2013 Bowman baseball, completed Homer Simpson-style

As in,

Although I don't scan the Blowout Buy/Sell/Trade boards as much anymore as they've gotten junkier (and worse with spelling and grammar, YEESH), I happened to check it out the other day and saw a guy selling a bunch of complete 2013 Bowman baseball sets--#s 1-220 for the base and Prospects 1-110--for just $9 delivered, which, by then, he'd lowered to just $8.  That was good enough for me so I jumped on it, then came home today to find a USPS medium flat-rate box sitting on my porch.  That's right, he'd spent more than $9 to ship me a set I gave him $8 (minus Paypal's cut) for.  Still, I'd lean on the side of generosity and not stupidity here--it's pretty obvious he's a box-breaker since he used a bunch of 2012 Bowman base to pad the box--and just smile and enjoy the set.  Before I show off the goods I figure I'll link y'all to it in case you want one of your own, which you can get from this thread here.

All right, we'll start with the most relevant cards to this blog, the Tigers from the base set:

That's definitely a fantastic group, I'm just surprised they didn't include Verlander, but it's fine.  Garcia was one of the "RCs" you'll see more of in a minute, but since he's pictured as a Tiger I'll include him here.  If Jose Iglesias had a card I would have included him too.

Detroit also had four guys in the Prospects set:

The Rondon is the base version of the parallel I just got from GSNHoF.  Castro is an up-and-coming 2B, which is good since Infante won't be around forever.  I have to admit I know nothing about Moya.  As for Thompson, I got to see him in-person, as well as Castro, when I took in a Lansing Lugnuts game vs. the teammates' West Michigan Whitecaps (he wasn't all that great).

Before I get to the rest of the stuff to show off, here's a couple card backs:

This is Torii Hunter's from the base set.  As often happens with Bowman, yearly stats are replaced by more info about the player, which seems reasonable enough.

And here's Rondon's back from the Prospects set, where the extra analysis becomes more useful.  Not a bad look overall, I think.

To close things out, I thought I'd show all of the base set's "RCs" and a few higher profile Prospects.  I always have to put "RC" in quotes these days because the term has become meaningless for reasons I've beat into the ground.  Anyway, I counted 24, including Garcia's card above, and I filled out the last scan with a few top prospects many of you may already know.

 

 

Twins fans are surely geeked to have one of the game's consensus rising stars in Buxton.  Giolito was the Nats' first-rounder last year.  Schoop isn't as high-profile but has an awesome name.  And Correa was the #1 overall pick last year for a team that might have a few of those in a row.  But hey, Sam, at least they included an Astro!  (By the way, Jose Altuve's in the base set).

So while I'm no prospector (good luck making ANY money off Topps' crap anyway!) I'm happy to have landed my first 2013 set for just $8.  By the way, if anyone needs some 2012 base cards for their set, please let me know, and I'll be including some of those in future trade packages to get rid of them.

Stay tuned for another exciting TMV/TMM trade package this week!