2003 Bowman Heritage baseball card set

The 2003 Bowman Heritage set contains 280 cards in it's base set (not including inserts or bonus cards). I have read that it was designed to look similar how Bowman originally planned it's 1956 baseball set to look. Bowman never ended up releasing a 1956 set, but supposedly, the design was in a long lost folder titled 1956 Baseball Card Preference Guide Study and was found by Keith Olbermann. Topps then decided it wanted to release it's 2003 Bowman Heritage set with the same design.

I'm not sure about that story, but I know the cards look almost exactly like the 1958 Hires Root Beer set.

Cards #171-180 can be found in 3 variations for each card, one being a "Double Image" where the card has two photos of the player on the front, side by side. The other is a "Knothole" variation, where the fence on front has a knothole visible. And of course there is the regular base card with no knothole.

The key rookie cards in this set are Robinson (Robby) Cano and Brandon Wood. Also included in 2003 Bowman Heritage were a "Facsimile Signature" parallel set, a "Rainbow" parallel set, and a "Gold Rainbow" parallel set. In hobby issued boxes, 8 different cards can be found as "Box Toppers".

Other insert cards for 2003 Bowman Heritage are:

A 55 card set of "Diamond Cuts Relics" featuring stars from 2003 along with an actual piece of GAME USED equipment on the card. The set can also be found in two different parallel variations, called "Red" or "Gold" Diamond Cut Relics. The "Gold Diamond Cut Relics" are the most scarce of the three.

Autographs that can be found in 2003 Bowman Heritage are cards of Delmon Young and Keith Olbermann, as well as a 12-card "Signs of Greatness" autographed card set featuring some of the most promising MLB rookies of 2003. The "Signs of Greatness" cards come in either blue or red ink for each player, with the red ink being the toughest to find.