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 there is one scheduled release - 2024 Bowman.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2024 Bowman
The first Bowman Flagship product of the year, 2024 Bowman (a.k.a. Bowman Baseball) is scheduled to release on Wednesday, May 8th.
There are 3 hobby formats - a regular Hobby box, an HTA Jumbo box, and a Breaker’s Delight box which is new for 2024 for this product. Regular Hobby boxes guarantee 1 auto per box and Topps pre-sold them for $259.99 per box and $3,119.88 per case (12 boxes per case). HTA Jumbo boxes guarantee 3 autos per box and Topps pre-sold them for $499.99 per box and $3,999.92 per case (8 boxes per case). Breaker’s Delight (a.k.a. HTA Choice) boxes guarantee 3 autos with no other cards in the box. These boxes were not pre-sold and most likely will not be available for public sale from Topps or Fanatics - most likely you will need to buy these through after market sellers (Blowout, etc.) or through breakers in breaks or personal boxes. I’ve seen boxes in the $600 range and cases (6 boxes per case) in the $3K range. There are various retail formats, with blaster/value boxes, mega boxes, and retail boxes (loose pack boxes) all currently available through Fanatics as of writing. Fanatics is selling blasters for $29.99, mega boxes for $44.99, and retail boxes for $139.99. Mega boxes are the only one that comes with guaranteed exclusives - 10 mojo refractor parallels, but be aware that the non-mega packs are almost assuredly filled with just base paper cards. ***Update - Topps released 2024 Bowman on their website on Wednesday as expected. Formats and prices were - Blaster/Value boxes at $29.99 with a customer limit of 10; Hobby boxes for $269.99 with a customer limit of 20; Cases of Hobby boxes (12 boxes per case) for $3,239.99 with a customer limit of 5; Jumbo boxes for $519.99 with a customer limit of 20; and Cases of Jumbo boxes (8 boxes per case) for $4,159.99 with a customer limit of 5.
The design is something we’ve been staring at since roughly October/November of last year when it was first teased. I’ve seen the whole range of opinions, and while it’s not my favorite, I don’t mind it. I always am a fan of full borders, which we have here. The main complaint that I agree with is with the autographed cards - the whited-out area where the players sign takes up quite a bit of real estate - easily about 40% or more of the inner area of the card. There are a variety of inserts - some good, some whatever. The main ones to discuss are the Spotlight insert, the 55 Anime insert, and the Retrofractors. The Spotlight insert was from last year, but it was pulled all too frequently. This year they’ve decreased the odds of hitting it to 1 in 60 Hobby boxes (it’s a Hobby box exclusive), so there may be some added value this year. The 55 Anime insert uses one of the more recognizable designs in Bowman’s history - the 1955 Bowman television design, pairing it with an anime look and feel of the players. These cards will fall roughly one in 10 Jumbo boxes and one in 12 Hobby boxes and will not be in retail. Retrofractors, starting with 2023 Bowman Chrome last year, are 1st Bowman cards that never were. This release we get Bob Gibson and the highly controversial Pete Rose, with his first MLB/MLBPA licensed product appearance in recent memory. In addition to base versions, Pete Rose also will have an autographed version.
The checklist is focused on prospects. For my and Max Arterburn’s breakdown of every prospect with a 1st Bowman card in the product plus a few extras, check out our 2024 Bowman Preview. There are plenty of other prospects included that will not have the 1st Bowman logo as they’ve appeared in previous Bowman products. There are also a small set of rookies and vets - 100 base cards and then a small subset of very hard to hit rookie autographs including Elly De La Cruz, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Jasson Dominguez, Junior Caminero, Evan Carter, Jordan Lawlar, Jung Hoo Lee, and others. It looks like if you are Superfractor hunting, the majority of those will only be found in Hobby and HTA Jumbo boxes according to the Topps odds sheet. Most importantly, the Prospect Autograph Superfractors will only be in those two formats according to the Topps odds sheet. Breaker’s Delight boxes will not have those included if we are to believe the odds sheet (I really don’t, but we shall see). As Dave and Adam’s Card World has announced a $200K bounty on the Dylan Crews Superfractor Autograph, it narrows the hunt down for better or worse.
One of the three Bowman Flagship products released every year, 2024 Bowman is always a prospector favorite. This year is no different, with a variety of prospects to hunt including Dylan Crews, Walker Jenkins, Arjun Nimmala, and plenty of others. Prices are high, the risks are high, but the returns have a chance to be high as well. While I don’t like to play in the high dollar products, it’s hard to sit out any of the Bowman Flagship products.