Each week over the past year our resident card expert Joe Lowry has given everyone on our Prospects Live Discord Baseball Card chat a heads up on what’s dropping in the Hobby. We’re now bringing those posts over to the main site to help keep everyone up-to-date on what is coming out and what might be worthy of your time. This week we have four products being released: 2021 Bowman Transcendent Collection, 2021 Topps Five Star, 2021 Panini Mosaic Baseball, and 2021 Onyx Vintage Extended Series plus a retail version of 2021 Bowman Chrome hitting retail shelves. ***Updated for 2021 Topps x Mickey Mantle ****Onyx Vintage Extended Series has been delayed until 11/19/2021.
2021 Bowman Transcendent Collection
2021 Bowman Transcendent Collection is scheduled for release on Wednesday, October 20th and is a hobby-only super high-end release coming back for its second year.
There is only one format, a “hobby box”, but it is more like a custom briefcase rather than a hobby box that you will see across the Transcendent line. There are only 100 boxes/cases produced which is identical to last year - hey, look at that, a print run that hasn’t increased from year to year! They run about $20K and given the price point, mostly finds its way into the hands of breakers. You get 84 cards plus an invitation to a VIP event, which tends to be the most valuable piece of the product. 50 base cards, 30 low numbered autos including 2 1/1’s, three additional 1/1 autos, and an oversized cut auto will be the full break down.
The design for the base isn’t anything special to my eye and the main point of interest for me are the gold-frames. I’m a sucker for them. More interesting are the dedicated 1/1 cards. The 1989 Bowman superfractors are a great nostalgic throwback while the through the years cards featuring either Alec Bohm or Wander Franco are going to provide some great cards/designs and some not-so-great ones. Honestly though, the design is really not the driver of this product.
Following essentially the same formula as last year, the product is a mix of the big name rookies and prospects such as Wander Franco, Austin Martin, Dylan Carlson, Jasson Dominguez, Jarred Kelenic, Julio Rodriguez, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Ryan Mountcastle, Spencer Torkelson, etc. The cut signature checklist include baseball figures as well as many non-sports figures and often provides the second-most value in the product and on a few occasions, the most value. Notable historic figures, especially from the political world, tend to do the best - we have some good ones here like George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy and Napoleon Bonaparte.
The true driver of this product is the cost and low print run, but Bowman Transcendent is not a product I got anything of last year. I don’t recall what single spot breaks were going for, but I have to believe they were over $300 for a single card (or the full base set). And if you throw in the invitation, the cost just gets that much higher. On the other hand, some of the less desirable singles can be found for $100 or less. While I didn’t grab any, I still may some day simply for exclusivity sake. But just because something is expensive and a limited print run doesn’t mean you should buy it, and that’s where I am at with the entire Transcendent product line.
2021 Topps Five Star
2021 Topps Five Star is scheduled for release on Wednesday, October 20th and is a mid-tier release that often gets its 15 minutes of fame every year and then fades back into obscurity until the next year’s drop.
There is only one format, a hobby box, which runs about $200 - $250. You’ll get one pack containing two autographed cards per box unless you get rarer hits in the form of Five Star Signatures or cut autos.
The design for the base is mainly forgettable, and for the most part, is trying to emphasize some richness with the gold accents and filigree (I’m probably using this word wrong, but let’s go with it). On the flip side, The Golden Graphs with metallic ink are always nice as well as the jumbo patch autos.
Similar to other Topps products in this tier like Tribute, Tier One, Museum Collection, and Triple Threads, the checklist contains a bevy of rookies and current MLB stars along with a fair amount of MLB legends. Not sure why George Springer needed an autograph for his old team, the Astros, as well as his current team, the Blue Jays, in the base autograph set, but I’ve stopped questioning why Topps does what they do long ago. It also looks like Topps used some of what has to be an ever dwindling supply of Lou Brock and Bob Gibson sticker autos in this product as well.
I’m not a fan of Five Star, especially at the current price point of roughly $100+ per card. I’d rather chase autos of the players I want in cheaper products or simply buy the guys I want from Five Star in the secondary market, often at a price point of much less than $100 per card. As the brand cachet and the singles value don’t really stand the test of time, it just doesn’t make sense to go that deep on this product in my opinion. Maybe if the design knocked my socks off, but even then, I would probably still sit on the sidelines.
2021 Panini Mosaic Baseball
2021 Panini Mosaic Baseball is scheduled for release on Wednesday, October 20th and is a new standalone product for 2021. It made its debut last year as one of the many brands found in Panini Chronicles Baseball.
There are four different hobby formats and likely the majority of retail formats. Of the hobby formats, you can find your standard hobby box going for about $150 - $200 which gives you 3 autos on average. The First off the Line (FOTL) hobby box went through a dutch auction on Panini’s website and got really close to the $150 floor, eventually selling out around $160. There are also 3 autos on average in FOTL boxes. Mosaic Choice hobby boxes are in the neighborhood of $150 - $175, but only give you 2 autos on average. Mosaic Quick Pitch hobby boxes are also in the same price range of $150 - $175, but only give you 1 auto on average. Besides the difference in hit counts, the main driver in format type are specific to the parallels, some exclusive to the format, that you can pull from these boxes.
The design for the base was a hit in 2020 across all sports it was found in. So I guess Panini thought why fix something that isn’t broken? The base design in the sell sheet is the exact same as it was last year, with only the rookie image having the background flipped. I am left a bit speechless - if this holds to be true when we get the cards in hand, I feel like applauding Panini for the bravado and booing Panini for their laziness.
There is no checklist as of yet (Monday, October 18th), but expect it to be very similar to what we have seen with the other main 2021 Panini baseball products along the lines of Select, Prizm, and Optic. Focused on rookies and stars with a likely subset or two focused on prospects and perhaps some legends thrown in for good measure.
