I have a not-so-secret secret. I love Bowman Platinum. In hand they are absolutely awesome. Right up there with Pristine and Finest. They’re shiny, and chromed, and just plain neat looking. Yesterday was the actual street-date, but I picked these up on Monday since my Target seems to not give two flips about street-dates in general. I bought a blaster and a rack pack. Scans after the break.

These are the base cards. Since foil seems to turn blue on scanners, and these are crazy blue looking, you can imagine their shininess in hand. This is a good cross sample of the base set. Being only 100 cards deep, this part should be fairly easy for set collectors.

McCutchen: Seriously son, you need to slow your roll…
Harper: Weeeeeeee!

RC’s, which, along with the prospects, is kinda the point of Bowman.

A new “Top Prospects” insert this year, which in a way is kind of redundant. A “prospect” card in a product focused on rookies. Ummm, duh? Still, nice looking though.

You’re going to have to go with me on this one. These are the “Emerald” Parallels. There are 4 colored parallels (Emerald, Gold, Ruby and Purple – retail only), then all sorts of refractors, serial numbered parallels, inserts, and die-cuts. Base set, easy. Parallel set, incredibly impossible.

Gold/Yellow parallels. You might have to squint for that one, the blue from the scanner really kills the yellow. In hand it’s much more apparent.

Ruby parallel. The rarest of the colored versions. I think the green are 1:5 packs, yellow are 1:10 and the ruby are 1:20, or something like that. So, the 5 total I got isn’t too shabby.

When you get a rack pack, there’s a mini-pack of 3 purple, “retail only” parallels.

So, ok. I don’t know what these are. I’m assuming its a refractor, but I have no proof. According to the sell sheet AND the official checklist,there are 3 kinds of base parallels for cards 1-100 (emerald, gold, ruby) and 7 (!) kinds of parallels for the prospects (BPP 1-100). There are X-fractors (hobby only, 1 per box), green (/399), blue (/199), gold (/50), red (/25), atomic (/5), superfractor (1/1). These aren’t x-fractors, I didn’t buy a hobby box, and they aren’t numbered anywhere. So, I have no clue. I only got 2 of them, so they’re some sort of parallel. They have a pebbled texture to them and they’re kinda rippled. I’m just going to go with “refractor”, even though they don’t seem to be on the product list.

Oooh, a die-cut. I actually like these quite a bit, which I suppose is good considering Topps went all die-cut crazy this year. We’ll be seeing stuff like this is pretty much every product for the rest of the year. Finest, Chrome, etc. This one really looks nice with the blue of Freeman’s jersey and the blue stripes in the design. Nice looking card.

Last but not least, a serial numbered green refractor, 344/399, Jake Marisnick for the Blue Jays.

All in all, I really like Bowman Platinum, it’s one of my favorite products of the year. I only buy one prospecting line, and this is it. I’ve never liked the look of Sterling (and it’s too expensive), and vanilla Bowman seems too plain. This fills the gap. I don’t think I’m going after a set, so these should all be available, except perhaps the Harper, which I might hang onto for a little bit. If anyone has any of the Red Sox, I only got 1 (Lester) from my blaster, so I’ll be looking to pick those up. If you have any for trade, let me know.