Review: 2012 Bowman Platinum Baseball

Last Wednesday was yet another release for Topps in their baseball lineup. 2012 Bowman Platinum Baseball, a very crisp and reflective product to get the ball rolling into the coming releases of Finest, Topps Chrome, and Bowman Chrome. Last years release I wasn't too impressed. The design of the cards was a little dull, and the Relics and Autographed cards seemed to not have that extra "sparkle" to make me want to buy a box.
I was hoping that Topps would change it up for this years release and when the sell sheets came out they looked great. The base card design was fresh and sleek, the die-cut inserts were a plus and the autographed and relic cards looked fantastic. Parallels of prospects and veterans were included, along with Jumbo patches, a Bryce Harper Bat barrel and redemptions for 53 game used memorabilia from the Arizona Fall league! This product was not only a great looking set but was loaded with goodies.
How could someone say no to a box like this? With chances to pull in some big cards and future all-stars of the game it is a no brainer.
The Hobby box contains 20 packs with 5 cards per pack. The hits are 2 Autographs and 1 Autographed relic per box. The 2 autographs are mainly rookies or future stars with on-card autographs for them. You do have a chance to pull a Purely Platinum Veteran card numbered 1/1, Die-cut veteran /25, dual autographs /50, triple autographs /10 and a Hexagraph book card with 6 autographs numbered out of 10. As for the relic autographed hits, these are 1 per box and come with a sticker autograph (at least from the majority of what I have seen), and are a mix of veterans and future stars.
When I bought this box I wasn't looking for the "white whale" to flip, this was more for future value and looking at the prospects. Of course you can't help but want that Harper bat barrel or a jumbo patch to flip but I tried to put that out of my head on this box bust and look forward to the on-card autographs of the future stars of the game. 


Here is what I received out of my box:
Base cards: 55 (0 doubles)
Rookies: 12 (including Cespedes and Harper)
Base Gold: 3 (Holliday, Jennings, Ichiro)
Base Emerald: 2 (Lester, Harper)
Base Ruby: 1 (Mesoraco)
Prospects: 11

Prospect Refractors: 5

Prospect Refractors Emerald: 1 (Kevin Mathews /399)

Prospect X-Fractors: 1 (Bryce Brentz)

Top Prospects: 4

Cutting Edge Stars Die-cut: 2 (Freeman, Nova)

Autographed Prospect: 2 (Greg Bird, Yazy Arbelo) 

Autographed Relic: 1 (Tyler Thronburg Redemption)

After the box bust I was a little sad it was over. This was a fun rip and had some decent cards in it, I wanted to open more. The Autographed Prospect cards of Greg Bird and Yazy Arbelo were on-card autographs, with both having really decent signatures. The Redemption for the Thronburg Relic autograph was ok but on the lower end of the those on the checklist. The parallels look good too, the base Gold are a little hard to tell from the regular base cards. The Emerald Harper and Ruby Mesoraco look really nice and stand out. 

I was pleased with this box overall but again it is more of a keeper or trade bait box than a flip for profit. If your looking for a really nice design and some future rookies this is the box for you. 

Gambler Overall Rating: 4 out of 5

Cost: 4/5

Autographs: 4/5 

Memorabilia: 3/5

Design: 5/5

Rookies: 4/5

Fun Aspect: 4/5