2014 Bowman Platinum Want/Trade List

Wants

Updated July 24, 2018 (Yes, I know this set is 4 years old, but I am going to finish it eventually)

Base:
1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 40, 43, 44, 45, 47, 49, 51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 96, 98, 99

Prospects (BPP):
4, 8, 9, 13, 21, 22, 27, 30, 32, 36, 42, 52, 58, 59, 60, 65, 68, 78, 79, 84, 87, 88, 94, 98, 100

Prospects Atomic:
Jonathan Gray

Prospects Blue (Sapphire /199):
Jonathan Gray

Prospects Camo:
Eddie Butler, Trevor Story

Prospects Gold:
Jonathan Gray

Prospects Refractors:
Jonathan Gray

Prospects X-Fractors:
Jonathan Gray

For Trade

Base Gold:
1 Taijuan Walker

Prospects
29, 38, 53

Prospects Refractors:
22, 30, 45, 94

Top Prospects Die Cut
Eddie Butler

Check Out My Rockies (Summer 2018)

You knew it was coming after the NBA post, my COMC Rockies package with a mix of the mailbox service cards, Spring cleaning sale, a random stuff I have bought over the last few months. Starting off with 3 different (I assure you they are different) Jonathan Lucroy cards from 2018 Heritage. We have the 100th Anniversary, the Flip Stock and the Red Back. I just need the Black border and the base for the rainbow. Despite playing in 46 games with the Rockies in 2017, this as a photoshop from his Rangers days. The beard is a dead giveaway.Also Despite being in Oakland all year, Lucroy is listed on the Series 2 checklist with the Rockies.

Top Baseball Parallels of All-Time (as voted by me) 1-5

Continuing where we left off....

5. Topps - Clear (2014-2016)
Topps Flagship makes it second appearance on the list, and you know there had to be something acetate coming. This is not the first time a set has had a complete acetate parallel, two football sets, 2000 Bowman's Best and 2013 Panini Momentum come to mind, but this the the first baseball one to come to mind, and I seem to remember these being kind of a big deal when they came out in 2014.

4. Topps Finest - Gold Refractors* (1999)
The second asterisk in the list, along with Fleer Brilliants, 1999 Finest Gold is another hard to find, sought after parallel that I don't actual have in hand. The Larry Walker above showed up on COMC the day after I requested a shipment, so while I "own" the card, it won't physically be in my collection for a few moths until I amass enough cards to warrant a shipment request. The weird deckle edges add to the uniqueness of the parallel, it's really a shame how ugly Finest has been since Topps brought it back a few years ago when they used to do things like this.

3. Gypsy Queen - Mini Black (2011-2015)
It took me a while to warm up to minis, and I eventually did, but I always liked the Gypsy Queen black minis, even the 2015's (which I feel is the ugliest GQ set) look good. I was pretty disappointed when they limited them to 5 in 2015, and even more gutted when they dropped them altogether in 2016, and it sounds like 2017 won't have minis at all, so that sucks.

2. Panini Prizm - Tie-Dyed Prizms (2015)
Not much needs to be said about these, just look at them, bask in the tripped out glory. You almost don't notice there is no logos on the card (honestly these might be number 1 if they had logos). Panini has tried this with other sets in other sports, but they never got it as good as these. Numbered to 50, so they are limited, but not impossible to find or ridiculously overpriced. Sadly it looks like Panini dropped the Prizm baseball line altogether, hopefully it comes back next year with something similar to these dead-head acid-trip beauties.

1. Bowman Platinum - Prospects Camo Refractors (2014)
Throughout the original run of Bowman Platinum (so not counting the lackluster release of 2016) I thought it was consistently one of the best designed of the Topps products, with 2014 being my favorite. The purple, orange, red, green all looked good, but the camo blows them all away. Topps has done camo before and has done it since (as has Panani), but it is just borders, nothing really different, this is different. The only thing I don't like about these is that they are limited to 15, so I still need two to complete the team set.


There you go, a fun little exercise that got me to did through my collection and post some actual content. So, what did I miss, what set was way better than these that I completely whiffed on? Post them in the comments, or make your own list, I am legitimately interested in other people thoughts on this. Thanks for reading.

Big, Big Zistle Trade, Part 1

The fat stack above just by itself would be a big trade for me, but that is not all of it, that's just the 2014 Bowman Platinum portion, putting a big dent in my wantlist for a set that I really wish I would have bought more of when it was around.

