1999 Bowman Series 1

All right now, my first pack posted in about 2 weeks. Didja miss me? Chris Harris picked out this '99 Bowman Series 1 pack that I picked up today (or yesterday, depending how late it is when I finish this) for my return post. You can pick the next pack I post here if you so desire. I got this and a '98 series pack, and for the life of me I can't remember which one cost a buck and which cost two. Let's split the difference and say it was a buck fiddy. Pat Burrell, Nick Johnson and Austin Kearns are the big rookies in this mess, so let's see if one is hiding in here.

Checklist and $125 Guarantee certificate
186 Doug Mientkiewicz RC
170 Gabe Molina
180 Billy Koch
119 Glenn Davis
LB2 Late Bloomers Jim Thome
39 Brian Hunter
134 Jason Tyner RC
11 Gary Sheffield
103 Jack Cressend RC
83 Manny Aybar International Foil

I opened up the checklist card before I found out it was worth 15 cents in the 2002 SCD price guide and now I feel bad for de-minting it. The $125 guarantee is as follows: You give Topps five bucks, and if you managed to build the entire 440 card set, you sould sell it back to Topps for 125 clams if you weren't completely satisfied. The catch? You had to redeem it between August 31st and December 31st, 2002. What a deal! Check out that mind-bending Thome insert. It looks like a fractal puked. I think Late Bloomers refers to the fact that Jim was picked in the 13th round of the '89 draft, because the guy was in the bigs in two years and was a pretty solid major leaguer by age 23. No Burrell, but I did get a rookie of a decent player in Doug M. If you put a gun to my head and told me to answer the question "Who has Doug played for since he caught the last out for Boston in the 2004 World Series?" or die, I'd be pushing up daisies right now. Of the other prospect cards only Jason Tyner is barely clinging to hopes of playing in the bigs. Poor Billy Koch has that creepy skin disease that no doctor will admit actually exists. I tried like damn to get a decent scan of the beautiful palm trees on Manny Aybar's card but the stupid foil made it look like Hurricane Bertha was wiping out the Dominican Republic no matter what I did. Instead, I leave you with the Then and Now pictures on the back of Gary Sheffield's card.