If Bowman is the favorite line of baseball cards for collectors chasing future Major League Baseball prospects, then Bowman Sterling has to be considered the top end of the line. The 2007 edition serves up plenty of autographed rookies and prospects to go along with relic (memorabilia) cards of veterans, helping to justify its high end price tag.
Hobby boxes of 2007 Bowman Sterling Baseball hold six packs of five cards each. Each box should yield a total of 12 autographed cards, six relics or autographed relics, six rookies and six prospects.
Base Relic Cards and Rookie Cards
There's plenty of good stuff built right into the Bowman Sterling base set. A total of 45 veterans and rookies (and Mickey Mantle) have relic cards as their base cards with a decent sized game-used swatch. The base set also features 70 first-year players on cards with the official MLB Rookie Card logo, 20 of whom autographed their cards. Note that the base cards aren't numbered per se, but instead have a letter code that starts with the letters "BS."
All of the base cards are printed on Topps' Chrome technology, giving the usual shine to the silver borders. Both rookies and veterans use a home plate-shaped border around the player photo, with the relic cards and non-signed rookies also incorporating a baseball element at the bottom that holds the player and team info. The autographed cards all use stickers, but like a lot of recent products the cards are well-designed around them.
Refractor parallels are also available, but thankfully Topps limits them to a single level numbered to 199.
I opened two packs of Bowman Sterling Baseball to review and pulled the following base cards:
Pack 1: Andy LaRoche MLB Rookie Card, Phil Hughes autographed MLB Rookie Card, Barry Bonds game-used pants card
Pack 2: Jo-Jo Reyes autographed Refractor (151/199), Ryan Howard game-used bat card
Prospect Cards
It wouldn't be a Bowman product of any kind without prospect cards, and Bowman Sterling includes 50 of both the regular and autographed variety. Both types are easily identified by the shield-shaped border around the photos and card numbers that start with the letters "BSP."
An additional 18 prospects who played in the 2007 Futures Game appear on Autographed Prospect Relics cards with a signed sticker and a game-used swatch from that game. Devil Rays prospect Evan Longoria is among the names on the checklist.
Just like the base cards, all prospects have Refractor parallels numbered to 199. Topps tells collectors to expect one prospect and one prospect autograph per pack, but my review packs turned out a tad better:
Pack 1: Justin Jackson, Michael Burgess autograph
Pack 2: Zach McAllister, Travis Snider autograph, Jason Heyward Refractor autograph 023/199
Box Toppers
Collectors who buy Bowman Sterling by the box will receive an added bonus in the form of two box toppers. The first of these is the ubiquitous A-Rod Road to 500 continuity series, which has been winding its way through all 2007 Topps baseball releases.
The second card will be one of a number of low-numbered parallels to any of the base cards or prospects. Black versions are numbered to 25, Red versions are limited to a single copy, and printing plates (which are autographed if the cards they were used to make are autographed) are all 1-of-1's.
In one box in each eight-box case, the parallel card will be replaced by a dual autographed card numbered to 275. Refractor versions range from 199 down to one copy.
The Last Word
Bowman Sterling may be one of the final Topps baseball releases of the 2007 season, but it's worth the wait. Collectors who specialize in prospect cards won't be disappointed, and the relic cards and rookie autographs ensure there's something for other types of collectors too.
On top of that, the way the content breaks down per pack means if the $200-plus price tag for a box is out of your price range, buying a single pack still provides good value. Topps continues to tinker with Bowman Sterling with each new season, and this set looks like one of the nicest ones so far.
