Getting Started with the 2025 Bowman Baseball Checklist
Alright, so I decided to finally tackle that massive pile of 2025 Bowman baseball cards I’d been sitting on. Had boxes everywhere, mostly unopened, driving me nuts. Thought I was onto something with collecting this year, but man, keeping track felt like wrestling an octopus. Needed a proper checklist, badly.
Started simple: I dumped everything onto my big work table. Wax packs, blaster boxes, hobby packs – the whole shebang. Realized pretty quick this wasn’t gonna be a “sort as I rip” kind of deal. Needed structure first. So, I grabbed my laptop and figured I’d look up a pre-made checklist online. Easy, right? Wrong.
The Messy First Draft
Found a couple PDF guides, printed ’em out. But man, they were all over the place. Some listed prospects alphabetically, others by card number, and none really highlighted the guys I knew were heating up this season. Felt like comparing apples and tractor tires. Frustrating.
Decided to make my own. Figured Excel was the way to go – columns for card number, player name, team, position, whether I pulled it, and a big ol’ checkbox for autographs. Simple stuff. Started manually typing names from the cards I already had sorted. Big mistake. Took forever and I kept missing variations.
The Card-by-Card Shuffle
Gave up on the partial start. Took a deep breath and went full manual mode:
- Sorted all base cards by numerical order, just piling them up one after another.
- Made separate piles for those fancy colored borders (you know, the numbered ones).
- Any chrome cards got their own stack – gotta keep that shine separated!
- Saved the “hits” for last: the autos and signed sticker cards.
Didn’t got organized at first, just started listing what I physically saw. Wrote card numbers and player names down in a notebook. Noticed there were a bunch of short prints and variations for rookies – like the same guy on different photo backgrounds. Pain in the neck to spot, but crucial for the checklist.
Highlighted the top prospect names everyone’s buzzing about as I went, noting them separately. Knew those were the key ones folks checking my guide would wanna know about.
Building the Final Checklist Guide
Took my notebook scribbles and finally put ’em into Excel. Took hours. Split the sheet into sections:
- Veteran Players (Organized by Team)
- Top Prospects (Grouped together, labeled clearly)
- Inserts & Variations (All the shiny, short print stuff)
- Autographs (Listing every single possible auto hit from boxes)
For the autos section, I just chucked them all in the trash… nah, joking! I actually listed them meticulously. Some are sticker autos, some are directly on the card. Made sure my guide noted which prospects you could actually pull a real autograph card for – those are the golden tickets, after all.
Tested the checklist while finishing a few hobby boxes. Having the printed guide in my hands while ripping packs? Game changer. Could tick things off immediately. Finally felt like I wasn’t drowning in cardboard. It works good enough for me, and hey, if it helps someone else figure out this monster set, even better. Definitely learned next time to start the list before buying ten boxes!