More Recent Pickups

Another show-off/empty the scan folder post. Starting things off is a part of a project that I have been working on for quite a while, getting a bat relic of the top home run hitting catchers. Lance Parrish sits 6th on that list with 299 homers as a catcher (324 overall) and this is his only bat relic I know of, so it nice to cross this one off the list.

Recent Rockies Additions

Another "clean out the scan folder" post loaded up with Rockies that I have picked up over the last who know how long. Starting with my favorite of the bunch, David Dahl. One thing Bowman Platinum did right is parallels. Not just different color borders, but changing the whole background, and the camo parallels are the nicest of the bunch. Topps is lacking big-time in this, while Panini is doing it fairly well in the Prizm line.

Random Rockies Pick-ups

Mini's! One of these is not like the other, franchise icons Troy Tulowitzki and Todd Helton with Juan Sosa in the middle, don't feel bad, I don't know who Juan Sosa is either.

Zistle Trade #45

How can you not lead off with this card, being a National League fan, Paul Konerko means very little to me, probably about as much as Todd Helton would mean to a White Sox fan, but this card is amazing. Base card gems like this is what make collecting fun, not low numbered parallels or cards with a piece of cloth that may or not be from a players jersey, cards like this.

COMRockies (Parallel Madness)

Still working the the most recent COMC package, starting with my favorite card of the bunch, a camo refractor of Rosell Herrera, numbered to 15, these are pretty hard to find for a reasonable price. I am not a huge fan of Herrera as a prospect, but this was too nice a card to pass up.

One Card Korean Mailday

Pretty sure this is the first package I have received from Korea. This is only the second Japan-fractor of Jon Gray that I remember seeing and after missing out on the first one, I managed to get this one. Numbered to 35 and only released in Asian versions of Platinum, I don't expect to see to many of these pop up. Kind of a sad reminder that Platinum was scrapped this season.

Thoughts on Topps changes for 2015

Topps recently announced some changes to the baseball line-up for the 2015 season, nothing really huge to most people, but the fact they discontinued one of the few brand I really liked in Bowman Platinum was pretty disappointing, so I am just going to over what changed and what I think as a collector.

Say good-bye to Bowman Platinum - Debuting in 2010, for me Bowman Platinum has consistently been the best Bowman brand as far as design goes (other than maybe Inception), and I personally thought that 2014 was the best of the bunch. While I never broke a tone of Platinum, I always picked up singles and participated in a few breaks. Where Platinum suffered is the fact that few people care about prospect auto's other than Bowman Chrome and Draft making the box never worth the price-point.

Platinum Zistle Trade

Another Zistle trade, this time sending some early 90's Upper Deck hockey away for baseball. 15 of the 16 cards I received we from 2014 Bowman Platinum, the only exception being the above Carlos Gonzalez from this years Finest set. Not a card that was high on my wantlist, but I wanted to see if these cards were are ugly in person as the look in scans. My opinion on this set has mellow from "Oh my God, that is the worst looking card design I have ever seen", to "Yup, it's ugly alright". Ever year Topps Finest pushes the boundaries of terrible looking baseball cards, and this year is no exception.
 To clease the eyes I did scan a few of the better looking cards from a set that I really like to design of.

2014 Bowman Platinum Group Break Results

In deciding not to spend over $100 on a box on 2014 Bowman Platinum, I decided to try and jump in on a few box breaks to pick up some Rockies. I have done two previous box breaks, 2012 Archives and 2012 Heritage, both went poorly for me, but that was largely because I joined before I realized how poor the Rockies checklists for these sets were.

I was hoping this one would be different, but it was not. 6 boxes of Bowman Platinum yielded me very little. I did watch the break, and the breaker ran a good honest break. It was just the packs that were against me. I did get the base team set, but that is only the two cards to the right.

Just a Taste: 2014 Platinum (w/ Small Review)

Along with the 5 packs of Gypsy Queen, I picked up 5 packs of 2014 Bowman Platinum. This is a product that I haven't bought much over the years, but have always like the looks of. After seeing the sell-sheet for this years release and really digging the base design, I flirted with buying a box or two, but the low interest and lower resale value scared me off a little. I don't expect to make money off cards, but I have seen way to many bad box breaks of this stuff to drop $120 on a full box. My 5 Packs didn't bring anything special, but the odds were against me with that small of a sample.