I See You on My TV Set

A #CrackinWaxMailDay from @CrackinWax features an old set I'm very fond of. 

 

I don't normally go for group breaks where completely random teams are involved, but I have a soft spot for the old Bowman Heritage sets. (Not so much the new ones.) The old TV set design from 1955 Bowman is probably my favorite. From the very moment it was designed, it couldn't have been anything but "retro", even when television must have felt like the cutting edge of technology at the time.

I ended up getting assigned with the Mets and A's in a 2004 Bowman Heritage group break at Crackin' Wax. I think the set does a nice job at paying tribute to the original. Let's check out just a few of the cards that I was able to tick off my want list.

The set has two basic designs, depending on the league each team belongs to. The lighter colored borders, like Tom Glavine, are assigned to NL teams while Oakland's Mark Mulder gets this darker TV cabinet.

While Glavine and Mulder were among the relatively few familiar names in the bunch, Bowman has always been very rookie/prospect focused since its Topps revival. Here we get a first year card of someone named Brad Sullivan. The black & white parallels in this set feature a thicker card stock and a facsimile signature, something which appears in other Bowman Heritage sets of the era.

While it was nice to take a few more things off my want list, this Eric Chavez bat chunk card is heading to my trade box. While Eric Chavez didn't quite put together a Hall of Fame career, he is a memorable player. There are quite a few good to great players to pull bat and jersey cards from in these boxes from the 2000s, as evidenced by a 2006 Bowman Heritage box I bought a couple of years ago. It's just a shame that they're so expensive now.
 

Unlike the 2006 box, there weren't any significant box toppers in the 2004 product. I did request this scouting report/checklist poster (there wasn't a lot of demand for it) and Christopher was kind enough to send it my way. This includes a blurb about each prospect in the set, and a full checklist is also included on the back. If you zoom in on the upper left corner, you can see what they said about a certain Molina brother. (There's not a lot of "scouting" on these reports.) The whole thing is much larger than my scanner bed, but I'm sure you get the gist.