Christmas Cards: 2012 Bowman Draft Picks Hobby Box

Here's the last and favorite of my Christmas gifts.  It's hard to believe Christmas was 2 weeks ago today!  This gift came courtesy of my mother and father in laws.  They did good, real good!

I'm a fan of Bowman and all of the prospects that come out of the product.  I like to keep my eye on the future of MLB players.  Sure there could be some tweaking of the entire lineup of Bowman products but I still like it enough to keep collecting it.  I'm not really sure why Topps made Bowman Draft picks a hobby only product this year.  It always seemed to sell pretty well at retail as far as I can tell.

Without further ado, lets see what I got from the box:

Here's one of the 2 insert sets available.  The other being Bowman's Best.  These seem like a Timeless Talents/Legendary Lineage ripoff from Topps flagship.  Some of the player pairings are somewhat strange.  Utley/Naquin, Bruce/Cecchini, and Fielder/Tulowitzki seemingly have not much in common.  I didn't bother to read the backs so I'm sure there's some connection.  I understand the Hamilton/Harper card since they were both #1 overall picks with skills off the charts.

Here's the 2 regular standard Orange and Blue bordered cards from the prospects set.  Never heard of either of these fellows but you never know what they could turn out to be in a few years.

I'm a fan of the Ice parallels from this year's Bowman products.  It's hard to tell from the scan but they even have a refractor-y shine to them too.  The blue refractor of the Rockies farmhand might be the worst photoshop job ever.

I got my promised autograph in the first pack I opened from the box.  Talk about breaking the suspense early on.  I've had this happen a few times over the last few boxes I've broken down if I remember correctly.  Lucas Sims seems like a decent enough autograph to get from the product.  I already own a USA autograph of his from a few years back, but it was a band-aid stickergraph.  I think this box should have ended up in a Braves' collector's hands and you'll see why a little later on.

The box produced it's 6 promised refractors.  I couldn't be happier about the Sean McAdams, it's one less I'll have to track down on COMC.  The Orioles cards produced pretty  well as I almost ended up with an entire team set of the base set and quite a few Chromes.

Bowman is all about the Rookie Cards and I was hoping for a few nice cards the bigger rookies and prospects from this years "class".  I think I did really well in that regard.  Check it out, I got:

The Chrome and regular Will Middlebrooks,

Regular and Chrome Trevor Bauer,

Regular and Chrome of Kevin Gausman (for obvious reasons)

Regular and Chrome of Mike Zunino

Regular and Chrome of Yu Darvish

Chrome and regular of Bryce Harper

This box was veritable Who's Who of 2012 Rookies and Prospects.

Now I said above that this box was a Braves box.  Check these out:

The Orange Refractor on the left is numbered out of 25 and the Blue on the right is #d to 500.  I pulled these out of back to back packs.  Plus the Harper Chrome and Darvish regular were nestled in with the Orange refractor.  Hot pack indeed!  I'm not sure what to do with them yet.

So that does it for Christmas 2012 for me.  Now back to your regular scheduled non-posting from "O" NO!!! Another Orioles Blog.

Box Break: 2012 Bowman Chrome

I bought this hobby box of Bowman Chrome on sale at Dave and Adam's during their Black Friday preview sale about 2 weeks ago and I just got done opening and sorting out what I got from it.  My tradebait posts from last week has been taking up a lot of my card time but that's ok!  I'm glad to be able to send the tradebait I offered to people that will appreciate them more than I do for cards that I want or need.  There's still a bunch of cards left so take a look over them if you might be interested in making a trade.

So onward to the BowChro box I got:

This year's Bowman design looks great all chromed up.  I got a nice assortment of refractors as you can  see.  Not much to write home about.

Here's my colored refractors.  Not much to see here but I think Spankee or dkwilson might be interested in the Upton blue though.  (I don't know why it looks purple in the scan).

Here's my autograph card from the box of JR Graham.  I'd never heard of him before this card but at least I know he touched it.  I'm a fan of the Bowman Chrome autographs because they are on-card so I'm nearly 100% sure they are authentic.

