Loose Thoughts On Bowman Draft 2019

I'mma just be real with you all, this product gets less and less interesting to me every year.

Note: None of what I'm about to say is advice one way or the other on how to "invest". I'm NOT an expert or a consultant. Invest at your own risk.

1). 4 teams that matter, 26 teams that don't

Originally I had eight large paragraphs here about why this product isn't appealing because the big names expected to carry it are prospects that DON'T play for the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers or Chicago Cubs. Rendering it all useless.

In short, I don't see in the value in this offering because the best players in this product play on teams like the Reds or Padres or White Sox or the other 23 teams that aren't the big four. By default that means that they do not have any star power. They just don't. As an extension of that they shouldn't have that much selling power either. Or at least not as much as, say, Gleyber Torres or Rafael Devers did once upon a time.

The best you can do is have a small class of people come together and artificially inflate prices on a bunch of cards that should have stupidly large print runs like the Ronald Acuña Investment Trust Group, LLP have been able to do. But not every prospect is going to have some weird bullshit market like that (see: Nick Senzel who is a good prospect but his card value has always been dirt).

As prospects/players I do like guys like Kody Hoese (who is probably the best name in the entire product by default), all of the NYY prospects, Ryan Jensen, Cameron Cannon, Michael Busch, and Chase Strumpf, but there is no Aaron Judge or Walker Buehler or Andrew Benintendi or Kyle Schwarber here. Let me be clear also, I am not an investor and this is NOT any sort of investing advice. These are just merely names that I like on teams that I appreciate. They also just happen to be first/second rounders for the big market Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox and Cubs but don't appear to be able to sell for more then $15 shipped (except Hoese but he's an outlier).

I'd love to be proven wrong and see them be cornerstones for the big four teams, but I've also seen what's happened to Jeren Kendall, every damn pitching prospect the Cubs try to develop, and honestly a lot of the prospects NYY tried developing after Judge graduated. Take that for data.

2). So what exactly is the point?

I don't want to be the guy who harps on value and money and investments so much, but I bring it up because this shit is too expensive to just treat as a hobby. This is well into "hope the IRS lets you deduct hobby expenses" territory (note: the IRS does not allow you to deduct hobby expenses following the tax rule changes that took effect in 2018). Who is buying this stuff? What exactly is the point of all of this?

That's a rhetorical answer, I know damn well that this is a product that has always catered to the online group break crowd for years.

Even so, is there really a ROI on this stuff? There must be for people to bother this much. But does it exceed everything after you factor in the time value of money? Does it exceed that by a significant enough amount to matter?

For that matter, who or what is supposed to be the intended market for these cards in in the future? Even in the future that market just has to be mostly investors looking to buy investments. Any casual collectors interested in autographs could just buy the cheaper alternatives like Bowman Sterling or any of Topps' non-rookie offerings because lord knows that Topps and Panini will continue to pump out autographs of these guys every damn year. Why pay $30+ when you can just pay like $8 for the same guy's signature? Is the BoChro brand really going to offer you anything different in terms of just being an autograph? For that matter, what happens when the player gets their Topps Chrome Rookie Autograph (which is apparently another big name autograph brand in the market now)? I get that the whole notion of rookies and pre-rookies is a serious point in this hobby, but if you're the average Joe, is wanting the "premier" card going to be that much of a priority when you can just as easily save money by going with a "lesser" brand?

These are genuine questions I have that I know I will never get honest answers to so long as people have something to lose.

3). Anthony Volpe will be in 2020 Bowman

Anthony Volpe, the Yankees' first round pick in the 2019 MLB Player Draft isn't even in 2019 Bowman Draft. Sure. Fine. Whatever. What's even the point of this again?

4). Hayden Wesneski

Credit where credit is due, Wesneski is the only player I actually needed a card of.

I like Jake Sanford, T.J. Sikkema, Jake Agnos and Josh Smith just fine but I've already seen them in Staten Island. To the uninformed their cards are the newest shiniest toys on the block. To me their cards are already yesterday's news. Wesneski was featured in the 2019 Pulaski Yankees team set but I never got his card, so I'm impressed that Bowman could be useful for once and at least give me their offering.

5). The Dreaded Repeaters

This isn't new, but I always feel the need to point out my disdain for repeaters in Bowman checklists. I get that Topps wants to go cheap by restricting the contracts it dishes out, as well as receive full value on the contracts they do give out. That doesn't mean I like what that leads to. I like Seigler, but he did not need his second Bowman base card of 2019 (third overall since 2018 Draft). If you're not going to use those repeater slots in any meaningful way because you need to "save" names for the following year's Bowman sets, just fucking shrink the checklist.

Once upon a time I looked forward to Bowman Draft. Here in 2019 I am no longer the type of collector jumping to see what kind of $10 BoChro auto of some second rounder in the poverty-ass Reds system I could pull out of a $220 box of Bowman Draft.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).