normally buy several jumbo and a few hobby boxes. This year I bought 1 hobby and have no intention to buy any more or any jumbo. I might buy a few blasters if I can find at Wal-Mart. I wish topps would step in and say that’s enough price gouging. It will definantly affect where I spend my money in the future too.

I’ve noticed that the back of a lot of the chrome cards if held up to the light and at an angle show small “scratch like” marks. Is anyone else getting these. I’m getting too many of them.

I’m interested in checking this out. What does Hobby Jumbo HTA mean? I mean I’ve seen ‘HTA” before but nothing of what the HTA means…

Thanks in advance.

Opened 5 regular boxes today. Didnt get any auto’s or any numbered cards… Brutal.

This is a nice set and the cards look great but as usual Bowman Chrome cannot keep a straight border to save their you know what. Here we go again with the 90% of the cards made way off center. You’d think they could do a little better.

Would get 5 stars if not for greedy distributors driving prices so far up that the average collector won’t be able to get their hands on any. The backbone of the card collecting hobby, the local card shops, was cut back to almost no product. As far as the product itself, I couldn’t ask for much more. The paper cards are of course exactly what they were meant to be. But the Chrome cards and the colored parallels are stunning. I love the New variations of all the old colors. And the stock on the autographs and the numbered cards seems to have improved quality as well. There are a few new inserts that I like, but what’s up with the Bowman birthday cards? Those are kind of a cheesy addition to the lineup. My biggest question about this product is where are they hiding the Japanese signature Ohtani autograph cards? I still haven’t seen any in circulation, but we know they exist. I hope they are the reward for the lucky autograph redemptions, as I was lucky enough to pull one out of my last box of jumbo. So after opening a personal case of Hobby, 4 jumbo boxes, and countless retail… I am a huge fan of this product. As a big fan of most Bowman products, I love the subtle changes they made to the stock and color of the auto and numbered parallels, and the overall design of this years product. Now if only I can find myself some Ohtani ink!! Happy hunting…

Nice product, if you can find it of course. Went to 3 different Walmart’s before I finally found a couple of rack packs. If you want this product from retail and you see it at a Walmart, buy it because it was disappear fast.

I gave this product 3 stars now but who knows next week. At the current price you should do okay in terms of value as long as you pull a #’d prospect auto or key rookie auto and some nice parallels. As always, it’s a gamble. Some of these are selling nicely on eBay, others are all over the place. Of course, pulling an Ohtani auto is hitting the jackpot! I only indulged in on 2 jumbos at about $20 US ($27 CDN) each and lucked out – no Ohtani auto but did get an atomic refractor prospect auto and a top 100 refractor auto (2/3 autos expected from the box).

I recommend either doing what I did, a couple jumbos, if you can find them; regular hobby packs (and boxes) won’t be as good value, or jump in on a group break as most sites are randoming off the Angels. This product is disappearing fast and I can see obscene pricing by this time next month.

Thanks for the info, Trey. I love this site and all the interesting comments. My Target was sold out of Blaster boxes so I had to go over to Walmart, there were only three left there. Here is my breakdown.
Total cards: 80
Base Cards: 22 or 27.5%
RC: 13 or 16.2%
BP: 24 or 30%
BCP: 16 or 20%
BCInserts: 5 or 6.3%

I like the card design, the borders are a nice contrast to the full bleed Series 1 cards (I really liked that card design as well though). I also like the team logo being located in the bottom left corner since it makes arranging cards by team much easier. My favorite insert is the Bowman Scouts Top 100, really cool.
The chromium, as always, looks awesome especially on the San Diego cards where it’s almost golden.
And last but not least, my hit was a green shimmer refractor of Ronald Acuna – not bad for a fairly small retail market in the South. :)

I have been collecting for 30 years, I want my cards to have some value. If you don’t like prices of products put out then quit the hobby. Otherwise do the best you can and enjoy the ride. Makes breaking boxes more exciting, everyone wants something for nothing.

How can you blame the manufacturers for collectors imitating lemmings chasing the same 1 or 2 hottest of hot players? Lock in early on products you buy with reputable dealers / stores/ wholesalers etc. They are the ones driving up the price along with anticipated demand. If the price is too high then don’t open. For me the price is too high to gamble on Ohtani so I will get what I need second or third-hand.

I’m a huge Reds Fan so it’s exciting to see Hunter Greene get his due diligence. As far as the cost of the Jumbo Boxes; it’s supply and demand. You can’t blame Topps for driving up the prices when everyone is going crazy over the Ohtani cards. Thirty plus thousand dollars for an atomic refractor? It’s absolutely ridiculous. Good on Topps though. I gave it a two star however based on the correlation that I have seen during breaks. Out of a 12 Case Hobby Box, I’ve seen trips of the same player. Oh well. Wait another month and buy the cards you want for a fraction of the price. Happy Hunting!

