Bowman has always been highly focused on prospects. This seems to be taking it to an extreme, however. The base set now consists of only 100 cards, while the prospects “insert” set features 150 different players. I miss the days when the base set was not just an after thought. The vast majority of autographs and other inserts are prospect related, but there are also a few veterans sprinkled in.

 

I don’t remember Bowman really doing buybacks in the same way the Topps flagship release has in recent years, but to celebrate the brand’s 70th anniversary, we get to see some this year. They’re using similar foil colors as the Topps release. I’ve only seen buybacks going back to 1990, as prior to that, the cards would be oversized compared to modern cards, and would not fit in packs.

This box contained:

168 Base (100% of 100 card set)
1 Base Silver Parallel
69 Chrome Prospects (46% of 150 card set)
1 Chrome Prospects Refractor
1 Chrome Prospects Blue Refractor
1 Chrome Prospects Blue Bowman 70th Refractor
118 Prospects (78.7% of 150 card set)
1 Prospects Silver Parallel
1 Prospects Purple Parallel
1 1948 Bowman Chrome
2 1951 Bowman Chrome
3 1992 Bowman Chrome
4 Bowman Scouts’ Top 100
4 Rookie of the Year Favorites
3 Talent Pipeline
1 2017 Bowman 70th Anniversary Buybacks 1997 Silver 406 Juan Encarnacion
1 2017 Bowman 70th Anniversary Buybacks 2006 Bronze 120 Troy Glaus
1 2017 Bowman 70th Anniversary Buybacks 2015 Bronze 112 Yu Darvish
1 Chrome Rookie Autograph Joe Musgrove
1 Chrome Prospect Autograph Patrick Weigel
1 Chrome Prospect Autograph Refractor Taylor Clarke