Bowman High Tek Baseball Preview

For the past couple of years, the designs for Topps’ High Tek baseball product has sent geometry lovers into ecstasy, with card designs featuring swirling lines, sharply angled rectangular shapes, wavy backgrounds and crisscrossing lines. Now, Topps has decided to shift High Tek to its Bowman line.

2017 Bowman High Tek Basics

Scheduled for release in late September, Bowman High Tek will feature baseball’s top prospects in a similarly dizzying array of patterns and variations. A 10-card hobby box will include four on-card autographs, a base parallel card and multiple base card variations. A case hit (12 boxes to a case) will feature a 1992 Bowman variation insert card, plus an additional numbered insert card.

The price for a hobby box should be around $85 per box, depending on the retailer. That compares to the 2016 Topps High Tek product, which contained only eight cards and one autograph per box but at a lower price point.

Pattern Preview

Longtime collectors will recall that Topps returned Tek to the active list in 2014 after a 16-year absence. Fans of the original set in 1998 had to grapple with a 90-card base set that had 90 different background patterns per card. Master card set collectors had a staggering 8,100-card set to chase. Plus, each card also had a parallel that was printed with diffraction foil.

This year’s Bowman High Tek set won’t be as daunting, but there still will be plenty of patterns for collectors to chase.

Topps has already announced Pattern 1 cards, which will feature green rainbow parallels, gold rainbow parallels numbered to 50, an Orange Magma Diffractor parallel numbered to 25, a limited Red Orbit Diffractor parallel, and a 1/1 Black Galactic Diffractor parallel.

Inserts and Autographs

In addition to the 1992 Bowman variation insert, the 2017 set will introduce Bashers, an insert set that will feature top prospects and young major-leaguers who are noted for their power. Another insert is called 2017 Bowman Rookie Cards, which will showcase the majors’ 10 most notable rookies.

Autograph cards will feature top prospects and young major-league veterans. In addition to regular High Tek signature card, autographs also will be featured on Bashers inserts and also on the 1992 Bowman variations. Autos also will be featured on parallels like Tidal Diffractor, Green Rainbow, Gold Rainbow, Orange Magma (numbered to 25), Red Orbit Diffractor (5) and Black Rainbow (1/1).

There will be plenty of variety, thanks to those multiple patterns and designs, when High Tek makes its Bowman debut on October 4.

About Bob D'Angelo

Bob has been a sportswriter and copy editor for more than 45 years and a blogger for two decades. He is celebrating his 60th year of card collecting, and still counts his 1965 Topps Mickey Mantle as his favorite. You can reach him at [email protected].