Retro Fun

Going back in time a bit for a different kind of blaster. 

 

With the current state of baseball cards, I've had to find some different ways of making purchases. Box breaks and "online dime boxes" can be great, but sometimes I just have the urge to open packs and can't go down to the local megastore to scratch that itch. Recently, I stumbled across a blaster box of 2003 Bowman Heritage on eBay for a reasonable price. It was actually priced at the suggested retail price, which for some of these boxes used to be more than the typical $19.99 we see today.

The packs look great, so I had to show off a wrapper as well. I usually try to keep at least one pack wrapper for every set that I collect.

Each box apparently comes with its own poster, which describes the history of this particular set. In this case, Keith Olbermann apparently purchased some prototypes for a Bowman set that was never released, which features three distinct designs.

The back of the poster has the full checklist on it.

Here is the primary design for the veterans in the set. It's plain but fits in with some of the other white bordered Bowman sets.

Each pack has one parallel card, as is the custom for Bowman Heritage. For this set, the cards are a thicker version of the base card with a facsimile autograph included. For this design, the border also becomes black.

There are a handful of retired legends in the set, and each of them comes in three variations, one for each design featured in the set. This basically means that there are three different Willie Mays cards with the same card number. A few other present day players get this dual-photo design as their lone version.

Prospects appear on this unique "knothole" design. The selection of rookies/prospects in the set is pretty dire. Brian McCann was the best known player that I pulled.

I'm surprised John Olerud isn't in a lot of newer set. He was a fairly popular player for awhile.

I didn't pull many Cardinals in the box, but I did get the best known Cardinal from 2003.

Here's another retired legend in his "knothole" variation.

I also ended up with a jersey card. Considering how old this set is, I think I did pretty well to get a Hall of Famer here. There doesn't seem to be any sort of guaranteed "hit" per blaster, but per the odds it seems like it should be pretty common.

If anyone has any extras from this set, feel free to hit up my want list. Thanks!