Helping to keep everyone up-to-date on what is coming out and what might be worthy of your time in the Baseball Card Hobby for the current week. Check out our Discord for more discussion on this and any other hobby chatter Prospects Live Discord.
This week we have one product scheduled for released: 2021 Leaf Metal Draft Baseball. This post will be updated if more news and/or product drops occur throughout the week - we probably should be seeing 2021 Topps Chrome Update hit retail shelves soon followed closely by 2021 Topps Chrome Update Sapphire Edition on the Topps website which was new for 2020. We may also see a few others like 2021 Topps Chrome Platinum Edition, Bowman Heritage, and/or 2021 Bowman Draft Sapphire Edition. Finally we likely see a couple of Topps releases from last week go live on their website - 2021 Bowman Draft (Hobby Jumbo and possibly Hobby Lite) and/or 2021 Bowman’s Best. ***Update - 2021 Bowman Draft Hobby Lite released on Topps website on 1/3 for $90 per box(sold out). 2021 Bowman Draft Hobby Jumbo released on Topps website on 1/5 for $375 per box (sold out in less than 1 hour). 2021 Bowman’s Best Hobby released on Topps website on 1/5 for $260 per box (sold out in less than 5 minutes). *****Updated for Fanatics acquiring Topps and Project 70 ending news
2021 Leaf Metal Draft
2021 Leaf Metal Draft baseball is scheduled to release on Tuesday, January 4th and is the kickoff of the prospect-focused cycle of Leaf baseball products for the 2021 class.
There are three hobby formats - a regular Hobby box, a Red, White & Blue (RWB) Hobby box, and a Jumbo Hobby box. A regular Hobby box guarantees you 6 cards which are all autos and is running for $115 - $120 pre-sale. The RWB Hobby box was sold directly from Leaf last week at $150 a box and it guarantees the same 6 autos as a regular Hobby box. However, all the cards are the exclusive Red, White & Blue parallel all numbered to 10 or less and is the second year for this format. Returning for year two, the Jumbo Hobby box has 9 autos plus a slabbed proof 1/1 autographed card for a total of 10 cards per box. The slabbed proofs, while they hold some novelty value, tend not to hold the traditional 1/1 slabbed card value you might think - they should be considered similar to printing plates in my opinion. There are no retail versions of this product.
Leaf never is afraid to do different things with their designs, and Metal Draft is a place where the change the base design every year significantly. Some years it hits for me and some years it doesn’t. This year it has a long skinny trapezoid with three floating lines above it on the left and right that isn’t on the border, but almost acts like one. A player photo with no background and the standard auto box at the bottom completes the look. This year, the design doesn’t really do it for me. However, I do like the 1990 Leaf throwback design even though they have been doing that for what seems like almost every year. I’m not sure why they have another “throwback” to last year’s design, but you do you Leaf. Finally, they have a few inserts. A Future Stars insert that has a star in the background which I don’t really like, the draft pick number of some of the higher MLB draft picks that they have been doing for a while, and the State/National Pride with a large flag as the background, which I tend to really like.
The checklist is not yet out, but expect a strong one full of the 2021 MLB draft picks, other big name prospects, some younger international prospects, and a few token current all-stars/legends. The sell sheet has the likes of Marcelo Mayer, Jackson Jobe, Colton Cowser, Cristian Hernandez, Blaze Jordan, Robert Puason, Bobby Witt Jr., Yolbert Sanchez, Sam Bachman, Luis Matos, Bryan Acuña (the younger brother of Ronald Jr.), Brady House, and Jasson Dominguez.
As Leaf has shifted to full sticker mode and with the already built-in unlicensed negative, I have gotten farther and farther from going out of my way for any Leaf products. Out of the similar Leaf product prospect group of products with Metal Draft, Flash, and Valiant, I prefer Metal Draft (I put Trinity to the side as it has a different angle than those three with the patches). But I still doubt I will be interested in getting any Metal Draft this year unless the State/National Pride insert set is a small enough subset to chase - something like 10-ish cards. I completed the full set in 2018 Leaf Metal Draft, but in 2019, the subset checklist was like double to triple the amount of cards and I wasn’t going to chase that many cards and 2020 was just a bit too much at around 15 cards. All in all, a decent product given the price point, but don’t spend the money for ROI-type purposes. Spend it to get guys/cards for your PC.
