Bowman's Best was Topps's other chromium brand in 1996-97, and its 125-card set closed with 25 rookies numbered R1 to R25. They were not in draft order. Kobe Bryant is R23.
The rookie cards reverse the colors of the veterans' cards: silver leads and gold is the accent. A wavy metallic band runs down the left side to the initial of his last name, with chromium worked into the photograph.
Silver for the rookies, gold for the veterans: the colors reversed for the first-year players.
Here he stands on the court in the Lakers' purple road uniform, number 8, a ball in his left hand, smiling up and away from the camera.
The back has no statistics box. In its place is a paragraph of text noting that he was Pennsylvania's high school player of the year for 1995-96 and the all-time scoring leader of southeastern Pennsylvania, with 2,883 points.
Refractor and Atomic Refractor versions exist above the base card, the Atomic the scarcer of the two. On the base card, the hardest place to keep clean is the back border above the text, where the cut falls.
