Barry Larkin
Year: 1996
Year: 1996
Brand: Bowman's Best
Card number: 66
The 1996 Bowman's Best set was not a set that I can even recall seeing as a kid. I'm 99% certain you could not buy packs of Bowman's Best from my local CVS drug store, and that's where I got all of my cards that year. That being said, even if CVS did carry the set, I'm sure it would have been well outside of my price range...and, had I somehow managed to convince someone else to buy me a pack, I'm sure I wouldn't have loved the set much anyhow!
Coming from a guy who generally speaking doesn't like the Bowman brand much, I think there's something fitting about a set being called "Bowman's Best" and that set still having an ugly design. Bowman designs (with only a few exceptions) are some of the worst, least inspiring designs in all of baseball card land and the '96 Bowman's Best is no exception to the rule. This set features an ugly yellow front with a baseball diamond "cutout" of an image - but it Larkin's case all you get to see are what appears to be blurry stairs in an empty stadium. The card backs aren't much better with multiple fonts and career statistics that are for some inexplicable reason chunked together in multiple year increments. It's a bizarre thing to see "1992-95" and then the batter's stats for that chunk of years. I don't like it!
All told, this is a set (and brand) that doesn't do much for me. I am, of course, glad to have the Barry Larkin card but otherwise you won't find me attempting to build the 1996 Bowman's Best set ever!
The only thing that really stands out about this product are the refractors. In regards to the base cards, I liked the football set more. And basketball had an acetate insert that year called Best Shots. Those were really cool.
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