Helping to keep everyone up-to-date on what is coming out and what might be worthy of your time in the Baseball Card Hobby for the current week. Check out our Discord for more discussion on this and any other hobby chatter Prospects Live Discord.
This week we have one hobby product scheduled for release - 2022 Bowman Baseball. This post will be updated if more news and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2022 Bowman Baseball
2022 Bowman Baseball is the first of three core Bowman releases every year and is scheduled for release on Wednesday, May 4th.
There are two Hobby configurations - a regular Hobby box and a Jumbo Hobby box. A regular Hobby box guarantees one auto and is running around $375 - $400 pre-sale as of this writing. Topps sold regular Hobby boxes direct from their website last year at $199.99 per box. I expect Topps to significantly increase the price this year AND still be able to sell out their stock lightning quick. A Jumbo Hobby box guarantees three autos and is running around $775 - $800 pre-sale as of this writing. Jumbo Hobby boxes are not sold by Topps direct from their website, so you will need to purchase through the secondary market/your local card shop. Retail formats are available and typically come in the form of Blaster/Value boxes, cello packs, and loose retail packs. Walmart has already sold an blaster box allocation online and people have been finding them stocked on the Walmart shelves. ***Update - Topps sold regular Hobby boxes to 582 Montgomery Club members for $299.99 on Tuesday, 5/3 and to the general public on Wednesday, 5/4. In addition, they sold Blaster/Value boxes for $29.99 each as well.
The design is just over half a border, somewhat reminiscent of the 2019 Bowman design from border coverage perspectives. I tend to prefer the full border, especially with what we got in 2020. It makes centering more difficult to tell from the naked eye, although the back of the card should be able to help in that regard. Player name and team logo are large across the bottom of the card and easy to read as usual, which is always nice and worth mentioning given how Topps did not do that well with 2021 Topps Flagship. Interesting to note is that we get the RayWave parallels here for the first time in a regular release (their were Lite exclusives in 2021). Various inserts are going to be found, some standard fare and some specific to this release. Standard fare includes ROY favorites and Bowman Scouts Top 100. Specific to the release are Hi-Fi Futures, which reminds me of 2021 Bowman’s Best Masterpieces but not as good, Virtuosic Vibrations, which looks like the player was dropped in a puddle of water, and Bowman in 3-D which is a horizontal insert with an interesting fading perspective of squares that my Local Card Pod co-host Ryan Rygiel says looks good in hand since he’s gotten some retail already. Bowman Invicta is another insert which we saw in 2021 Bowman Draft and gets another go in 2022 Bowman - thick stock cards that I heard plenty of people were fans of in 2021, but not really anything interesting for my personal aesthetic.
The checklist is chock full of players getting their 1st Bowman cards. My full product preview with all of the 1st Bowman players written up will drop on release day to really give you the down and dirty. The headliners are Kahlil Watson, Elly De La Cruz, Colson Montgomery, James Wood, and a trio of Dodgers. You also get shots of Base Paper Rookie cards (and vets) like Wander Franco and Oneil Cruz as well as very hard to hit chrome rookie autographs and various inserts. The main disappointment for the hobby is that we don’t see Jack Leiter anywhere in the checklist, and we don’t get a Brady House auto (his 1st Bowman base was in 2021 Bowman Draft, but he did not have an auto in that product).
Overall it’s hard not to be drawn in by this product given the depth of the checklist and value. Even if the headliners turn out to not be what the hobby thought they would be along the lines of 2021 with Austin Martin (good player, but likely not elite) and Aaron Sabato (no longer a potential Pete Alonso bat), you still end up with guys who pop like the Coby Mayos of the world. The main detraction is the price point and secondarily, as usual, the print run increase. Estimates have the print run at a 30% increase over 2021. The good is that it should allow more people to get their hands on it, but the bad is that it probably devalues the long term marketplace for this product. Given the high price point, this is a retail and breaks type product for me along with a few singles purchases of guys I really like if the price is right.