Forty years ago or so, it would have been hard to imagine a product full of minor league players being a smash hit with collectors but when Topps first tried the idea in 1997, it was clear there was a market for prospects printed on shiny stock. Bowman Chrome became the introduction to guys like Adrian Beltre, Roy Halladay and Kerry Wood.
Fast forward to this year and 2024 Bowman Chrome is on its way with the usual array of autographs, inserts and parallels. Topps held a pre-sale for Hobby boxes and cases on Wednesday.
Hobby boxes contain two mini boxes (packs) with six packs of five cards in each mini box. There will be one autograph per mini box.
2024 Bowman Chrome Base Set
Topps sticks with the format for the base set with 200 cards–100 Chrome Prospects and 100 regular base cards (about 60% of which are rookies. There will be 12 Rookie Short Print Image Variations, 20 Etched in Glass Variations (13 rookies and seven prospects), ten Rookie Color Run Variations as well as Refractors featuring Lou Gehrig and Sandy Koufax (who has also signed some of them) as sort of an extension of the base set.
The”Etched In Glass” variations fall 1 in 721 hobby packs with a checklist that includes Jackson Holliday, Elly De La Cruz, Heston Kjerstad, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Junior Caminero, Masyn Winn, Jackson Chourio, Wyatt Langford, Dylan Crews and 11 others.
As always, there are numerous colored parallel versions to chase.
Inserts
That first Bowman Chrome set 27 years ago didn’t have a lot of inserts–just two, in fact. These days, it’s a much longer list.
Bowman Ascensions and Gladiators of the Diamond have a mix of rookies and prospects on their 25-card checklists. It Came to the League has 20 cards with a similar mix. International Impact is similar to its 1997 brother that had what turned out to be a pretty great card of Beltre. This year’s set has 25 cards.
My First Bowman is a 40-card set that mixes veterans, rookies and prospects.
AFL Fall Stars focuses on players who performed well in last year’s Arizona Fall League and there’s a special card for MVP Jakob Marsee (along with an autographed version). Bowman Spotlights is another insert, with 15 rookies and prospects.
There’s a 1999 Bowman 25th Anniversary insert set that features mostly rookies and a ’99 International Refractor style set of 25 that’s also rookie oriented.
Autographs
Chrome Prospect Autographs are the big attraction here, with the on-card signatures of players who wind up being big league stars often becoming the most valuable baseball cards of their careers, especially the lower numbered parallel versions.
There are nearly 150 prospects who have signed for Bowman Chrome so the majority aren’t likely to become big names in the Hobby. There are Rookie Autographs–24 in all, including Elly De La Cruz, Jackson Holliday, Wyatt Langford, Jackson Chourio, Jackson Merrill and Junior Caminero.
Several of the insert sets will have autographed versions including International Impact, My 1st Bowman (19 of the 25 players from the regular insert set), Gladiators of the Diamond, AFL Fall Stars and Bowman Ascension.
All-American Game Autographs will have a five-player checklist including Bobby Witt Jr.
There will be Chrome Autograph Relic cards with a mixture of veterans, rookies and minor leaguers.
The hobby-wide release date for 2024 Bowman Chrome Baseball is Sept. 11. You can check out boxes on eBay here.
2024 Bowman Chrome Baseball Checklist
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