There is no tension. No drama. No surprises. The design is remarkably similar to the last few years, so much so that it takes more than a quick glance to decipher the year. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Brand recognition is a good thing. Bowman definitely has that. Repetition of basic design year after year is not such a great thing.
Bowman has an identity crisis as a brand. It has a clear cut goal of being the place to find rookies. It does a very good job at that. Rookies abound throughout each set. I believe that Bowman would do much better as a straightforward release. Cut down the parallels (or get rid of them all together). Throw the Chrome parallels away and keep them in Bowman Chrome, where they belong. Have a base set, maybe a few inserts and an autograph parallel of each base card. I think that would clean up Bowman nicely.
I could do without the Draft Picks and Prospects standalone set. Isn't that what the Bowman set is supposed to be anyway? If there has to be a Draft Picks set, (and I've said this before) make it a different design from the Bowman flagship set.
It may sound like I have a hate of Bowman. I really don't. I like Bowman. I see what it could potentially be and I love the tools it has at its disposal. I do not like the execution of the Bowman sets. There is a lot of wasted opportunity, in my opinion. It is bogged down with shiny distractions and needs to get back to basics.
The White Sox have seven cards in the set. It breaks down to three base cards, three chrome cards and an insert.
Base cards:
15 - Josh Phegley
TP-37 - Courtney Hawkins
BDPP-13 - Tim Anderson
Chrome cards:
15 - Josh Phegley
TP-37 - Courtney Hawkins
BDPP-13 - Tim Anderson
Future of the Franchise Mini:
Courtney Hawkins
The White Sox cards in this set are not difficult to collect and that is a major plus in a set riddled with left turns and rainbow chases. There are blue, orange, red, black, silver ice, red ice, purple ice, black ice, cyan printing plate, magenta printing plate, black printing plate, yellow printing plate, chrome, chrome refractor, chrome blue refractor, chrome green refractor, chrome gold refractor, chrome black refractor, chrome orange refractor, chrome red refractor, chrome superfractor, chrome cyan printing plate, chrome magenta printing plate, chrome black printing plate and chrome yellow printing plate parallels that make up the 220 base set.
In order to get every card of Josh Phegley, you will need the regular base card and the twenty-five different parallels. I'm not sure if I want twenty-six different variations of the same Josh Phegley card. Do you?
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