2012 Bowman - First Look

I saw these three-pack blister packs of 2012 Bowman in Target over the weekend. They had 3 of them and not any other Bowman (like individual packs or blasters). So I bought out the supply.

First off - I was astonished by the design. Astonished by Bowman? The card which hasn't changed it's basic black-bordered design in over 10 years? Yes I was. Here's what the base card looks like.

The basic black, with red photo borders for veterans and green photo borders for rookies is gone. The photo border is now color coordinated to the player's team colors. The back border is gray. Here's a rookie card.

Exact same design as the veteran cards.  In the past few years, Bowman has had a different design, with white borders, and numbering for the Prospects cards. This year...

The design is slightly different than the base cards with more rounded photo borders. Notice another big change from previous years. There is no huge facsimile autograph taking up half the card.  The backs are slightly different as well.

The Prospects maintain the BP numbering.

Parallel cards come in the normal Blue, Gold, Green, Orange, and Red. I got some Golds and one Orange.

As usual, the Gold cards have not only a gold border, but gold foil as well.

The Orange are serial numbered to 250. This one is #118. The Prospect cards seem to be lacking the Gold parallels but have a Purple parallel.

There were 3 Purple Parallels in each blister pack. The may be exclusive to that packaging.

The Bowman International Parallel is back but without the foil-board backgrounds. These look more like traditional Bowman with a black border.

I only pulled one base card and one Prospect International parallel. The Prospect version has a white border. Both were of American born players. Presumably the cards feature the national flags of the players home countries.

There is a new parallel, Bowman Silver Ice.

The scan does not do this card justice. It appears to be covered with a grid of tiny lights which float above and below the surface of the card. There is a Red Ice card as well, which I think is a 1 of 1.

I also pulled an autograph.

Every pack also had 2 Chrome Prospects cards which has been the pattern for Bowman for a number of years.

I hope this guy is the next Bryce Harper since I pulled three of his Chrome cards.