I also got a few inserts in the box.  I'm a fan of the Futures Game inserts even though I hadn't heard of either of these guys.  I think their generic sounding Latino names might be the culprit though.  It's not a knock on the guys themselves, it's just that the names aren't really that memorable since they are somewhat generic.  I'm not as big a fan of the Franchise Favorites inserts.  It's not because of the Yankees card I pulled either.  Robinson Cano continues to follow me around in every box I open though!  The insert set just reminds me too much of Legendary Lineage and Timeless Talents.  I wasn't a fan of those either!

Here's the one card that makes me call this box a success.  I know it's just a dinky Nick Markakis refractor card.  Just thinking about all 330 cards being paralleled though, it's a tougher pull than you might think to pull your favorite team or even your favorite active player.

I got a bunch of cards for my set that I'm building but it's hard for me to say I wasn't a bit disappointed. My inserts and refractors were somewhat crappy and the autographed prospect card was an unknown to me.  Maybe Graham becomes a superstar one day and I become a thousandaire from the card!  Everything pictured is for trade except for the Markakis!

Box Break: 2012 Topps Update Series

I'm way late to the party when it comes to this years Update series but the longer you wait to buy a hobby box, the less you have to pay for it!  I bought this box at the CSA show the weekend of October 12th-14th for 48 dollars.  It was a bit of an impulse buy but I think I made out rather well on this box.  Actually, I can't think of a better flagship hobby box that I've opened in terms of the cards I got out of it!

I picked the second to the last box from the bottom of the pile.  Apparently I got the right one since there were 3 Orioles parallels in the box.  Strangely enough, the Jason Hammel gold sparkle came out of the same pack as the base card did.  As a matter of fact, most of the gold sparklies came out of the same pack as the base card did.  I got a ton of the regular gold parallels that I'll be listing at the end for trade.  I need pretty much all of the Orioles except Hunter and Hardy.

I also did fairly well on Orioles inserts too.  I got the Ripken and Jones Golden Moments, as well as the Palmer Golden Greats!  Not too shabby but I still need another copy of each to finish out the team set since each of these will be heading into their respective PC binders.

I was pretty stoked when I got Matt Kemp's SP variation card.  Then I realized that there would be a feeding frenzy between Spiegel, Plaschke, and Night Owl to see if they can trade me for it.  Anybody want to take bets on who sees it first?  HAHA!  I think the SP variation cards are pretty cool ever since Topps has been inserting them into packs.  The jersey variations and the diamond sparkles are/were stupid.  I really want a Jim Thome Orioles card but I don't have 200 bucks to spend on one.  The Jose Reyes and Albert Pujols jersey variations were dumb too.  If you really wanted them in their Marlins or Angels jerseys that bad, why not wait another month and a half and get them in Heritage as base cards?

 I think I may have bought into the whole Harpermania hype a little bit.  I haven't gone crazy buying his cards or anything but I have been lucky and pulled quite a few from packs.  I guess that happens when you buy a lot of Bowman products!  The streak continues with the Golden Moments, the 1987 mini, and the All-Star card (not shown).  I think he does have a bit to learn about playing baseball at the top level but I do respect the way he plays the game with his hair on fire.  I think the maturity will come with age and as long as he keeps his mouth shut and lets his bat do the talking, he'll win over more fans.

Here's my hit of the box, and it's a goodie!  Yonder Alonso seems to have a bright future out there in San Diego.  There are regular versions of this insert and then there's the #'d to 10 gold sparkly version that I have!  These cards are one in 16,680 pack pulls!  Holy Crap!  That's 463 hobby boxes worth!  I haven't quite decided what to do with the card yet but I'm leaning on putting it on eBay or COMC if no Padres fans can blow me away with an offer.  What do you think I should do with it?

Here's all of the inserts and parallels that I pulled from the hobby box and the retail packs I opened.  Everything is for trade!

