Pack of the Day 98: 2015 Bowman Value Pack

My son's Kindergarten class had a musical presentation the other day. When I arrived at the venue I had to park three blocks away, and once I got into the building there were about 200 angry people in the lobby, complaining because tickets were all sold out and they weren't able to get in to see their children perform. Apparently the grade school song and dance routine is a hot ticket in this town. My wife was able to see our son perform, as she had volunteered to assist the teachers backstage. Outside in the foyer, some angry mothers were becoming unruly and I decided to get out of there.

Although lately I have mostly been buying singles and sets rather than busting wax, sometimes you just need to open a few packs of cards. With a little time to kill, I made up an excuse to go to Target. I considered buying a loose pack of 2015 Bowman and maybe one of 2015 Gypsy Queen, but the local pack searcher had been around at some point and all of the Bowman packs had been removed from the gravity feeder, felt up, and the unwanted packs were all shoved into the Gypsy Queen gravity feeder. I am not sure how you feel up a Bowman pack for hits because most of the value in Bowman comes from colored parallels and autographs. It's not really a relic-heavy product. I don't usually shy away from the loose packs because I think the guy made off with all of the hits; I avoid them because the pack searcher in our town is pretty heavy-handed when it comes to his search methods. I've found many a card with peeled edges and dinged corners after he gets done plying his trade. The blasters of the new WWE Chrome set called out to me and I considered the repack selection, but I eventually settled on a value pack of 2015 Bowman, with 3 packs and a bonus of three Yellow parallels. 

First up are the three Yellow parallels. I'm not familiar with any of these dudes, so the only real notable thing for me here is the amazing Photoshop job on the Jairo Labourt card there on the right. Bowman usually has some pretty obvious editing on the photos, and every so often you find a card like this one that really goes the extra mile. It's like a throwback to the vintage edits you see on cards from the 70s.

Each pack contains 4-5 veteran cards, 3 prospects, 2 Chrome prospects, and 0-1 inserts, for a total of 10 cards. At least that is how these three packs worked out. I want to apologize to any Adam Wainwright fans who are out there. I drafted him in some of my fantasy leagues, which pretty much doomed him to suffer that season-ending injury he sustained a couple of weeks ago.

I did manage to hit a few Astros among the various prospect cards, although I managed to avoid any of the really popular ones. Colin Moran is the representative in this pack. The back of the card says he is rated as the Astros' seventh-best prospect this year. I recognize Tyler Naquin's name from previous iterations of Bowman.

Here are the two Chrome prospect cards from the first pack. Again, I don't recognize these guys. I don't know how I feel about the card design this year. The partial borders and one-sided balance of the player name and team logo are a little distracting, but I also think the cards look good. I guess I'm just used to either having no border or an all-around border.

This pack contained a colored parallel, a Purple Chrome Refractor of Victor Reyes. These fall 1:105 packs, so I guess that's pretty good. I have no idea who Victor Reyes is, though. The card is numbered # 144 / 250.

I'm not really familiar with any of these dudes.

David Price hasn't exactly been an ace this year. You can blame that on me again, as I drafted him for a fantasy team. Iwakuma has also not been very good and is currently out with an injury, but that one isn't my fault. He is a good pitcher, but his K-rate isn't good enough for most fantasy leagues with an innings cap. Liriano and Yelich have some nice photos on their cards, although that Liriano card is a good candidate for a Panini product as most of the logos on his uniform are obscured.

Jairo Labourt's awesome Photoshop makes another appearance, this time in shiny Chrome. Matt Andriese is a pitcher in the Rays organization. His card says he's their 15th-rated prospect. And that does it for the second pack.

Here we get quite a variety of shots among the veterans in the pack. We've got Corey Dickerson swinging the bat, Jake Lamb celebrating, Chris Sale throwing angrily, and Elvis Andrus fielding.

The three prospect cards in this pack are three more guys I've never heard of. Edmundo Sosa is so far down on the Cardinals' farm system that his games are played in a local fishing pond.

The Chrome prospects in this pack are two more guys I've never heard of, but at least Domingo Santana is an Astro. 

Closing things out is another Astro, this time on a Gold parallel numbered # 31 / 50. These Gold parallels fall 1:564 packs, so they're a pretty rare find. I got pretty lucky in these three packs with two numbered parallels, although really they aren't big names and probably aren't worth much. Bowman is fun to open because of the variety of cards in the packs, with veterans, prospects, Chrome prospects, and all kinds of colorful parallels.