Here's a refractor set I completed over the summer and have been meaning to feature on the blog: 1998 Bowman Chrome rookie reprint refractors. I even laid all the cards out for a big overview photo.
It's 50 reprints celebrating Bowman's 50th anniversary, featuring both their vintage era (1948-1955) and Topps' modern reboot (1989-). Odd-numbered cards were inserted in Series One, while even-numbered cards were in Series Two. Base reprint inserts had 1:12 odds, while refractors were 3x tougher to pull at 1:36. In addition to the front's rainbow shine, refractor parallels are notated by a big "R" on the back.
Bowman Chrome had just started the year before in 1997, which followed the debut of Topps Chrome in 1996, so these 1998 cards are the "1st Refractor" of most of the old-timers like Satchel Paige. This particular Paige was a card show pickup from 2015 that I plucked out of the PC once I was closing in on completion... before happily finding a replacement for the PC in a cheap lot soon after wrapping up the set.
Willie Mays had just received the full Commemorative Reprint Insert Set treatment by Topps in 1997 (which also included his Bowman cards), so that '51 Bowman Mays was on its second reprint refractor in as many years. Other than that, I don't think any of these original cards had seen refraction before. But Topps soon showed they weren't too concerned about redundancy. Bowman would go back to the rookie reprint well again in 2001 (vintage era only-- including 6 of the 8 such reprints included in '98), 2002 (modern era only-- most of which had been reprinted in '98), and then the flood of "sapphire" reprints in 2012. All the reprinting seems to have cooled down since Fanatics took over.
But anyways, I think these '98 refractors look pretty good. I didn't risk taking them out of their sleeves for the pic, so you've occasionally got some sticking-to-the-sleeve action going on like with the Bagwell, sorry.
The cards mostly ran me from a couple bucks to a few bucks. I probably had to go double-digits a couple times for highly-collected guys like Griffey and Jeter.
Lots of big names from the 90s. Brad Fullmer had some hype at the time, but shook out with the shortest career of the bunch.
Centering can sometimes be an issue with these, but at least there's no "hulking" (that's just a reflection on Manny's face). The Roberto Clemente refractors from earlier that year (inserted in 1998 Topps) are prone to hulking, so it would seem Topps was still getting the hang of making Chrome cards, narrowly figuring it out in time for these Bowman reprints.
The inserts reprint cards through 1996 Bowman, which makes sense with Bowman Chrome debuting in '97.
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