Gold Sparkle: US63 Laird, 65 D. Norris, 78 Durbin, 108 Loe, 140 Duensing, 159 Sheets, 191 Abreu, 239 L. Scott, 257 J. Quintana, 261 Oliver, 278 Pettitte
Gold Bordered: 57 Betancourt, 254 Humber, 199 Dunn, 262 Marcum, 331 Pujols, 334 Rizzo (missing some foil on the front), 351 Hart, 369 Street, 373 Car-Go, 425 C. Zambrano, 436 C. Perez, 453 Garrett Jones, 515 Bloomquist, 519 Gio Gonzalez, 546 Thornton, 600 Kershaw, 656 C. Santana, US11 Ankiel, US49 Burnett, US82 Wigginton, US83 C. Lee, US109 Marte, US153 Maholm, US161 Dozier, US223 Logan, US293 Victorino, US300 Kotsay, US328 Soto
Blockbusters: BB-2 Sabathia, 4 G Carter, 6 Buhner, 9 Ryan(2), 13 Cespedes, 17 Hunter, 20 D. Ortiz, 24 Carlton(2), 28 J. Santana, 29 M. Ramirez
Golden Greats:  GG-81 Banks, 88 Griffey Jr, 89 Brock, 92 R. Jackson, 97 Boggs, 98 Spahn, 99 Stargell
1987 Minis:  TM-101 Goldschmidt, 107 Bumgarner(2), 112 Darvish, 115 Beltran, 118 A. Jackson, 121 Latos, 132 Rice, 136 Beachy, 144 Trumbo
Golden Moments: GM-U5 J Santana, 9 M. Cabrera, 12 Granderson, 15 Castro, 17 Price, 21 Banks, 26 Yount, 45 Tulowitzki

Lastly, here's my needs list to complete my set:

13, 17, 25, 33, 41, 45, 47, 54, 55, 57, 60, 67, 100, 111, 123, 127, 159, 166, 171, 186, 197, 224, 232, 247, 249, 251, 267, 270, 288, 293, 305, 316, 327

Box Break: 2009 Allen & Ginter

As many of you may or may not know, I'm working on building all of the Allen and Ginter sets from 2006 thru 2012 and beyond.  I didn't used to be a fan of A&G but somehow I turned the corner this spring/summer and did a 180.  Since I purchased the 07 set complete and an 06 and 08 partial set this summer in my now infamous buy from craigslist, I'm now working on 09 thru the present.

I actually bought this box about a month ago and set it on my desk where it collected dust until a few days ago.  I had probably searched ebay for a month prior to finally being able to get the hobby box at a comfortable price for me and my wallet.  I actually missed the auction the first time around and it had ended with no bids.  I contacted the seller and we were able to work out a deal.  Without further ado, the highlights:

These code cards are pretty useless to everyone now but I guess they were the must have cards when the code had yet to be broken.  I'm pretty good at trivia games like Jeopardy but the Ginter code is not my cup of tea.  How anybody figures it out is beyond my comprehension.

I'm not sure if it really qualifies as a hit or not but this is a shortprinted mini of Kelly Shoppach.  I think these are like a 1:24 pack pull.  Even though this particular card is a mini, I do like the design of the base set.  I didn't bother to scan any of the regular sized cards because I'm sure in 2009 each one was probably scanned and shown plenty of times.  We all know what they look like.

These are pretty cool little minis.  They are the national heroes minis.  I had never heard of Al-Qadir but  I have heard of William Wallace.  Yes, that William Wallace, the guy that the movie Braveheart is based on.  I don't think the picture on the card looks much like Mel Gibson!

Here's my other 2 insert minis.  These don't do that much for me but like most A&G mini inserts they are hit and miss with me. 

And now the moment we've all been waiting for!  Here's the hits (aka the ripped up shreds of kitchen towels that are inserted into cards posing to be authentic pieces of jerseys)

Captain Cheeseburger, not a player I care for or collect.

Jimmy Rollins, a player that could be called captain since he's been with the Phillies so long.

And Adam LaRoche AKA the traveling man.  I wonder if he sticks around in Washington next season?

So there you have it, 1 whole hobby box of 2009 Allen & Ginter.  I enjoyed this box even though my hits were somewhat lacking. I would have loved to pull an autograph out of the box but you can't win them all!  Everything shown in the pictures above and the list below is for trade.  Let me know if you see anything you'd like!  Not all of these are from my box, some are from some lots I've picked up over the last few months.

