2001 Bowman Heritage baseball card set

The 2001 Bowman Heritage set contains 440 black & white cards and was designed to resemble both the 1948 and 1953 Bowman baseball card sets.

The set has a a few good rookie cards in it including Albert Pujols and Ichiro Suzuki.

A 5-card promotional set was given out at a large sportscard convention, and is supposedly limited to only 500 copies of each card. The promo set includes Albert Pujols, Roberto Alomar, C.C. Sabathia, Mark McGwire, and Juan Gonzalez. Each card was issued by itself, sealed in cellophane along with a piece of gum sealed separately in another piece of cellophane. The Albert Pujols card could end up being one of his most sought after rookie year cards, considering the low print run and limited distribution.

As for the regular, or "base" set, all cards from #331 to #440 are considered "short prints" or "SP" cards, meaning they were supposedly printed in less quantity than non-SP cards, and were tougher to pull from unopened packs.

The set was not a huge success with collectors, I suppose the black & white card fronts may have had something to do with that, but hey, Bowman was going for the vintage look, so at least they tried.

However, the "Chrome" cards from 2001 Bowman Heritage were not very attractive at all (in my opinion). They have a very dull, metallic look on the fronts. Also, Bowman neglected to include either of the top rookies in the Chrome set. The set contains 110 cards, with great stars such as Derek Jeter, Cal Ripken, Chipper Jones, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Mark McGwire, Ken Griffey and several more.

Bowman also included 5 autographed cards that were randomly inserted into packs of 2001 Bowman Heritage. Three of the players signed regular sized 2001 Bowman Heritage cards. Those players were Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, and Roger Clemens.

The other 2 players that signed cards for 2001 Bowman Heritage were part of the "1948 Bowman Reprint" insert set. Those players were Warren Spahn and Bob Feller, both retired Hall-of-Fame members.

2001 Bowman Heritage baseball also included a non-autographed 1948 Bowman reprint set in it's packs, as well as a "Relic" version of the 1948 Bowman cards.