Bowman 2012 And The Art of Spending Wisely

I happen to be a fan of Bowman products.  Not because I consider myself a prospector, but because I live in AA baseball country, and it's fun to get cards of guys I see come through here.  It's with Bowman cards that my son has been able to get real baseball cards (sometimes autographed) of players he sees play live. 

I've built, or should I say, am in the process of building complete sets from 2010 and 2011 Bowman still, which I mostly put together through blasters.  2010 yielded me a few Strasburg cards, and last year I had monster luck with Bryce Harper cards.

I'm in for the 2012 set as well.  However, one tries not to go through life without learning how to do things better and smarter.  I realized that it could be so much easier and cheaper to pass on building the 2012 set through blasters, trades and sportlots.com.  A quick scan of eBay reveals that I can buy a master set (220 card base, 110 card prospect set and 110 chrome prospect set) for about the cost of 3 blasters.  Or, I could be patient and wait for the inevitable lot of Bowman cards that will surely be auctioned off at Cleve's from someone who buys a hobby box or two for the big hits and sells the rest for a steal at the auction.  It happens all the time.

Today at lunch, I had to go to Walmart for business purposes.  Seriously, I did.  Before I went in I reminded myself of my wise strategy:

• No blasters- maybe buy one pack to see what the cards look like
• Buy a master set online and be done with it and then chase a few good cards that I really want (i.e. Ranger parallels, autos of guys who might play for the Naturals soon, etc.) or..
• Wait to get the bulk of the set from a Cleve auction, and finish off the rest through trades

I was proud of myself for such a level headed, disciplined approach to my collection.  Confident, I went into Walmart.

Let's take a look at the blasters I bought:

 Mr. 4 Home Run- Josh Hamilton and other Rangers

I like the base set design just fine.  It's simple, and I like the placement of the team logo.  The font size of the player name is a little small though.

Of course, there are the obligatory parallels.  The orange (#d to 250) and the gold do nothing for me, but I have to say I really dig the "silver ice" parallel and the international parallel with the player's home country flag as the backdrop.  The silver ice cards have a hologram/3D look to them, and are really neat under lights.  The flag cards are very sharp too.  I'm seriously considering building a 3 pronged base set with the base card, silver ice and international parallels as well.  That would look great in a binder with 3 cards of each player layed out in rows in 9 pocket pages.

Each pack contained 2 Bowman Chrome cards.  I didn't get any big prospects as far as I know, although I've heard some good things about Josh Bell.

One thing I was pleasantly surprised about this years Bowman offering was the lack of inserts.  From what I can tell, the Bowman's Best set is the only one.  That's fine with me, as it will make building a master set much simpler.  The Bowman's Best cards are pretty nice looking I think.

Oh, I almost forgot the hit I pulled in blaster #2.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any Yu Darvish cards, which is what I was really hoping for.

Now the question becomes, do I still go ahead and just buy a master set online, or do I do this the hard way again?