Bad Wax Review – 1998 Bowman Baseball Series 1(Pack 3)

Basically we are down to duplicate packs now.  Today we open our third pack of Bowman 1998.  When I was thinking of a new direction for the blog, I considered 3 products, Fleer, Topps or Bowman.  In the end, I think that Topps was the right direction to go in since it has stayed the same for the past 25 years.  Produce a set that everyone can afford.  Of course I’m speaking of their base set and not chrome or some of the other high end stuff.  I just like to collect the sets and I figured now I have a goal.  Here is what the pack looks like again:

The target cards for this set, that I haven’t gotten already were Mike Lowell, Troy Glaus, Jack Cust, and Magglio Ordonez. I have already gotten the Jimmy Rollins card (first pack) and Bronson Arroyo (second pack).  I have one more of these packs to go through after this one and I really want the Ordonez and the Glaus, so let’s see what transpires.  A ripping we shall go:

1. Albert Belle – OF – White Sox – 42 – I believe this is my second card from him.  I posted a scan of the card below just to show you his autograph.  It’s much darker than other autographs in this set and I’m thinking can you tell someone’s personality from how hard they push down when they sign something?  If so the Albert has some serious problems.  Oh wait, we already knew that.  He it is for your viewing pleasure:

2. Jason Fitzgerald – OF – Indians – 162 – He never even got a sniff of the big leagues and was run out of the minors in 2003.  He was a third team all american in college, and a first round draft pick, but sometimes it’s hard to do that at the next level.

3. Mike Mussina – P – Orioles – 9 – He’s still with the Orioles in this card.  It’s hard to believe that Moose was an Oriole for 10 years.  I seriously didn’t realize that, it’s also hard to believe he’s been pitching in the bigs for 17 years.  After looking at his stats, I’m blown away, he has 250 wins! His average season was 16-9, 3.70 ERA, a WHIP of 1.190 and 180 strikeouts.  Actually his only “bad” year was last year.  I wonder if that was an aberation or a sign of things to come.

4. Alex Sanchez – International card – 152 – The back of the card is completely in Spanish.   Now I understand that Bowman was trying to be PC and all, but why would you produce a card that more than 1/2 of your core buyers can’t read?  Alex is still trying to get back to the bigs, he is with the White Sox now, so I think this one will go to Steve at White Sox Card Blog.

5 . Troy Cameron – SS – Braves – 125 – For Troy it was long ball heaven until he got to AA.  Chicks might dig the longball, but executives in baseball like when you can hit for an average over 0.225.  I guess Troy just liked the chicks too much!  He’s out of baseball (as of 2005) and his last team he played for was San Diego.

6. Dan Serafini – P – Twins – 163 – He made it and stayed up in the bigs in 1996 until 2000, since then he’s been in and out of the minor leagues.  Last year he played for Colorado.  I think it’s just a great example of a guy that just wants to play baseball, just one more season.  I respect guys like Serafini, he could have walked away after his last steady gig, but he just wants to play and doesn’t care where he does it.

7. Scott Rolen – 3B – Phillies – 2 – Could I possibly get more Rolen cards?  I had the guy so it’s hard for me to be objective about him.  In 1998 he was still loved by Philly fans.  Do you believe that some people are saying that when he’s done he might be the best third baseman ever to play the game.  That’s just not right, What about Ripken? A-Rod? Schmidt? I think I’ll be permanently sick if he’s regarded as the best 3rd baseman of all time.

8. Vinny Castilla – 3B -Rockies – 3B – This can’t possibly be his real signature.  It’s one step away from putting hearts over his i’s. What does Vinny’s signature tell us about him?  Did he ever learn to write in cursive?  I mean I usually write everything in print, butwhen asked to sign something I have a nice signature.  Also is Castilla his last name or middle name?  Or is it one of those hyphenated names that bother me so.  Here is his card:

9. Troy Glaus – 3B – Angels – 134 – I have to admit, I’m excited about this one!  I was a big Glaus fan when he was at UCLA (I went to Arizona so I got to see him play).  The guy was legendary in the Pac 10, he hit 34 homers in a season once.  Just to let you know that’s about one every other game.  This is definitely a nice card to pull out of this pack.  It’s the third best behind Rollins and Ordonez.  Here it is:

10. Heath Murray – P – Padres – 112 – Heath retired from the game in 2002.  He was actually a pretty good middle reliever, but once you play in the league a while, you think you are worth more than you really are.  He decided to walk away rather than to accept the league minimum.  He does has one cool story, him first outing was vs. Greg Maddux and he won!  I don’t care what you do for the rest of your career, when you kick it off by beating Maddux (in his prime no less) it’s all down hill from there.

Nice pack this time around.  I got nervous when my best card was a Vinny Castilla, then low and behold there was the Glaus.  I am hoping now that the last pack will have the Ordonez, or maybe I’ll just get it on eBay at some point.  This pack should have a nice overall score so let’s get to rating it:

Cost of Pack – $4.00 – 1.5 stars – The pack cost really kills any hope of a 3.0+ star rating. I’m glad that Bowman doesn’t do this anymore, but damn, it’s hard for me to say that it’s worth the price tag.

Cards in Pack -10 – 4.0 stars – 10 cards out of a set of 221 is a nice chunk.  You get 5% of the set every time you open a pack!

Stars in Pack – 4 – 3.0 stars - Belle, Castilla, Mussina, and Glaus are my stars of this pack and for Bowman that is about as good as you can hope for.  Considering that most of the cards in the set are rookie cards.

Value of pack – $5 – 4.0 stars – Nailing the Glaus in this pack had made it a 4 star pack.  I think one more RC or a younger star would have made this a 5 star pack in this catagory.

Overall we are looking at 3.13 stars for the pack! That is outstanding for a pack that I would consider Bad Wax at first glance.  To nail 2 of the 3 best rookie cards in the set in 3 packs is something else.  Do you think I can hit the Ordonez in the final pack?  Stay tuned later in the week to find out.  I’m keeping the Glaus but anything else from the pack is up for grabs.  Email me at superbadwax@yahoo.com for details.