2015 Bowman brought consistency to the convoluted Topps parallel system. After several months of smooth sailing, 2015 Bowman Chrome kept the same formula (a first, at least among recent years) and brought us the first Kevin Plawecki base Rookie Cards and the first MLB-licensed autographs from Akeel Morris, Jhoan Urena, Milton Ramos, and Michael Conforto? Um, what’s his 2014 Bowman Draft autograph doing here?
The evolution of the Bowman brand has been interesting lately. Since the last major redesign in 2012, Bowman has added ice parallels, wave refractors, and mini shimmer refractors, removed the First Bowman Card designation, added a new 1st Bowman designation, introduced Bowman Black autographs, confused collectors with 2013 Kris Bryant Bowman Chrome autographs in 2014 products, added wrapper redemptions, ended wrapper redemptions, dropped the pretense of a “base set” in Bowman Draft, and much, much more. After three years of incremental improvements, Topps reshuffled the deck in 2015 and brought order to an increasingly chaotic product.
It’s hard to believe that it’s March already. And this piece is two months late… Between Topps and Panini releasing products right down to the wire, chasing down cards, and chasing down answers, it took me longer than expected to get this the way I wanted it. 2014 brought us the first cards, first autographs, and first memorabilia from the first Mets player to win the Rookie of the Year award in 30 years. It also brought us the last autograph card from the first person ever to wear a Mets uniform.
With all of the cards released across dozens of products in 2014, it can be hard to figure out what is worth collecting and what might as well be forgotten. What makes something essential? It’s a mix of collectibility, notability, and attainability. Popular brands/inserts and autograph debuts will dominate here, not big money low-numbered parallels or big stars. Just about everything mentioned here should still be fairly easy to find on the secondary market at reasonable prices.
Now in the second year of the post-black era, the Mets memorabilia offerings in 2014 were a bit more colorful than they’ve been in the past. Color has been hard to find recently, but new blue and orange jerseys and a renewed focus on pinstripes at home helped to turn things around. It was looking like a great year for memorabilia until the black came back courtesy of Panini. The plague of “event-worn” memorabilia has now spread to baseball.
On Sunday, Noah Syndergaard made his second futures game appearance, closing out the USA team’s 3-2 victory after starting off last year’s Futures Game at Citi Field. It will be a few months before his jersey from this year’s Futures Game makes its way into cards, but last year’s edition is now widely available thanks to last month’s 2014 Bowman Inception. In fact, Inception seems to have been the destination for much of the material from the 2013 Futures Game, leaving very little to fill the time before this year’s material appears (likely in 2014 Bowman Draft in November, possibly sooner). While every year is different, here’s a look back at where the jerseys from the Mets prospects in last year’s Futures Game ended up.
For a guide to the various material types discussed here, see this breakdown of the 2013 NL All-Star jersey.
See all Futures Game material in the archives: USA Team | World Team
Players: Rafael Montero, Brandon Nimmo
Material: Primary
Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects is a typical landing spot for Futures Game material, so it wasn’t surprising to see the first 2013 Futures Game swatches show up here. Of the three Mets though, only Rafael Montero and Brandon Nimmo were featured here and only with pieces of the primary fabric panels. Noah Syndergaard would not have any material released in 2013. Dilson Herrera, received in the August trade of Marlon Byrd and John Buck to the Pirates, does have jersey cards here but not as a Met, making them ineligible. These cards have several serial numbered parallel tiers, but none of them contain any different material.
Players: Rafael Montero, Brandon Nimmo, Noah Syndergaard
Material: Primary, Secondary, Side Panel
As usual, the first Bowman product of the year included a few pieces of last year’s Futures Game jerseys. And by “a few,” I mean 25 of each. Unlike the more numerous Bowman Draft cards, these contained material from various different parts of the jerseys, including the small side panel sections, as seen in the Montero card above. This set also featured the first Noah Syndergaard jersey cards as well as another non-qualifying Dilson Herrera card.
Players: Dilson Herrera, Brandon Nimmo
Material: Primary, Secondary, Patch (Herrera only)
The first minor league product of the year, Pro Debut has a long history (all the way back to 2010) of including Futures Game material. This year, it was where Topps burned off much of the material from lesser names, meaning Herrera (now shown as a member of the Savannah Sand Gnats and therefore eligible for inclusion here) and Nimmo. While the material here is not identified as coming from the 2013 Futures Game, its origin is obvious. The base jersey set (now called “Debut Duds” instead of “Minor League Materials”) featured two parallels (gold, numbered to 50, and silver, numbered to 25) with a mix of primary (front panels) and secondary (back panel) material. No side panel swatches have been seen so far. Dilson Herrera was also featured in the jumbo patch set (numbered to 5).
Players: Rafael Montero, Noah Syndergaard, Dilson Herrera (patches only), Brandon Nimmo (patches only)
Material: Primary, Secondary, Patches
After a wait of nearly a year, Bowman Inception finally delivered Noah Syndergaard’s 2013 Futures Game material in quantity. Syndergaard and Montero were both featured in the base memorabilia set with many parallels and variants containing material of various types, with many (but not all) of the low-numbered variants containing patches. This is also the product that got most of the remaining large patches, including the apple ASG logo and letter patches (the 2013 Futures Game logo patches from Montero, Nimmo, and Syndergaard remain available for future products).
Players: Noah Syndergaard, Dilson Herrera, Brandon Nimmo (blue parallel only)
Material: Primary, Secondary, Side Panel
Bowman Platinum was absolutely loaded with memorabilia in 2014, much of it from the 2013 Futures Game. The bulk of it is from Noah Syndergaard and Dilson Herrera, including the elusive side panel swatches. Brandon Nimmo shows up in the retail-only blue parallel with primary and secondary swatches, leaving just his side panel swatches left to appear.
Players: Brandon Nimmo
Material: Primary, Secondary, Side Panel
And in the final prospect product of the year with material from the 2013 Futures Game, we get that last missing piece – Brandon Nimmo side panel swatches. And his primary and secondary swatches as well. That wraps things up for 2013, on to 2014…
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