Blaster Box Busting: 2007 Bowman Heritage Baseball Cards

I do not buy baseball cards at a retail store for value. Generally, you are not going to get something great from a blaster box of retail baseball cards; hobby is the way to go. However, lacking a card shop that is open on Sunday or Monday, I sometimes am in need of a card fix and buy retail just for fun. A box of 2007 Bowman Heritage baseball cards caught my eye when I was at K Mart and having never opened a pack of them before I thought: "why not?"

The blaster box of 2007 Bowman Heritage that I bought was priced to sell at $11.99. Really, $9.99 or less would have made me happier, but I had visions of pulling a Tim Lincecum rookie card dancing in my head. New York Yankees player Alex Rodriguez is featured as the Topps Spokesman on the outside of the box. He's not saying much, but wording on the box does inform me that there will be a total of 64 cards inside. These 64 cards are divided 8 in a pack with a total of 8 packs in the box. Of course it advertises the box as having only 7 packs, plus a bonus pack! A bonus pack? As if there were a law laid down somewhere in time that blasters all have 7 packs and they are doling me out an extra one.

One of the packs in my box was pre-mangled, but only one of the cards found in that pack had sustained major damage. The rest of the cards in that pack and the other packs were in good enough condition. The cardboard stock did seem a little soft though and the edges of most of the cards and some of the corners were not the type you would send in to be analyzed by a grader.

The packs consisted of base rookie cards, base veteran/ star cards, and prospect cards. The pictures on the cards are designed to look like artwork drawings as opposed to live photos. There is also one Rainbow Foil card in every pack. The Rainbow Foil cards are a variation of the base cards, only they are thicker and have a shiny rainbow inducing foil coating on the front of the card. You might even get away with just calling them refractors, or wannabe refractors. The pictures on the cards are designed to look like artwork drawings as opposed to live photos.

I did not land any exciting memorabilia or autographed baseball cards from my 2007 Bowman Heritage blaster box. The most valuable cards I pulled were as follows:

1. Hunter Pence RC: This rookie card of the Houston Astros star that I pulled is the SP version; short print. The difference between it and the regular version is the regular version has a facsimile signature on the front whereas mine does not. At the time of this pull this Hunter Pence card is worth $8 via Beckett. I would expect 99 cents or less on Ebay. If you catch a couple of collectors at the right time and get them to bid against each other, maybe over a dollar.

2. Phil Hughes RC: This rookie card of the beloved and despised Yankees pitcher is a Rainbow Foil version. This makes it more valuable than the regular version of his rookie card with a book value of about $5. Once again, Ebay buyers would never go for that pricing.

3. Tommy Hanson Bowman Prospect: This pitcher is talented and gets a healthy fan base seeking out his cards merely because he is on the strong market team the Atlanta Braves. The baseball card is around $3 book value, but I just thought it was a cool card by design regardless.

Other than those three cards, nothing much to speak of. In the base cards I pulled a Frank Thomas card, which is the player I followed as a child. However, the border on the card was in too rough of shape for me to even want to use the card for anything other than packing material should I sell one of the better cards on Ebay.

I think my 2007 Bowman Heritage blaster box was worth the price I paid in terms of a lottery ticket for a Tim Lincecum rookie card. If I had pulled that then I would have been a winner in my mind, however, I did have fun, and at least with this type of lottery ticket you always get a little something. If I saw another box of these and was bored again, I would make the same purchase.