2014 Bowman Inception Baseball Review and Checklist

At one time we discussed one of the possible future for card releases that could involve creating a product of nothing but hits. Of course, I had forgotten that last year’s Bowman Inception baseball release had just been released and actually served that exact purpose. For various reasons, the product did not exactly light up collectors’ eyes as many thought. The biggest card in that set was Yasiel Puig but otherwise there really was not much else to excite collectors.

Topps came up with what most collectors believe is a better design for 2014 Bowman Inception and eliminated some of the issues it had with chipping and other defects. Inception released in late June.

The concept is real simple: Five cards, including one signed relic piece four other autographs. Now, granted the mix of players skews very young, so there is some prospect knowledge needed but the price point is not so bad on a per card basis that many collectors can live with the gamble. Don’t look for a ton of relics here—just on card autographs of rookies and prospects. For many, that’s an appealing idea.

My local card store (Triple Cards, Plano TX) reported selling out of his 40 box allotment of 2014 Bowman Inception within a week at about $110 per box. Pretty impressive. Online retailers are currently between $100-105 per box. Thus each card has an average cost of about $20.

The closest thing to a base card is the prospect autographs which feature hand-signed cards with the player photo set against a mainly white background with some brown. The backs feature career highlights.

Here’s what came out of our box:

Prospect Autographs: Archie Bradley, Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa. That’s a heckuva trio to pull but there are apparently enough out there to keep secondary market prices reasonable.

Prospect Inception Autograph (#d to 1); Carlos Tocci

Autograph Relic Card (#d to 50): Colin Moran

The Moran relics haven’t done well while a quick search of Carlos Tocci shows he is an 18-year-old prospect playing in the single A minor leagues. Of course we will have to see how he develops as so far he is not showing any real power or stolen base capabilities. Entering the 2014 season he was ranked as the Phillies #5 overall prospect so there are a lot of tools to work with there. Thus, we will see in a few years whether we hit it big. It was a quick break but the jury will be out on these guys for a few years.

Even if Tocci does not develop as well as we’d like, though, we did well enough with our other cards to feel like the customers at Triple Cards, whom the owner quoted as saying “I don’t know all of these players but I liked this. Give me another box.”

You can see 2014 Bowman Inception singles, lots, cases, case breaks and boxes for sale on eBay here.