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 three products being released: 2021 Topps Dynasty, 2021 Panini Elite Extra Edition, and 2021 Panini Flawless Baseball. This post will be updated if more news and/or product drops occur throughout the week. ***Updated for Topps Gallery showing up on retail shelves

2021 Topps Dynasty

2021 Topps Dynasty is a super high-end product that is scheduled to release on Wednesday, December 22nd.

There is only one configuration - a regular Hobby box. The Hobby box contains one encased autographed patch card. They are running for about $550 pre-sale at the moment. Last year, Topps sold these direct from their website for $375. Not sure if they will be adjusting their philosophy yet as product has stopped selling out (unless it’s an I Love Fuzzy Pandas figurine), but if not, I anticipate somewhere around $450 - $500 if they don’t. ***Update - Topps posted these for sale at $410 from their website

The design is what you would come to expect from Topps Dynasty. A large patch, player portrait, and on card autograph. The background color is a sandy brown which they have used quite often in years past, although last year went with a traditional stark white. I don’t have much to complain about, although my preference is the white background of last year. Most patches are really nice multi-colored patches as well, and there are a few subsets that use either baseball hide or batting glove material which is really cool.

The checklist is full of desirable Rookies, Stars, and retired MLB players. Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout, Vladdy Jr., Juan Soto, Ronald Acuna Jr., etc. fill out the active list while you get players like Derek Jeter, Cal Ripken Jr., Ichiro, Nolan Ryan, etc. highlight the retired players list. Unfortunately there are still going to be plenty of players that won’t even likely return you 20% of the box price like Steve Garvey, Steve Carlton, Nate Pearson, Deivi Garcia, etc.

I don’t own any Topps Dynasty cards and I have thought about purchasing the sub-$50 cards like a Michael Wacha just to own one, but have passed on doing so. At one point i will buy one and possibly if Will Clark or Mike Yastrzemski this year come up for a cheap price, I might do it. But there is no way I am interested in paying the sealed box price or participating in high dollar breaks with this product in it. Great product, but a crazy primary price point.

2021 Panini Elite Extra Edition

2021 Panini Elite Extra Edition, or Triple E as we tend to call it, is a lower end prospect focused product that is scheduled to release for the hobby products on Friday, December 24th.

There are two hobby formats - a regular Hobby box and a First Off the Line (FOTL) Hobby box. Both formats give you eight autographs and two relics on average with the FOTL format having exclusive auto and base parallels. The FOTL hobby box went to a dutch auction on the Panini website starting at $300 and hit its floor at $125. Regular Hobby boxes are going for around $100. We likely will also see retail formats for this product as well, especially with blaster boxes. ***Update - Panini is selling regular Hobby boxes for $100 direct from their website.

The design is busy as is usual for Elite Extra Edition. This year we get a full border with angled corners and diagonal slashes of wood grain in the top left and bottom right corners. As is the case with Triple E, we again get die-cut cards as well as Optic Contender cards.

The checklist is heavily focused on the most recent draft picks with the base card numbers corresponding to their draft pick position. So Henry Davis is card number one, Khalil Watson is card number 16, Jay Allen is card 30, etc. Some interesting omissions are card number two (Jack Leiter) and card number 27 (Jackson Merrill). I am guessing neither signed deals with Panini this time around, although both have been in previous Panini products - Stars and Stripes at the very least. Jackson Merrill does have a relic card in the product, but Leiter has nothing. Kumar Rocker and Owen Kellington have been flipped flopped with Kumar as base card number 102 and Owen as base card 10 which is just strange all around. Finally we have DPL base and auto cards which are often the first time we get autos from any of these players with the majority if not all of them currently unsigned. If you do join breaks with this product, be very cognizant of how the breaker will handle the DPL players and Kumar Rocker cards. There are also some prospects we’ve seen in previous products from this year and years past like Jarren Duran, Brandon Marsh, Brennen Davis, etc. and relic cards from retired MLB players that have been first rounders of the past like Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, etc. ***Update - I realized after posting that Kumar Rocker on a majority of his cards has his team listed as New York (his college focused cards are listed as Vanderbilt). Since this is Panini, they only do the location and not the team name as they don’t have the MLB license. But we all know this is the Mets, and this is a bit Awkward.

