Product Review: 2013 Bowman Platinum Baseball Hobby Box

Last week marked the release of 2013 Bowman Platinum from Topps which added to the prospect collecting for 2013. The Bowman Platinum brand continues with providing us with today's stars, rookies and future stars in the game. If you like baseball prospecting this is a great product for that. It takes the Bowman regular release and adds some flare to it, and by flare we mean die-cuts, parallels, inserts, autographs and relics.

This years set is comprised of 100 base cards and 100 Prospect base cards. Each of the base cards have hobby parallels to collect with the Base cards having Gold (1:5), Blue Sapphire (1:10), and Ruby (1:20). The Prospects also have a Chrome version to them and have multiple Refractors to hunt down; X-Fractor, Green, Blue, Gold, Red, Atomic, and Super-Fractor.
Inserts play a role within this years product. Best Bowman Players of All-Time continues in Platinum with 10 cards in the continuity program to collect. Along side are Diamonds in the Rough, Top Prospects. and Cutting Edge Stars die-cuts.

Each Hobby box will consist of 20 packs and 5 cards per pack. Most hobby shops will sell by the box, but you might find some that sell by the pack. If you do, your odds of finding a Relic will decrease due to the fact there are no filler cards in this product. So pack searches could be on the hunt to pull them out of the opened boxes. Autographs are harder to search for so you have a good chance there.

Platinum runs in both Hobby and Retail packs, however the main value comes from the Hobby boxes. The difference being the different Purple Retail Parallel. This is not to say that you can't find an Autograph or Relic in the packs at Retail, but your odds ratio increases.

So lets see how we did in our hobby box break:

Base Cards: 24 (0 doubles)
Prospect Base Cards: 50 (0 doubles)
Base Card Gold Parallel: 4 - Jered Weaver, Cole Hamels, Edwin Encarnacion, Yoenis Cespedes
Base Card Blue Sapphire Parallel: 2 - David Wright, Chase Utley
Base Card Ruby Parallel: 1 - Chris Sale
Chrome Prospects: 5 - Corcino, Crick, Rosario, Montgomery, Nunez
Chrome Prospects Green Parallel: 1 - Corey Seager /399
Chrome Prospects X-Fractor: 1 - Joe Ross
Diamond In The Rough: 1 - C.J. Edwards
Best Bowman Players Blue Sapphire Refractor: 1 - Evan Longoria
Cutting Edge Stars: 2 - Evan Longoria, C.J. Cron
Top Prospects: 4 - Jorge Soler, Kevin Gausman, Gregory Polanco, Matt Barnes
Autographed Prospects: 2 - Jesse Biddle, Michael Kickham (Green /399)
Autographed Jumbo Relic: 1 - Avisail Garcia Blue Refractor /199

I must say we did fairly well overall in this box. The card design of the base and prospect base cards are nicely done with refractor type technology. You can tell the difference between the Prospect cards as they have a circle around the BP compared to the oval around the BP on the regular base set. We did notice some chipping around the edges of the base cards though. Not typical pack damage so could be the brittleness of the card stock and technology. This was on a few cards but nothing major showing or damaged. Chrome prospects are the same design as the base cards but with the technology and different numbering. Refractor technology is great from Topps and the parallels equal to those in previous releases. the one thing about the chrome cards is finger prints. they run rampant when you look through them.

Base card parallels are nice with the "Cracked" look. Blue and Ruby are easy to pick out but the Gold is very tricky and have to be in the right light to make sure you have a parallel or not. The scan shows it perfectly but under normal lighting it is tough. Would help if Topps stated the parallel on the back of the cards.

Diamond in the Rough and Top Prospect inserts are decent and the design of the Top Prospect cards are one of the best. Aside from the refractor technology, the design lines on the card make them very collectible.

Continuity programs sometimes can be tiresome but this years "Bowman's best" is a great one to collect. Dating back to the first Bowman cards and adding them as Blue Refractors is awesome. Very happy with the Longoria pulled for the PC. Die-cuts continue to draw interest with collectors. Cutting Edge Stars is no different, very cool design and unique cut. these are tougher than they look but be careful around the bottom sharp cuts in the middle which look a little brittle.

Onto the Hits......well lets talk Autographs, as in On-Card Autographs. Again a big fan of these and add value to us as collectors. The two players we pulled aren't the top prospects but nice that they are on-card autographs. Was happy we didn't pull a redemption for an autograph with the current troubles with replacements.

Our Autographed Relic was a nice Jumbo of recently traded Avisail Garcia. Must say he has a great autograph and took the time to sign it nicely. even though it is a sticker auto still happy as this is common with relic autographs. Again we were pleased with no redemption plus pulling a nice future star is never a bad thing.

Overall is a good new story for the 2013 release. Designs are sharp, inserts were well planned and added value to the box. Of course the 2 Autographs and Relic Auto make or break the box typically but in this case with the amount of prospects pulled your value is there. This is just like any other Bowman product with prospects, you might have to wait a bit to see your values show but well worth it when these prospects make it to the "bigs". Highly recommended for any Prospect collector or Chrome fan.

Most cards/hits pulled in our breaks end up on our site storefront www.packgambler.com, or our COMC account ThePackGambler. If you are interested in any of the cards we have mentioned please send us an e-mail at packgamblersales@gmail.com

Gambler Overall Rating: 4.6 out of 5
Cost: 5/5
Autographs: 4.5/5
Relics: 4.5/5
Parallels: 4/5
Concept: 4.5/5
Fun Aspect: 5/5