2023 Bowman Draft pre-sale went live yesterday, prices were announced, and the hobby as we know it lost its innocence.
As a lifelong sports card enthusiast, the past three years have brought me to my knees multiple times. It’s truly exhausting trying to keep up with the market side of the industry. It seems every week for the past 3 years new product has been hitting the shelves. There was a time when an astute collector could recite every product on the market for every sport. That time is long gone. Even the most ardent collector would struggle to name half of the offerings in today’s hobby landscape.
It’s one thing to spray a variety of new releases across the local card shop shelves in hopes to pull in a buyer from across the financial spectrum of the hobby. Having the option of high cost or value priced cards helps to serve a larger market and tap both ends of the monetary spectrum. These new products have the ability to bring in new collectors. That’s good no matter how you slice it. However, when we take a stalwart product, one that brought with it a certain type of collector at inception, and we literally 10x the price inside of a couple years, that’s bound to cause a ripple in the “mojo” of the industry, no?
We have seen the price of product rise across the industry, but at around $500, the 2023 Bowman Draft release may be the biggest shock to the system yet. Let’s do a quick history lesson, this quote is taken from the Topps Ripped website:
Bowman Draft is a product designed for prospectors – collectors who prize prospects to find up-and-coming players before their value skyrockets – whether they’re new to The Hobby or vets. What Bowman Draft offers is the first opportunity to collect and connect with players – and their first Bowman card – over the course of their careers. Part of the appeal of Bowman Draft is the fact that you will pull prospects that have the potential of becoming the next Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, or Julio Rodriguez. It’s as much about building a relationship with a player as hitting on the first card of a future Hall of Famer.
-Topps Ripped (February, 2023)
The Prospector
Baseball has long had an affinity for the “prospect”. There are many websites, like Prospects1500, dedicated to the baseball prospect and the team pipeline they are linked too. A little over 20 years ago, the art of prospecting hit the hobby and has captivated collectors ever since. Everyone from The Athletic to ESPN has written about prospecting and its relationship to baseball cards. Reddit and Blowout have spent copious amounts of forum page space in discussion about prospecting and cards.
The prospector, at its core, is an offshoot of the Investor type we discussed a few posts back. The strategy around cards and prospecting is outlined above in the quote from ripped. The collector obtains the players first card, seen by many as the most important, you wait for them to become the next Mike Trout, you sell the card for hundreds of thousands. Easy, right? It’s not the norm, I guarantee you that, but it’s the ideal path so to speak.
Bowman Draft – Then and Now
In the year 2000, Bowman Draft made its debut. 25 of the most recent draftees were included in the set. It was actually called 2000 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects. Some weeks later, 2000 Bowman Chrome Draft Picks & Prospects came to market. This inaugural offering was only obtainable in set format. There were no hobby or blaster boxes on the shelf. Each set came packaged with an auto. The MSRP? $30 for the 2000 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects set. The Chrome set would debut at $99.99, which is quite a hike from the paper versions original debut. Oh, and no auto in the chrome set! 2001 would follow a similar path, but there was no Chrome release for Draft, only the standard bowman has a chrome release in 2001.
In 2002 the game changed. Hobby boxes were released and packs could be secured for $2.99 MSRP. Boxes typically settled in at a price of somewhere between $65-$75 depending on where you got them. The packs contained 4 base, a gold parallel, and 2 chrome cards.
Over the next 13 years very little changed with the MSRP or the format. 2006 brought a twist as they started seeding auto’s into every box along with a relic. This was also the year the concept of the Rookie Card changed and a stamp was added causing great controversy. Prior to this it was common place to call a prospect card (the first one to hit the market) a rookie card. All of this aside, the price of a hobby box did not change until about 2018. As a collector, you could secure them for under $100 easily, and most of the time, the price settled in around $55-$75. I recently stumbled upon a thread on Blowout and this is what one user reported paying at pre-sale for jumbo draft boxes:
2016 Bowman Draft Jumbo $124.95
2017 Bowman Draft Jumbo $124.75
2018 Bowman Draft Jumbo $149.99
2019 Bowman Draft Jumbo $239.69
The poster ended their list saying, “I stopped in 2019 as I could no longer afford anything beyond.”
Here is the beyond (taken from Topps website)
2020 Bowman Draft Jumbo $309.00
2021 Bowman Draft Jumbo $375.00
2022 Bowman Draft Jumbo $450.00
and that brings us to 2023….
***Remember, Bowman Draft went to a Jumbo format in 2016. More cards, a bit more money, but also more autos per box.
2023 Bowman Draft Jumbo listed at $479.00 on topps.com on release day. No real change in format, the same three autos per box. There aren’t many products in the world that go up 4x price over the course of 7 years. What’s more distressing is the bulk of these cards will be worth zero in very short order. Baseball is hard, and prospects don’t typically turn into Mike Trout, or even Mike Yastrzemski. It’s almost a combination of the investing and gambling strategies.
One would think the rise in price on a year to year basis would thwart most buyers. 20% increases year over year are massive. Possibly there would be a pullback, a revolt, but nope! Topps.com is sold out across the board in all formats. Is it the breaker that’s buying it all up? The LCS looking to stock up? Collector’s hoping to recoup their investment by getting lucky on hitting a low numbered Max Clark Parallel?
One thing we know for sure, Topps considers this an accessible offering. I am not sure how Topps defines “accessible” or if they are trying to set a new definition. Who is this accessible for? If Topps considers this now accessible, what is high end?
Going forward, I hope the prospectors can still prospect within the card world. it’s a fun piece of the hobby but it’s getting pricey out there for sealed product. It remains to be seen how the single card market will be affected. I leave you with this profile of Bowman Draft from the aforementioned Topps Ripped website (plus a link to the posting itself) , notice the value level listed…
DEBUT YEAR:2000
THE TOP PRODUCT ON THE MARKET FOR PROSPECTS WAS FIRST CALLED BOWMAN DRAFT PICKS & PROSPECTS.
LICENSORS:MLB
BOWMAN DRAFT IS A BASEBALL PRODUCT.
VALUE LEVEL:ACCESSIBLE
PREEMINENT PRODUCT FOR COLLECTORS WHO FOCUS ON PROSPECTS.
–Topps Ripped (February 2023)