When I got back into the hobby, I really liked this product for access to all of the prospects I wanted at cheap prices. But year after year I grew more tired of the design, the lack of card value, and the huge checklist. This year I don’t see myself getting any outside of ending up in a mixer with it by happenstance.

2021 Panini Flawless Baseball

2021 Panini Flawless Baseball is Panini’s highest end baseball product and is scheduled to release on Friday, December 24th.

There two hobby configurations - a regular Hobby “box” and a First Off the Line (FOTL) Hobby “box”. I put box in quotation marks because it is actually a very fancy briefcase that contains a mini box of six autos and two relics and then an encased gem card and an encased auto. Boxes are going for around $1,600 - $2,000 and FOTL went to dutch auction last week and apparently sold out around $1750. ***Update - Panini is selling regular Hobby boxes for $1,400 direct from their website.

The design is very similar to years past with a mainly white background with various understated geometric shaped colors identifying the brand and subsets. A classic and conservative design that I tend to always like. The encased gem cards are unique to Flawless and contain actual gems like diamonds, rubies, sapphires, etc. The real value of these gems has been questionable over the years as most collectors who’ve looked into say that they are the cheapest examples of these types of gems possible. Regardless, I still think it is cool given the uniqueness of it.

The checklist is full of rookies, all-stars, and legends of the game. However, given the unlicensed nature and price point, it’s often really hard to get even close to the box price point back when selling. For example, I’m a big fan of Eric Davis, but his auto probably sells for $50 or less. But definitely players like Ke’Bryan Hayes, Juan Soto, Vladdy Jr., Shohei Ohtani, Ichiro, Sandy Koufax, etc. are well worth hitting in this product.

I have never purchased a box or been in a break with Flawless baseball given the ridiculous price point. On the other hand, I have bottom fed a couple of singles that I really like. The cheapest Flawless auto I could find when I looked a while back was a Dennis Eckersley auto for $15, which I now own. The cheapest encased gem card I could find around the same time was a Trea Turner Flawless Gems card for around $40 that I also own. I don’t think anything changes this year - not interested in the product except on the other side where I can pick up a cheap single perhaps.

2021 Topps Gallery

2021 Topps Gallery is a retail-only product that is typically sold exclusively at Wal-Mart and is now showing up on retail shelves.

There are all the various retail formats including a Mega box. Mega boxes guarantee two autos and are $80 when purchased direct from Wal-Mart. There are no hobby formats, although often times the Mega box is mistaken for a “hobby box”.

The design is pretty standard for the base Gallery cards of the past with a theme of a painting hanging on an art gallery wall. White borders with a shiny inner frame that gives you the impression of a fancy painting frame. It’s hard to tell without the cards in hand, but it looks like they have completely abandoned the “painted” look of the players on the base cards and they are now the standard photo of the player with the background blurred out and somewhat of a less-refined overall feel. This gives it still a little bit of that classic Gallery feel, but still lacks all of the good and bad from previous versions of Gallery. They have a die-cut stained glass insert called Gallery of Heroes that looks really cool but also feels derivative from Panini Mosaic/Prizm stained glass cards unfortunately. The MLB Originals insert is supposed to look beat up with “creases” and “stains” on the card visually, if not in reality. I don’t really need that reminder of poor quality cards, but I guess I could see people liking the nostalgic approach here. The Master of the Craft insert is simply a card with a bad flashback to 70’s geometric design and I don’t get it. The Modern Artists insert gives a strong 1951 Topps vibe and I really like the images of it I’ve seen.

The checklist is not yet released, but assume you will see a decent amount of the rookies you have been chasing throughout the year including players from Update Series like Kelenic and India.

I typically stay away from Topps Gallery on the retail shelves unless I am desperate for a rip and that’s all they have. It does not resell well at all, and the autos are all stickers. On the other hand, I don’t mind picking up singles for my PC on the aftermarket as well as any insert sets that I connect with. This year, I might be doing that for the Modern Artists insert - we shall see once I get one in hand.