SPs: 306 Cliff Lee, 307 Pence, 318 Delmon Young, 320 BJ Ryan
National Pride: NP2 Upton, 3 Bay, 9 C. Guillen, 61 Teahen, 62 Braun, 63 Beltran, 64 Liriano, 65 Delgado, 67 A. Gonzalez, 70 C. Pena, 72 E Gonzalez, 74 Y. Molina
Baseball Highlight Sketches: 2 Griffey Jr., 9 Thomas, 10 Thome, 11 K-Rod, 12 Yankees, 24 Mariano
Crack the Code Cards: 141 Zambrano, 189 Kotchman
Regular Back Minis: 7 Smoltz, 23 Armstrong, 24 Wiebe, 74 Tuiasosopo, 75 D. Wright, 135 Suppan, 166 Meche, 181 Rowand, 271 Jurrjens, 274 J. Hamilton, 321 Shoppach
Ad Back Minis: 34 Dempster, 78 Byrnes, 79 Electron, 101 Bailey, 208 M. Young, 298 Haren
Black Border Minis: 208 M. Young, 334 Burrell
National Heroes: NH22 William Wallace, NH37 Al-Qadir
Worlds Biggest Hoaxes, Hoodwinks and Bamboozles: HHB2 Pi, 13 War of the Worlds

Here's the cards I'm still looking for to complete the base set and the National Pride insert set:


2009 Allen & Ginter: 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34, 36, 38, 41, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 64, 66, 68, 70, 72, 74, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 81, 83, 84, 86, 88, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 99, 100, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 113, 114, 115, 117, 121, 124, 125, 126, 128, 130, 131, 132, 134, 136, 138, 140, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147, 150, 153, 157, 159, 161, 163, 164, 170, 171, 173, 175, 178, 179, 181, 183, 184, 187, 190, 191, 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 202, 203, 205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 215, 219, 220, 222, 223, 224, 225, 229,232, 233, 235, 239, 240, 244, 245, 246, 248, 250, 252, 255, 257, 261, 262, 265, 267, 271, 272, 276, 277, 280, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 290, 293, 294, 296, 297, 302, 312, 314, 316, 321, 323, 326, 328, 334, 335, 339, 340, 341, 343, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349

National Pride: NP10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 38, 40, 58

Box Break: 2012 Topps Series 2

I doubt anybody really cares about 2012 Topps Series 2 at this point in the year.  Updates is right around the corner, and A&G, Finest, and Chrome is already out.  I actually bought this box at the National at the bargain basement price of 38 bucks.  I've noticed over the last few years that series 2 goes down in price over the summer so I didn't preorder like I used to.  I was thinking I'd find the box for about 45 bucks and was shocked to find a vendor selling the hobby boxes for 38 clams.  Hobby box for less than the cost of 2 blasters?  Yes Please!
I'm not going to bore you with base cards because I'm almost 100% certain that all 330 cards have been scanned and posted across the blogosphere.  Only the hit and new inserts from series 2:

Here's my one hit of the box and it came in the first pack.  Talk about taking the drama out of the rest of the packs!  Porcello seems to be a middlin' kinda hit but it is Flagship, not Triple Threads!  I'm sure Dhoff might be interested in this one.

Mound Dominance makes its debut in series 2 and I guess these are just OK.  Good to see Topps is still making inserts out of relic cards. I guess they are just keeping up with the continuity of series 1.  I was happy to get Jim Palmer's card from the set so I have one less card to chase!

Topps has brought back the Diecut cards this year and I'm pretty happy about it.  They just add an extra angle (pun intended) and level of interest in the card for me.  I chose to show Stan the Man because he was such an awesome player that doesn't seem to get the hype of some of the other players of his era.  Why is that?

I like the idea of the insert set but the execution is damn near awful.  "Career Day" doesn't even fit on the card bottom and there is    tooo      much       empty      space       on      the     right    side       of     the    card.  Braun looks worried that he is going to be swallowed up by the blue fade.

I did get several damaged cards in my box but I think that is a self inflicted wound.  I carried the box in my back pack for about half the day at the National.  They may have gotten damaged just by me picking up and putting down my bag all afternoon.  Even so, base cards of Joakim Soria, Juan Uribe, Jacob Turner,  and a Golden Futures insert of Chris Sale shouldn't be too hard to replace.

