Bowman AFLAC
Description
Bowman AFLAC is a series of card sets released in conjunction with the annual All-American Classic, an annual game featuring 38 of the best high school players. The first game was played in 2003 and has been played every summer ever since. The American Family Life Assurance Company (AFLAC) was the game's presenting sponsor from 2003-2010. perfectgame.com picked up the sponsorship in 2011.
From 2004 to 2013 Topps was a sponsor of the AFLAC/perfectgame.com All-American Classic and produced cards for each game -- including on-card autographs. Since all players in the game were entering their senior year of high school, Topps could not release these cards until after they had signed a professional contract (and not all players did).
For the 2004 and 2005 games, Topps seeded into packs of that year's Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects redemption cards good for an AFLAC set. Because all the players were entering their senior year of high school, fulfillment of these sets could not begin for a full year, until after the players had graduated, been drafted, and signed with an MLB team. As a result, the 2004 set was not fulfilled until January 2006 and the 2005 set until January 2007.
Beginning with the 2006 game, the unsigned version of the AFLAC/perfectgame.com set has only been available to attendees of the All-American Classic game. Since the actual game is sparsely attended, the print runs on these cards are extremely scarce (Topps also gives each player an allotment of his own card). As part of Topps's sponsorship of the game, each player was required to autograph a number of cards (usually no more than 250) which would then be saved and used as inserts in various Bowman products, as soon as the player signed a professional contract.
2013 was the final year Topps produced this set as Leaf Trading Cards picked up the license.
Checklist
2004
See 2004 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects.
2005
See 2005 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects.
2006
NOTE: This was the only year in which the design of the Topps flagship baseball set was used for the AFLAC set.