Always trying to find new ways to get value out of the Bowman name, Topps cooked up Bowman Elevation during the 2006-07 season. For the sophomore release, the content level has been kicked up a notch and married to a futuristic-looking design.
Bowman Elevation Basketball is a hobby-only product that comes in 12-pack boxes with five cards per pack. On average, collectors can expect six relic (memorabilia) cards, two rookie autographs, four rookies and two parallels per box.
Base Cards and Parallels
Say one thing for the Bowman Elevation base card design: it's certainly creative. The player photo is set against a grayed-out background, with thin gold foil stripes on the right and a single foil stripe on the left. Squashed in-between that at the bottom is the player and team info, and the Elevation name is featured in a stylized white bar on the left.
That motif carries over to the card backs, which have an odd bit of completely blank white space. Ambitious, yes, and certainly futuristic-looking, but not that attractive to this eye.
A short but sweet base set consists of 50 veterans and NBA legends and 50 rookies numbered to 999. Parallels come in five different colors with print runs ranging from 99 copies for Blue to one copy for Black.
In a random box opened for this review, both rookies and parallels were seeded more generously than expected. I found nine rookies and one Blue parallel to go with 36 of the 50 veteran/retired cards and two more parallels.
Relic Cards
Fans of memorabilia cards should be pretty pleased with Bowman Elevation, as it serves up both rookie and veteran jersey cards. The vets are represented with Elevation Relics and Elevation Patches. Both subsets come in single, dual and triple versions, with five parallel levels for each. Numbering ranges from 199 for single relics down to one for Black parallels. Note that the multi-swatch versions are multiple pieces from the same player, not multi-player cards.
First-year NBA players get much the same treatment with Rookie Remnants, horizontally-oriented cards that also come in single, double and triple varieties. These cards have a cool design, though it would be nice to see Topps use different colored swatches for the duals and triples.
Again, my sample box delivered more than the expected six relics. All told, I pulled four Elevation Relics (including a three-color Andre Iguodala patch numbered 08/19), three Rookie Remnants, one Rookie Dual Remnants and two Rookie Triple Remnants.
Autographed Cards
The signed cards in Bowman Elevation come mostly from 2007-08 rookies, with a few veterans thrown in for good measure. Rookie Writings is the main autographed insert, with 35 of the 50 rookies signing. Rookie Writing Relics add a jersey piece, and Rookie Writing Patches substitute a patch swatch. All of them have five parallel levels with varied numbering.
Twenty NBA veterans and legends appear on Elevation Autograph Patches, pairing a triangle-shaped patch piece with a signature. They are numbered to 29 or less and fall one per 12-box case on average.
Both of the autos in the About.com sample box came from the Rookie Writing Relics set: a gold Greg Oden numbered to 29, and a gold Marco Belinelli numbered to 19. These cards are very nice, with the swatch in the middle and an on-card signature on clear plastic that can be seen from both the front and back.
The Last Word
Different isn't always good, and the busy, cluttered design of the Elevation base cards is proof. However, the content and value are excellent, with generous helpings of rookie and veteran memorabilia cards and multiple hard-signed autographs for a competitive price.
If hits drive you more than base cards, you'll want to consider trying a few packs of Bowman Elevation this season. For next season, here's hoping the brand keeps the same strong game plan and brings something a little prettier to the party.