So, I'm glad I was able to get this box on the cheap and to fill out a lot of my set.  Including the couple of retail packs I bought, I only need a handful of cards to complete it.  Flagship is always a fun break so I'm now looking forward to Updates to release in a couple weeks.

Here's my wantlist of cards I need to complete the set:

333, 358, 360, 374, 387, 432, 438, 445, 475, 499, 571, 574, 581, 584, 585, 603, 629, 642, 644, 647

Here's the list of Trade Bait I have available for cards from my extensive wantlists:

Gold Sparkle Parallel: 347 Gentry, 357 Harang, 394 LaHair, 469 Pestano, 494 Barney, 511 E. Santana, 516 Morton, 544 Collmenter, 569 Hafner, 591 Huff,
Target Red Parallel: 434 Motte, 341 E. Encarnacion
Gold Standard: GS-33 Gibson, 37 McCovey, 43 Seaver, 44 A-Rod, 45 Jeter, 49 Clemente
Gold Futures: GF-32 Storen, 34 Beachy, 42 N. Feliz, 43 Strasburg, 46 J. Weeks (2)
Mound Dominance: MD-1 Seaver, 3 Koufax, 8 Ryan, 10 Galaraga
Golden Moments: GM-7 Sandoval, 16 C. Gonzalez, 18 Hamels, 24 Brett, 32 O. Smith, 33 R. Jackson, 45 M. Cabrera, 41 A. Dawson, 50 Griffey Jr.,
Career Day: CD-1 Pujols, 3 Kaline, 6 DiMaggio, 10 Braun, 11 M. Cabrera, 17 Votto, 20 Hamilton, 21 Kemp
A Cut Above: ACA-1 Fielder, 2 Pujols, 8 H. Ramirez, 12 Musial, 15 J. Bautista, 19 Cano, 23 Kemp
1987 Minis: TM-52 M. Cabrera, 54 J. Upton, 62 Lincecum, 65 Teixeira, 73 Gordon, 79 Wilson, 83 Mauer, 87 Musial, 92 Koufax, 96 Mantle, 99 Clemente

What I Got For Christmas

I hope that everyone had a Merry Little Christmas.  I know I did.  The last few days I've driven over the hills and through the woods to visit family members and friends and I used today as a little reflection time and to do what I love to do: stare at pictures of men!  More specifically I'm staring at new pictures that I got as gifts.  I think I had a pretty nice haul.  I got a blaster to 2011 Bowman Chrome from a friend, a hobby box of 2010 Bowman Chrome from my wife, and a couple rack packs of 2011 Topps Update in my stocking.  I didn't get much of note out of the Bowman Chrome blaster but the 2010 Bowman Chrome hobby box was loaded with some really nice hits and a bunch of cards towards the set:

Here's the "lesser" hit of the box.  It's a pretty nice looking card of a team that I don't really care for.  BTW, it's numbered 86/150 for those of you that are interested.

 This card is actually a bonus hit out of the box.  Team USA autographs are tough pulls at 1 in 207 packs so I'll venture to say that this is a case hit.  This card is especially cool because he was drafted by the Orioles this past summer.  I'll most definitely be hanging onto this card!

Here's my promised autograph of the box and it turns out that it is a refractor.  Not bad!  I think he's one of Minnesota's top prospects because I have heard of him.  I did look up the price range of this card and it does book for 80 bucks!

 Here's the most awesome card I pulled.  SUPERFRACTOR! SUPERFRACTOR! SUPERFRACTOR!  These are really tough pulls dropping at 1 in 5625 packs.  That's one in every 26 cases.  I have no idea whether I should hang onto this one or try to sell it.  I've pulled a couple printing plates and 1 or 2 1/1's in my pack busting career, but this one is bar none my best 1/1 card.  I can see why Superfractors are sought after because they look amazing!

Coming down from the excitement of a Superfractor, I got this Liquorfractor of Tom Terrific out of on one my Update rack packs.  I did also get 2 Diamond Giveaway codes that I don't know what to do with.  I've already cashed out my portfolio and hadn't planned on getting anymore.  Heck, I even traded all 37 of my unique rings away and deleted the shortcut to the site from my favorites.  I ended up with
10 Orioles rings, 12 Browns rings and 15 Cal Ripken rings.

