When it comes to baseball sets with the very first cards of the top MLB prospects, there's Bowman and there's, well, everyone else. The 2008 edition once again delivers plenty of cards featuring players who may not make it to the big leagues for several years, but nevertheless will have some collectors chasing them down today.
Hobby boxes of 2008 Bowman Baseball have 24 packs of 10 cards each, with two Bowman Prospects and two Bowman Chrome Prospects per pack and one autographed card per box. HTA Jumbo boxes contain three autographs each.
Base Cards
If you've collected Bowman Baseball for any length of time, you have a pretty good idea what the base cards will look like. The 2008 cards have the same black borders with red frames for veterans and green frames for MLB Rookie Cards. There are also facsimile autographs on the fronts and some of the best, most informative write-ups in the hobby on the backs.
Though prospects are the focus of the brand, the base set is actually fairly big, containing 200 veterans, 20 MLB Rookie Cards and 10 autographed MLB Rookie Cards. The last category includes Clay Buchholz and J.R. Towles.
The one-per-pack gold parallels also return, using gold for the borders and gold foil for the player name strip and the faux signature. Other parallel levels for this season are Blue (numbered to 500), Orange (#'d to 50) and Red (hobby exclusive and limited to a single copy).
One hobby box should get you roughly halfway to a complete base set sans the autographed rookies. A random hobby box I opened yielded 111 veterans and seven MLB Rookie Cards. I also pulled 16 Gold parallels (14 vets and two rookies) and one Blue Josh Beckett.
Prospect Cards
Without question, these cards are the bread and butter of Bowman Baseball. A total of 110 players receive their first Bowman cards in 2008 in both regular and Chrome versions.
In the 2007 set, the Bowman Prospects simply took the base card design and substituted a white border and blue frame. That's not the case this season, as the blue frames have a funky horizontal stripe pattern and the overall look is more of a departure from the base set. Whether that's good or bad is a matter of personal taste.
Since both the regular and Chrome cards fall two per hobby pack, you'll end up with nearly equal amounts of each kind. My sample box produced 48 Bowman Prospects and 46 Bowman Chrome Prospects. The regular prospect cards share parallels with the base cards, and I found eight Gold and one Orange.
The Chrome Prospects also have Refractor parallels numbered to 599 and X-Fractors numbered to 275. I pulled a single Refractor of 2006 A's draftee Ben Jukich.
Autographed Cards
Along with the aforementioned autographed MLB Rookie Cards, Bowman dishes out prospect signatures as well. A total of 20 players signed Chrome Prospect Autographs this year, including top 2007 draft picks David Price and Michael Moustakas. My box's autograph was 2006 Florida Marlins draftee Scott Cousins, whose big looping on-card signature looks great.
A new twist for 2008 comes in the form of Bowman Scouts Autographs. That's not a typo - these are signatures from 21 scouts who signed top MLB players. While it's somewhat doubtful collectors will be clamoring for autographs from scouts, this insert is at least something different, and that's always commendable.
Finally, HTA Jumbo boxes have an extra autograph included as a box topper. Signs of the Future cards give 35 prospects plenty of room to sign on horizontally-oriented cards.
The Last Word
Collectors who enjoy following players on their way to the majors will love Bowman Baseball as much as ever. The prospect cards may never command huge values, but for some hobbyists the uniqueness factor overrides that fact.
In other ways, the 2008 set feels a little stagnant, with the design elements that carry over from year to year and content that is almost identical to 2007. That doesn't mean it's not enjoyable and affordable, and it should maintain the brand's reputation and popularity.