2012 Bowman Chrome Baseball Card Box Break Recap And Review

Bowman Chrome Baseball is as consistent and familiar as the set it based on, Bowman Baseball.  Very little changes from year to year.  For this year’s Bowman Baseball, Bryce Harper was the face of the box along with newcomer Garrit Cole.  For that release it was Yu Darvish who stole the show with his cards garnering the top prices paid on the secondary market.  So it is not surprising that Darvish has replace Cole as the featured player alongside Harper for 2012 Bowman Chrome Baseball.   If Bowman Chrome has been a part of your collection in the past, you will want to get in on this year’s set too.  If you are new to Bowman, there are some nice cards to be found here.

Bowman Chrome Baseball falls under our classification of trading cards. Hobby boxes contain 18 – 4 card packs and feature one autographed card in every box.

Here is a look at some of the cards we pulled.

Base Set

Robinson Cano, front and back

 Brandon Phillips, Jayson Werth, Ian Kennedy

 Prospects

 Manny Machado, front and back

Guillermo Pimentel, Matt Benedict, Anthony Garcia 

 Refractors

 Justin Verlander, front and back

 Andrelton Simmons, Gabriel Lino, Danny Winkler

 Blue Prospect Refractor

 Austin Barnes #250

Base Purple Refractor 

 Kole Calhoun #/199

Inserts

All-Star Futures Game

 Wil Myers

Franchise All-Stars

Mets - David Wright & Zack Wheeler, Brewers - Ryan Braun & Scooter Gennett

Legends In The Making Diecuts

 Trevor Bauer

Become The Bowman Scout

 Promotional Card

The Hit

 Williams Jerez Refractor Auto #/500

Overall Look

Chrome carries the design of Bowman Baseball which has always has a straightforward design. These Chrome cards are sharp and inserts are where most of the design elements come into play. Lots of color parallels, diecuts and insets based on the Futures game all look great.  The additional notation of "refractor" on the backs of the cards is always helpful.

Quality and Variety of Players

This set offers 220 base cards and 110 prospects offer the best of the MLB and a variety of primed prospects and young hopefuls to make for a good mix.

Do the hits hold up?

In additional to rainbow hunting, the variety of different hits makes this year’s Bowman Chrome standout.  The first auto cards from speedster Billy Hamilton, along with autographed Rookie cards from Bryce Harper, Trevor Bauer, Will Middlebrooks and Yu Darvish to name a few. There were Blue Wave Redemption cards to be had, but the allotment has been filled.  What is still left is the Become a Bowman Scout promotion.  Details about the promotion can be found at Facebook.com/BowmanBaseball

Will you want to collect them all?

A base set is a definate yes and rainbow collectors will want to expand into the different colored refractors.

Rating

4 1/2 out of 5

2012 Bowman Chrome Baseball delivers again.  It is a consistent favorite of card collectors.


Review box provided by Topps