So as you can see, there was some real Christmas magic in the packs I received this year.  I hope everybody else's card gifts were as wonderful as mine!

Box Breaks: 2011 Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects (with Chrome!)

I'll admit that I've gone a little crazy with all of the box breaks lately but this should be my final one at least until Christmas.  Bowman Draft Picks is a product that has for the most part been a hit with collectors over the last few years.  Since I am a pretty big Bowman fan, I actually jumped feet first into the fray and bought 3 boxes on preorder way back in the summer.  Lets see what I got:

 I got just got one blue refractor and its of a Yankee. This one is numbered 2/199.  Good luck Brandon cracking that lineup with A-rod blocking your progression to the majors.

I got one gold refractor of a Braves prospect that I don't know anything about.  I still don't know anything about him because there is no patented Bowman scouting report on the back.  BTW, Kyle is #'d 41/50.

 Now this is a little more like it, I know who this guy is.  I got a TTM back from him during Spring Training and have been following him a little bit here and there since.  Not a bad looking border considering the team he plays for.  Mike is #'d 339/499

My first Autograph is of the Giants 47th pick in this years draft?  I was a little underwhelmed to say the least until I did a little online research.  Topps screwed the pooch on this one, he was actually the 47th player taken overall!

 This relic actually came out of a blaster box I picked up at Target.  Not a bad player to get a relic of I guess.  It's numbered 168/199

Here's my next autograph of Taylor Jungmann.  I think its pronounced "Young-man". Anyways, it's a pretty nice looking card except for the terrible photoshop job on his hat.  Enough with the awful photo manipulation Topps!

Here's my favorite card of the 3 boxes.  Its the refractor version of the autograph and it really looks good.  Brandon is an interesting story as he comes from Wyoming.  There is no High School baseball in the state so he was drafted on the merits of his American Legion and Travel team play.  Not only was he drafted, he was drafted in the 1st round.  I read about him in my sports weekly and I'll be following his career to see how he turns out.  Also of note, I'm glad that Brandon takes pride in his penmanship.  His signature is legible and neat.  I hope that it doesn't degrade into chicken scratch as he moves up the minor league ranks.

To say that I really enjoyed this year's Bowman Draft Picks product would be stretching the truth.  I'm still a fan of all of the new players but there just seems to be something missing from the product this year.  I was able to finish off the base set and base prospects set so that's a plus but I'm still far from completing the Chrome sets.  I'll get a want list up eventually for those.

Here's a listing of the paralells that I have up for trade:

Gold Parallel: 42 Shaw, 72 Presley, 88 Vizcaino, BDPP52 Snell, BDPP95 Clifton, BDPP98 Farinaro, BDPP100 Meadows

Blue Parallel: 1 Moustakas, 31 Dirks, 59 Cozart, BDPP1 Hicks, BDPP24 Crick, BDPP103 Pabst

Refractor Parallels: 5 Beato, 13 Hamburger, 21 Sosa, 30 De La Rosa, 39 Godfrey, 60 Alburquerque, 65 Lynn, 73 Pestano, BDPP4 Armstrong, BDPP34 Gagnon, BDPP45 Hope, BDPP48 Anton, BDPP55 Martin, BDPP60 James, BDPP65 Reynolds, BDPP72 Gamache, BDPP94 Ciuffo

Blue Refractor: 26 Brandon Laird #'d 2/199

Gold Refractor: BDPP74 Kyle Kubitza #'d 41/50

Box Break: 3 Boxes of 2011 Bowman Chrome

I splurged on 3 boxes of Bowman Chrome when they went on presale earlier this summer.  For some reason, I've become enamored with Bowman Chrome over the past year and I'm probably the only one in the entire blog-o-sphere that has any interest in building sets of this product.  I think half of my decision is that I seem to have piles of Chromes sitting in my commons boxes as "leftovers" from building base Bowman sets and feeling guilty about it.  Also, I think I need a set building challenge.  Let's face it, building flagship Topps and Bowman sets isn't terribly difficult! These are going to be more of long term projects because buying cases of Bowman Chrome products is out of the question budget. Hopefully I can finds some lots left over on eBay that will help me towards my goal and then I can fill in some gaps with Sportslots and at shows.  So without further ado, here's the highlights of my 3 boxes:

We'll start off with one of the more rare cards from the break.  USA autographs are pretty rare in this years product so you know that a blue refractor is even more rare.  It is numbered but it's not that it really matters anyway.  Al seems to have a nice autograph at this point in his career (I think he is a high school senior and is eligible for the MLB draft this coming spring) but it will probably devolve into some scribble like most players autographs these days.

