Pack of the Day 167: Several Rack Packs of 2017 Bowman Platinum

I dusted off the scanner yesterday and processed some photos, so I've got some new stuff in my blog queue. That's pretty exciting for me.

On Monday I had an appointment 'in town' with my doctor. Although I live in the 3rd-largest city in Idaho (according to the 2010 census) and work in the largest city in the state, I still think of traveling outside my neighborhood as going into town. My doctor told me I'm tired all the time because I make bad decisions and go to bed too late, and that she can't help me if I don't put in some effort on my own. She also threatened to hit me when I told her my caffeine intake. She's a pretty good doctor, because she doesn't put up with my shenanigans.

Anyway, since I was in town, I decided to hit up the nearby Walmarts to see if I could scare up any of that 2017 Bowman Platinum stuff I've been hearing about. The first Wal-Mart had a display for Bowman Platinum, but the display was empty except for some clearance blasters of old Panini football products. I looked on the pegs and all around the shelves, but there weren't any loose packs or anything to be found.

I moved on to a second store, and found one rack pack on a peg and another couple of rack packs behind some blind-box collectible figurines. The Bowman Platinum display box was entirely empty, so again I didn't come away with a box of cards.

After that I stopped at a pharmacy to pick up a prescription, and it was close enough to a third Walmart that I decided to give it a shot. Similarly, the display box here was empty, but I found a handful of rack packs hidden behind other products here and there throughout the card aisle. I bought those, too. I really wanted to get a box of Platinum instead of rack packs, but they just aren't in stock in my area. There is a fourth Walmart down the road, but I haven't tried that one yet. I don't know if I will.

Each rack pack has 12 cards in it. Gleybar Torres and Dansby Swanson get the cover treatment. The rack packs contain special parallels of the prospect cards in the set.

Here are the pack odds and NPN information, for those who are into that kind of stuff.

The base cards are shiny, like you'd expect from a product called Platinum. I didn't get the Bellinger rookie card that people are going nuts for, but I did pull one Aaron Judge card. I won't be able to retire from selling it, but at least I got one. There was quite a bit of duplication between my packs, so I pulled a lot of the same players multiple times. Unfortunately, Judge wasn't one of them.

These cards come from the Prospects set. They've got a different card design, and the card numbers are based on the players initials rather than actual numerals. Those two Cubs guys were part of the trade for Jose Quintana a couple of days ago.

The blue cards on the left are the exclusive Prospect parallels. They came one per pack. On the right are some of the serially-numbered parallels I pulled from the packs. Jackie Bradley Jr., Blake Rutherford, and Rafael Devers are all Purple parallels numbered # / 250. Dinelson Lamet is a Green parallel numbered # / 99. I pulled one other Purple, but the corners of every card in that pack were heavily dinged, so I set them aside.

Since I didn't pull any autographs, this Orange parallel of Michael Fulmer was probably the hit of the break, outside of Aaron Judge. This one is numbered # 02 / 25.

I like the design of these Bowman's Next Generation inserts. They kind of look like 2016 Topps Bunt turned up to eleven.

I got another Aaron Judge card, this one from the Platinum Presence insert set. Again, the team logos play a big role in the design of these cards.

Finally, I pulled four of these Rookie Radar inserts. It was nice to get an Astro in Yulieski Gurriel, who has been coming on lately for the team. Hopefully they can carry this season's success all the way through to the postseason.

That's my rundown on my 2017 Bowman Platinum break. This is probably all of the Platinum I'll open for the year, mostly because all of the local stores have been cleared out. I was lucky to find the packs I got. It's a decent product, but like any prospect-based release I find that a lot of the names are unfamiliar.