Atlanta area collector David Bach got quite a surprise when he bought a box of 2017 Bowman Draft baseball from a sealed case opened at On Deck Sports Cards in Lawrenceville, Georgia last week. In addition to the promised three autographs, he pulled three additional cards that definitely didn’t belong in the product.
Inside were two 2017 Bowman Chrome refractors of Aaron Judge –one blue and one green—and a 2017 Kris Bryant Finest Finishes card from Topps Finest. Not only were they from completely different products, all three were missing the autograph and none had a serial number on the back.
It appears as if the cards were leftovers from production. They were never given to the players for signatures nor printed with the serial numbers that are typically printed in gold on the back. How they wound up in a case of Bowman Draft we don’t know.
Bach called Topps to let the company know what he discovered and Topps tells us they’re still looking into what may have happened during the pack out process but they say it appears to be an “isolated incident.”
Bach says he bought two cases of Jumbo Draft and one Super Jumbo, all of which were factory-direct.
He’s sending them to Beckett for grading and authentication and said the company wants to catalog them.