Speaking of scribbles, it leads me to my next mojo hit of a Canadian fella that will be tormenting the O's for the foreseeable future.  Does the facsimile autograph in anyway resemble "Brett" or "Lawrie" to you?

I don't have much to say about this Gold refractor of Youkilis other than it might fetch me a few bucks in trade value or COMC store credit.

This little sucker popped out of the last pack I opened  Wow, Orioles cards look great on the regular Orange and even better as Orange refractors!  If they weren't numbered so dang low, I'd probably have a couple more of them!  This one is #d 24/25.  I saw Ronnie play this past summer and he seemed like he doesn't like to sign autographs.  He just sat up on the railing while the other guys on the Baysox happily signed for me.  Maybe he just having a bad day or I went to the wrong game.

Here are 2 of my autograph cards that I was promised.  From the scouting report on the back, Swagerty seems like he is projected as a back end bullpen guy for the Cards though looking at his Baseball Reference page, he started and relieved this year.  Segura just got added to the Angels 40 man roster and his a highly regarded Top 100 prospect.  I will compliment each of these players on their penmanship.  It even appears Jean ran out of space and just meandered the pen back towards the start his signature!

And last but certainly not least, my redemption cards.  I'm not a fan of Topps' new bland design of these redemption cards.  It reminds me of some crap that Pannini would do.  Regardless, the refractor set of USA baseball card excites me a little bit and the Orange Refractor autograph of Jacob Turner is pretty exciting.  This is my second Orange refractor autograph of the year as I pulled a Sean Coyle from regular Bowman this past spring.  If there was another team that looks great as Orange refractors it would have to be the Tigers.  I haven't decided what to do with the Turner yet.  I might try to sell it on Ebay and see if I can turn it into a 1967 Brooks Robinson.

Overall I have no real complaints about Bowman Chrome this year. The cards don't warp up nor are they off-center.  They look great as always and the particular cards I invested my hard earned money in could not have been much better.  

If I had one complaint though, it would be the amount of cards per pack.  Across all of Topps' Chrome lines, I think packs should have 5 cards per hobby pack. 4 cards just isn't enough to make the casual collector willing to plop down the cash.  Don't get me started on retail as there are 3 cards per pack.  That's a buck per card.

In particular, I noticed in my 3 boxes that whenever there was an insert, refractor, or autograph, it took place of a base set card.  Why couldn't the "hit" take the place of a prospect card.  The prospect set only consists of 110 cards with the base set consists of 220.  If Topps can't add another card to the pack, don't short me a base set card to put in a hit!  

Here's the rest of the inserts and refractors that I will have up for trade:  

Refractors: 17 Granderson, 58 Hudson, 69 Hanson, 74 Hill, 90 Weeks, 106 Bruce, 110 Gutierrez, 121 C.Young, 140 Weaver, 168 Garza, 217 Cobb

Prospect Refractors: BCP121 Gast, 186 Brantly

Green X Fractors: BCP182 Sampson, 193 von Rosenberg, 218 Riordan

Purple Refractors: BCP136 Magnuson, 160 Cole

Blue Refractors: BCP121 Higashioka, 175 Lawrie

Gold Refractor: 166 Youkilis

2001 Throwbacks: Chipper Jones, Ichiro (english), Ichiro (Japanese)

2001 Throwbacks Prospects:  BCT13 Mesoraco, 14 S Miller, 15 Deshields Jr, 18 Chisenhall, 19 A Vizciano

2021 Diecuts: 4 Deshields Jr., 7 Ranaudo, 8 Allie, 12 Singleton, 17 Dominguez, 24 Turner, 25 Myers

2021 Diecuts Refractors: 3 Taillon, 11 Banuelos, 16 Tago, 18 Sano

Bowman's Best Prospects: BBP54 Singleton, 59 Archer, 60 M Perez, 64 Myers(2), 65 Turner