Fanatics Acquires Topps
In what may be the biggest hobby news of all of 2022 that dropped on the third day of the year, multiple sources reported that Fanatics is acquiring the Topps trading card and collectables business for $500 million. Read more of the details and my take on it here: Fanatics Acquires Topps
Project 70: This is the End
Topps announced via their Twitter feed on Monday, January 3rd that Project 70 will be concluding on February 9th, 2022. This was the originally speculated end date for a full roll out of 20 cards with 51 artists and 4 cards per day. That has not actually happened for many different reasons, but it seems like Topps is sticking to their intended end date regardless of the situation.
We’ve seen days and even a week or two without cards. We’ve seen artists completely disengage from the product with no cards coming from them for months on end. And we’ve seen cards not making it through the approval process (and one that shouldn’t have).
Other details provided by Topps in their announcement include any collector who has purchased every single card from a specific artist direct from Topps will be getting the promised limited edition poster for that artist regardless of how many cards that artist completed. There was a lot of speculation previously on this topic on whether Topps would be making posters for the artists that did not complete the originally intended 20 cards. This is a good decision by Topps.
Included in that information about the poster, we actually got to see a mock-up of the poster itself for the first time. The mock-up shows a print of all cards from that artist and was the leader in the clubhouse for speculation around what it would end up being. The second most speculated poster subject was an additional art piece from the artist, which would have been really cool, but also a lot more difficult to pull off well. I like the idea of having all cards from the artist on the poster as you can then safely store the cards if you so choose but still have a visual representation of them hanging on your wall.
The end date also leads to speculation about artists that are the farthest from completing their 20 card run. It’s always possible Topps increases the amount of cards per day from the current max of four per day to more than that to get as much out as possible, similar to what the did for Project 2020 at the end. But assuming they don’t, any artist/collective with under 15 cards is going to be hard pressed to complete the full 20 cards. We already can safely assume Action Bronson is out with only seven cards completed and nothing for over six months and similarly with Blue the Great with only six cards completed. Others under the 15 card threshold are Matt McCormick (14), Naturel (14), DJ Skee (13), Jonas Never (13), Thiele (13), Mimsbandz (13), Sean Wotherspoon (13), Market (12), Pose (12), Distortedd (11) Ben Baller (10), Bobby Hundreds (10), and Sket One (7)*. DJ Skee has said on his discord that his two latest submissions have been rejected by MLB and that he still plans on completing the full 20 card set. Sket One was brought in as a fill-in artist of sorts and is expected to complete 13 cards for his full set.
For those that have been engaged with Project 70 like myself, it has been quite the bumpy ride with never a dull moment. It created at least one new star in the trading card space with Alex Pardee, and it introduced myself to new artists I was unaware of and whose work I really enjoy (Lauren Taylor and Chuck Styles being the two highlights in that regard for me). I am glad that Topps communicated this information ahead of time rather than just stopping it out of the blue on the final day or close to it. As Jim Morrison of The Doors fame sang, “This is the end, Beautiful friend, This is the end, My Project 70 friend, the end”. Or something like that…
2021 Topps UK Edition
2021 Topps UK Edition is back for a second year and is the United Kingdom (UK) version of 2021 Topps Flagship (Series 1/Series 2/Update Series). It went live on the Topps website on
There is one configuration - a regular Hobby box. There are no guaranteed hits although there are autos in the product. Boxes can be purchased direct from the Topps UK site for £65 which is about $90. No retail was available last year and I don’t see that changing this year.
The design is exactly the same as the Flagship Topps design but includes a UK flag just underneath the Topps logo on the front of the card. Just like last year, there is one exclusive UK parallel. Last year it was a Big Ben parallel and this year it is a Union Jack parallel. Just like the Big Ben parallel last year, the Union Jack parallel is numbered to 99.
The checklist is yet to be released but it supposedly has a 220 base set, which is exactly the same as the Topps Japan Edition. I would not be surprised at all if it is exactly the same base checklist as Topps Japan Edition. There is a short printed auto checklist that has been released that is only 10 players with a total of 200 autos. Not 200 per player, but 200 in sum. In theory, that means each player has 20 autos, but it’s possible some guys are even more short printed as happens with guys like Trout. The 10 players with autos are Juan Soto, Christian Yelich, Pete Alonso, Mike Trout, Yadier Molina, Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Buster Posey, and Fernando Tatis Jr.
I did not get any UK edition last year and I doubt I will this year unless I decide to pick up a Union Jack parallel of a PC player or two. Honestly, from the pictures, the Union Jack parallel doesn’t get me all hot and bothered like the Cherry Blossom parallel does from the Japan Edition. Also, with no guaranteed hits, it just makes buying sealed boxes such a tough proposition. It’s a pass for me.