by Rich Klein
For “fans” who have been reading these reviews for nearly four years at this point, you are all probably used to hearing this mantra: "Please check with us in about five years to see how we did with this product". Well, the baseball card brand this truism is best used for is the Bowman Draft Pick brand. Even more than the regular Bowman product issued earlier each year, the Topps company’s Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects usually features players called up during the season as well as fresh draft picks 
from the June draft and those who’ve never been on a card before.
2012 Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects is hobby only this year but again comes 24 packs to a box with two Bowman Chrome cards and an autograph. It seems like Topps could add a second autograph a card to each box since most of the players who sign for this product are fairly low on the payment scale and a second autograph might even spur more sales. Of course, arguing with the continued success of this product is very difficult as my local card store (Triple Cards, Plano, TX.) had sold approximately 10 cases at $74.25 per box.
The owner did report good success out of his boxes with at least six AFLAC autographs, some gold autographs, a purple autograph as well as a 1/1 Bowman Best insert. His comment, as referred to earlier is that most of his clients, who are not prospectors (or Chromies as the Beckett Message Board used to call them) really do not know who their autographs are. Online, you can find them for as little as $50 per box.
So how did we do from our box? First off, there were no duplicates—always a plus.
Base Card Rookies: 41 of 55
Base Card Draft Picks 75 of 165
Chrome Rookies Base Cards: 13 of 55
Chrome Draft Pick Base Cards: 29 of 165
Chrome Draft Pick Refractors: Brandon Brennan, Tyler Gonzalez, Brian Johnson, Peter O'Brien, Michael Wacha, Kyle Zimmer
Bowman Draft Pick Silver Ice Parallel: Paul Sewald
Bomwan Draft Pick Blue Parallel (#d to 500): John Kuchino
Bowman Rookie Orange Parallel (#d to 250) Joe Kelly
Bowman Draft Pick Orange Parallel (#d to 250): Hudson Randall
Chrome Rookies Blue Parallel (#d to 250): Drew Smyly
Dual Top Ten Picks: Ryan Braun/Bubba Starling, Matt Cain/Mike Trout, Clayton Kershaw/Max Fried, Paul Konerko/Courtney Hawkins
Draft Pick Autographs: Nick Williams
The Dual Top Ten Picks and Silver Ice parallels have been fairly popular with collectors and we landed a couple of nice ones from that subset although they don't sell for more than a couple bucks. Williams is a Texas high school outfielder drafted by the Rangers this year, symbolic of the annual 'wait and see' that accompanies 2012 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects autographs but on a short term basis there were some decent rookie cards and parallels to stick away. Getting introduced to some of these youngsters via a baseball card is always fun and at the low end of the price point here you can’t complain much, even if a second auto would be nice. See what's available on eBay right now by clicking here.
Rich Klein can be reached at [email protected]