Looks like a joke to me. I’ve seen many box breaks on Youtube and there’s not much in terms of quality baseball players. Bunch of nobodies for what they are charging for a hobby box. I haven’t seen an Shohei card yet.

What I meant is that they must have opened their boxes way before the release date since they had the time to send the cards for grading and to receive them back.

Trey, it appears that the cards don’t show up only a day or two earlier than the release date, since there are two guys who listed on eBay graded Rhys Hoskins cards some 10-12 hours ago. Is there a special pre-release date before the actual release? It happens with hockey cards too, but generally with collection sold in places such as Tim Hortons or Canadian Tire.

How many Japanese Versions are they of Ohtani ?

We will never get your money back without Ohtani auto,so I won’t break it.I will keep notice on second hand market to find a chance to buy it.

The card design/photography/player selection are fantastic! I am a collector for 55 years, and these cards are beautiful. Prices will go crazy on them!

Topps is getting really greedy with this type of “market” pricing based on a prospect autograph. Im really disappointed in them for ruining a great brand which I have always built sets of. Not this year. Sorry Topps.

Ultimately the product will be weighted by the class of rookies and autographs. Overall 2018 looks weak, aside from Ohtani. Pitchers typically don’t generate value and the non-ohtani prize is Hunter Greene. I guess throw in some McKay and that’s about it. The Hobby/Jumbo is so pricey I can’t possibly purchase that, so I’ll stick to retail.

I give it five stars because of all the excitement surrounding the Ohtani cards. As I write this, there are Atomic Chrome autos on ebay for over 30k!!! If that is not exciting enough for you, according to Trey’s release date the cards have not even officially been released yet.
Release Date: 04/25/2018
Hobby Box Configuration: 10 cards per pack, 24 packs box, 12 boxes per case
Jumbo Hobby HTA Configuration: 32 cards per pack, 12 packs per box, 8 boxes per case

I was lucky enough to order a hobby box from MLBShop/Fanatics for $67 shipped just as folks were going Ohtani crazy inflating the price of Heritage Hobby.
Like others have said this set seems to be the same rehash collection of prospect autos.
Admittedly I dig the ToppS1 Homerun Game and Bowman Retail Callup cards with codes. I always enjoyed the “Crash the game” UD inserts. I think they offer a collector a way to engage in a player or team that they might not otherwise explore… kind of like how fantasy teams force folks to study statistical value of players.
ASSUMING MLBS/FAN ever does ship my order…they done shady things in the past… I might find it hard to resist the immediate opportunity to triple my $. Even with Ohtani in base set I’m betting a handcollected set will be south of $40… Allowing it to be acquired with my net proceeds.

Guess I wont be buying Bowman this year. No base Ohtani’s, and the chance of pulling one of his autos is probably one in every ten thousand packs. Definitely not worth the exorbitant price. And why does Topps keep recycling the same old rookie autographs every year.

Agree with Paul and Matt. I look forward to Bowman every year but the price is insane this early. Usually you can get it somewhat cheaper at first…not this year. What’s the price going to be in a few months! WOW! I will buy only retail this year. Over 900 for three boxes, crazy!!!!

I couldn’t agree more with what Matt said. The price for the hobby/jumbo boxes is incredible. I look forward to Bowman every year since I got back into collecting 5 years ago, but think I’ll pass on it this year.

The base checklist is full of young guys who have tons of Bowman cards in the past.

Lame

BUT the auto checklist looks promising

Will there be retail packs?

The price of this product is ridiculous especially when you factor in that it’s being driven up by a rookie who really never had a true prospect status unless you count the time from when he signed to spring training as such even though it was well known he wasn’t going to the minors. The checklist of prospect autos isn’t terrible but isn’t great. Was hoping Acuña would be featured a little more outside of inserts given his super fast rise to being the top prospect in baseball. Ultimately I will only be buying packs and retail of this product because of box prices which sucks since I have actually enjoyed Bowman here recently.

YEAH!!! Hoskins and DJ Peters BC Autos…It’s about time.

Seriously not ONE Indians auto in the whole product??? WOW

Trey I really want to invest in an Ohtani card. Would you agree that the 2018 Auto will be a better investment. And I notice that he’s signing in English and Japanese. Any idea if that is going to be its own refractor?

If Acuna gets called up on the 13th of April is there any chance they’ll be able to squeeze him in? Or is 2 weeks too short of notice?

Otani confirmed
(Source: Topps on Instagram)

Lets see how how the prices sky rockets on this.. if past 2 years are any indication the prices will be higher than ever if Ohtani has cards in here.

Looks like they are trying to sneak borders back into the set

It is ok.

Card design looks okay. I might buy a pack to see if the cards look better in hand.