Saturday, November 23, 2013

2013 Bowman Blue Sapphire Chrome Series

All the Bowman products this year have featured an insert set called "Bowman Blue Sapphire Best Players of All Time". I'd picked up a few in random packs. Looking up the set list on baseballcardpedia.com, I saw that there were two Phillies in the Bowman Chrome series. I managed to find the whole 9-card set on eBay for only $0.50/card.
The cards feature whatever original number they had. You have to look pretty carefully to see the tiny "REPRINT" below the Topps logo at the bottom of the back. This is actually a reprint of a Bowman Draft Pick card from 2003.

It's probably pointless to try to figure out Topps player selection for these cards. I mean, I like Jimmy Rollins just fine, but is he really one of the Greatest Players of All Time? I suppose the same could be said of almost any of the players in this set. The original is from 1998 Bowman.

Two Phillies and a former Phillie. From the 1991 Bowman set.

From the first Topps Bowman set from 1989. These cards were about a quarter inch longer than standard. The size wasn't very popular with collectors and Topps went to standard size in 1990.

Another from the 1989 set and an important card. There were only two Griffey cards in regular, as apposed to update sets, in 1989. This and, and even more important card, 1989 Upper Deck.


The big man from the 2013 World Series in another 1998 reprint.

From the 2002 Bowman set.

OK, he lead the league in home runs in 2010 and 2011, but those years look pretty different than the rest of his career. In my opinion, the least likely of this group to make it to the Hall of Fame.

Banks is already in the Hall of Fame, hit over 500 home runs, and the only guy in this bunch who could be called one of the greatest players of all time.

3 comments:

hiflew said...

I think the best comparison for Jose Bautista would be Cecil Fielder except Joey Bats improved without Japan becoming involved.

BTW, there are actually 54 cards in this "set" spread across 5 different Bowman products. I have to track down the Holliday and the Helton, but they don't appear to be very expensive at all.

jacobmrley said...

The 1989 Fleer base set had a Griffey as well. It was only the Flagship Topps set that year that forgot Junior.

capewood said...

I stand corrected. Fleer, Donruss, Bowman, Upper Deck all had Griffey cards in their regular sets. Score and Topps only had Griffey in their Update sets. I should have checked first. I own every one of these cards.