The baseball season truly takes life when Bowman Baseball steps to the plate. What emerged as “The Home of the Rookie Card” transformed into “The Home of the 1st Bowman Card” now has become the Home of the 1st Bowman Autograph, parallel, numbered and various forms of a prospect’s most desirable cardboard offering.
The 2023 Bowman Baseball product comes in multiple configurations that have been arriving on the market this month. We decided to do a Brief Box Break on a Bowman blaster, so let’s step to the plate and dig in.
Blasters boast six packs with twelve cards per pack for a total of 72 cards per box. At about $30 per box, it’s a decent point to get in the Bowman game.
Everybody is chasing Andruw Jones’ son Druw’s 1st Bowman autographs, parallels and everything else in that sphere, so that was on our mind cracking into this one.
As we could tell from the very first pack and as everyone pretty much knew, this is loaded with the 1st Bowman, 1st Bowman Chrome, paper rookies and rookie chrome cards. Not exactly a shocker there.
We had a first Bowman Chrome of Pirates prospect Braylon Bishop.The Buccos 14th round pick in the 2021 draft is getting off to a slow start, hitting just .111 so far this season.
The first pack also saw a Modern Prospects insert of Red Sox young stud Ceddanne Rafaela. The diminutive swiss army knife showed promise (and some pop) in 2022 across a few levels of the Sox farm system.
We hit a Colton Cowser Sights on September in our second pack. The young Oriole hopes for a late season call up, according to this card. The fifth overall pick in the 2021 MLB Draft is already performing at the Triple A level, so don’t be suprised to see him before September. 
It didn’t take long for the Druw Jones sweepstakes to hit our countertop as we pulled the Arizona Diamondbacks super prospect’s 1st Bowman Chrome in our second pack. Currently injured, Jones got off to a slow start to the 2023 season.
Not to be outdone, the card right under Jones was a Bowman Chrome 1st green retail refractor of Seattle Mariners infielder Martin Gonzalez. The youngster showed some promise in rookie ball last season.
In the third pack we found a Josh Baez top 100 prospect card and a paper Brett Baty RC.
In our next pack we found a Rookie of the Year Favorite of New York Mets prospect Fernando Alvarez. It was a Shea Stadium pack as we also pulled Jesus Baez’s first Bowman Chrome, another Mets prospect.
In our next to last pack we pulled a Bowman Spotlight Tristan Casas insert. These are found in every 18 packs. The Boston Red Sox big first baseman is hitting below the Mendoza Line after parts of two minor league seasons.
Our last pack, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, we unwrapped a Felix Vario top 100 prospects card as well as a George Burgos 1st Bowman Chrome.
We felt lucky to pull the biggest prospect’s 1st Bowman Chrome in a blaster that holds only 72 cards. On top of that, as with any Bowman Chrome product right out of the gate, there could be a number of future stars within these packs. It’s definitely playing the long game for the unheralded players with a wait and see approach for these youngsters to really pan out.
As a side note, after we opened our blaster we sold one to a customer who found a green auto numbered to 99 and a number of other parallels and colors of rookies and Bowman first players. The blaster he pulled after adding up all the current value was over $200. He is under the impression after doing some digging that the first run and distribution of Bowman products is far better than any subsequent, so we will see if that holds true with the rest of our cases.
Check out sports card boxes of all kinds in Sports Zone’s online store here.
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