Keeping in mind this is an unlicensed product and therefore its long term value is most likely capped, I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on some of this, especially given its status as a first year standalone product. I definitely won’t overpay for it, but I also think if the price holds, which I think it will as Mosaic seems to be a product they print a lot of, there could be some nice deals to be had on it in the future for my own PC. And the stained glass inserts are pretty cool, so I may grab one or two of those as well.
2021 Onyx Vintage Extended Series
2021 Onyx Vintage Extended Series is scheduled for release on Friday, November 19th and is a lower tier release from one of the smallest players in the industry.
There is one configuration, a hobby box, that goes for around $45 - $50. It contains two base cards and 2 on-card autographs.
The design fits with the few designs that Onyx has used for the baseball sets in the past few years. There looks to be their standard re-work of the 1965 Topps design and then a white border with various bold paisley colored motifs surrounding the players. I’ve always liked their 1965 Topps-styled design, and never really been into any of their others.
There is no checklist as of yet (Monday, October 18th), but we should expect it to be prospect heavy with a few current and ex stars. So far we have teased Shohei Ohtani, Cal Ripken Jr., Randy Johnson, and Ken Griffey Jr. from the non-prospect group while from the prospect group we have Adley Rutschman, Bobby Witt Jr., Henry Davis, Jack Leiter, Jasson Dominguez, Jordan Lawler, Julio Rodriguez, and Marcelo Mayer. Onyx has also said we will get to see some current college players as well given the new NIL situation.
Another unlicensed product and one that doesn’t get a lot of respect in the hobby leads to lower values in general. I tend to get a little bit of the Vintage and Vintage Extended Series every year because it’s cheap and you have shots at a lot of fun and big names. In addition, this is often a good early chance at guys before they hit their first officially licensed products in the current year draft or J2 classes, which can help this product’s short term value. Add in the Ohtani factor this year, and especially the opportunity to hit very very very rare Ohtani Kanji autos, and I will definitely be taking a few shots on this product in 2021.
2021 Bowman Chrome Mega Boxes
2021 Bowman Chrome Mega Boxes have started to show up on retail shelves at the end of last week. See my full product review on 2021 Bowman Chrome here.
The main attraction here is getting chrome base 1st cards at a cheaper entry point as well as the exclusive mojo refractors and mojo autographs. However, the majority of the time the mojo autographs and about half the time the mojo refractors will be different photos and thus lacking the coveted 1st Bowman logo. As of this writing, I did find some Cristian Hernandez base mojo refractors that did have the 1st Bowman logo, so that is promising. No hits are guaranteed and it appears autos will fall about 1 in 10 boxes.
I am unsure on pricing as I haven’t seen it posted anywhere, but I am sure someone will correct me on whatever I speculate here as soon as this post goes live. So I will say it is likely between $40 and $50. Last year this was a bad deal because there were no 1st Bowman base cards in the entire product run and the main guy I was chasing, Luis Matos, did not have a 1st Bowman logo on his mojo autograph. This year Topps fixed that, so at retail prices, this is probably worth buying more than a couple of boxes. I anticipate that will be tough to do as I don’t think these will stay on retail shelves for days or even hours as soon as they are stocked.
2021 Topps x Mickey Mantle
2021 Topps x Mickey Mantle is a new product that we first started to get hints about late Monday evening with a checklist and not much else. It had the full announcement on Tuesday and Wednesday, October 20th, the product went for sale on Topps’ website.
There is only one format - a single pack box that sells for $9.99 and contains five cards. You can purchase a max of 100 boxes per account. As of this writing, they are still available. The estimated print run is at least 125,000 boxes and may be a bit more than that.
The design is basically a retrospective of Topps’ favorite Mickey Mantle cards as well as designs that they wished that Mantle had cards for in the past but never did, like 1951 Topps or more recently like 2013-2021 Topps Flagship. While these cards should get plenty of items, like the logo, to differentiate them from their true vintage cards, I hope no one gets caught up in thinking these are the real deal and purchasing them in the singles market by mistake (like the Through the Years debacle from 2021 Topps Series 1).
The checklist is 50 base cards of Mantle with five short prints available and various parallels of each card. The autograph checklist is 12 past Yankee greats like Don Mattingly, Derek Jeter, and Mariano Rivera. The autos are serial numbered to seven which leads to about 1 in every 1500 boxes/packs. There are even longer shots at getting a Mickey Mantle cut auto, which at first seemed to be potentially just one card in the print run, but now appears there may be as many as seven.
I picked up a single pack because I’ve made worse choices with $10 plenty of times in my life. Don’t anticipate grabbing any more as I am not a Yankees fan and the odds are too long for getting any worthwhile hits. Nostalgia does sell well though, and with a hobby icon as the main subject, I can see this product doing fairly decent in the secondary market for both singles and sealed product.
Notes
One final note worth mentioning in this week in baseball cards is that we had the next chapter added to it this weekend is the ongoing situation with George Valera’s 1st Bowman autographed cards. The hobby has been asking for the past few years where and when it will come, and we were still holding out hope that he might end up in 2021 Bowman Chrome until about a month ago when Valera’s agent tweeted a photo of a 2020 Bowman Sapphire 1/1 Padparadacha with no auto in the designated place to sign the card. The agent confirmed that Topps did not meet their price demands for signing and thus Valera never signed it.
And then this weekend Valera’s agent tweeted a picture of Valera holding the signed version of the card. At first glance, you might think this means that perhaps his card gets inserted as a retro version into a future Bowman product, or perhaps as damaged cards, missing hits, or redemption replacements. But the reality is almost assuredly that Valera was signing just that specific card to give to his agent as a keepsake.