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 scheduled release - 2022 Topps Archives. This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week. Yet again I say perhaps we see 2022 Topps Archives Snapshots online exclusive drop. Maybe we get 2022 Topps Chrome Sonic Edition, whatever that is. Or even 2022 Topps Chrome Sapphire Edition? ***Whelp, I was completely off on potential online drops - instead we got 2022 MLB x Garbage Pail Kids: Series One by Keith Shore and Topps X Steve Aoki (2022 Steve Aoki’s Baseball Party - Wave 1).
2022 Topps Archives
2022 Topps Archives is a low end nostalgic styled product scheduled for release on Wednesday, October 12th.
There is one hobby configuration - a Regular Hobby box. It comes with two guaranteed autos (no relics in the product). Currently they are available for pre-sale at $120 in most places. Topps sold Hobby boxes for $134.99 direct last year. For retail, there will be blaster/value boxes and possibly other formats. Topps sold blaster boxes for $20 direct last year. ***Update - Topps sold Hobby boxes for $124.99 and blaster/value boxes for $24.99 direct from their website.
The design of Archives typically takes three historic Topps designs and uses them for the base checklist. In addition, other historic designs find there way into the various inserts and autographs. The base designs this year are from 1963, 1978, and 1987. I like 1963 as it’s recognizable, but doesn’t make it anywhere near my list of favorite Topps designs. On the other hand, 1978 is one of my favorite designs. I’m a sucker for simplicity and this has it with a full white border with a thin inner border, team name in flowing script in the bottom left, and the player name underneath the thin border on the right. It’s also from my birth year, so bonus points! I also love the 1987 design as it hit when I really started getting into collecting baseball cards. However, it is starting to get to be too much with it also being the 35th anniversary throwback insert in the Flagship and Flagship Chrome products. I would’ve been much more excited to see it here if not for that fact.
The checklist is spread across rookies, current vets, and ex-MLB players. All the rookies we want to see, including some that don’t have Flagship or Flagship Chrome cards, are here like Wander Franco, Oneil Cruz, Bobby Witt Jr., Spencer Torkelson, CJ Abrams, Hunter Greene, MJ Melendez, MacKenzie Gore, Royce Lewis, Jeremy Peña, Seiya Suzuki, Steven Kwan, and more. Occasionally Topps Archives will also include an insert/auto insert subset that can drive interest and value like they did in 2016 with a Bull Durham set (including a Kevin Costner as Crash Davis auto) and in 2018 with the Sandlot set. Unfortunately 2018 was the last time we saw something like that. There will still be some unexpected autos like a Joe West auto (umpire) and some likely sought after Rachel Balkovec (first full-time female minor league manager) and Alyssa Nakken (first full time female MLB coaching staff member). And then there will be the various sought after vet autos that will likely be hard to hit like Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout, Aaron Judge, etc.
There’s almost always something that I want every year from Topps Archives, and this year is no different with the Balkovec and Nakken autos. However, with the price point and the sheer volume of autos available in the product coupled with the low desirability of even the big rookies in the product, it’s an easy pass from a sealed box perspective. I’ll simply pay the piper at some point for the cards I want from the product rather than swing and miss in breaks or wax purchases. I’d recommend most everyone else do the same.
2022 MLB x Garbage Pail Kids: Series One by Keith Shore
This surprise crossover dropped on the Topps website on Monday, October 10th.
There are two formats - a single pack box and a five pack box. Each pack contains six cards - five base cards and one “chase” card - essentially a parallel. The single pack boxes are being sold for $19.99 and the five pack box gets you a bulk rate five dollar discount which brings it to $95.
The design is classic Garbage Pail Kids (GPK) with the subjects being current MLB players and using team names and logos. While I can see crossover appeal given the strength of the checklist from traditional baseball card collectors, this really feels more like a product that GPK fans that also happen to like baseball (or perhaps even not fans) would be more interested in.
The checklist, as mentioned above, is strong, and that’s because it is literally fifteen players* long. The asterisk is due to the artist, Keith Shore, having chase cards as well - a regular card with two name types (referred to as an A name and a B name) that falls one in ten packs, and an autographed version for both the A and B names that comes one in fifty packs. The artist autograph is the only auto in the product. If any player had autos in the product, the price would have been astronomically higher. That’s because the 15 players in the product are Aaron Judge, Pete Alonso, Juan Soto, Mike Trout, Wander Franco, Bobby Witt Jr., Hunter Greene, Ronald Acuña Jr., Albert Pujols, Julio Rodriguez, Manny Machado, Miguel Cabrera, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Oneil Cruz, and Xander Bogaerts. Even the “lesser” names in the checklist still hold a good amount of interest and value. Each player has A and B names as standard base cards along with a C name variation “chase”. Parallel chase cards are also possible with a colored foil border of varying rarity with the 1/1 being a gold lava foil border.
While I loved GPK cards as a kid and regularly bought them from the ice-cream man on my way home from elementary school, I have not gotten back into them with their recent rebirth/resurgence (at least I assume they went away and then came back recently). Keith Shore isn’t my type of artist from previous exposure to him through Project 2020 and other Topps collabs. If there was a PC player in this checklist, I would likely pick up some of those cards (and perhaps that happens if further series are released as implied by this being Series One). Since there are no PC players/teams for me, it was an easy pass. But it sure seemed like there was a decent demand for this product, which I can understand given the popularity of the players, GPK, and Keith Shore.
Topps X Steve Aoki (2022 Steve Aoki’s Baseball Party - Wave 1)
The second surprise drop of the week was a new Topps and Steve Aoki collaboration, following up on their successful soccer collaborations over the last year or so, 2022 Topps Steve Aoki’s Baseball Party Wave 1.
There is only a single configuration - a regular “Hobby” box, although Topps was selling individual boxes and a “case” of boxes which contained 5 individual boxes. The individual box comes with a 30 cards with 28 of the cards being base cards and two cards being parallels, spread across 5 packs. A rare “Bushido” insert card will fall one in twenty boxes, although it is unclear if this replaces a parallel in that box or is in addition to it. Autos are also possible but not guaranteed. Individual boxes are being sold for $34.99 while a case gets you that $5 bulk rate discount leading to a $169.99 price point.
The design is very much a neon lights club feel. The players are action shots with the background being a strong neon color with diagonal slashes of colors, almost looking like the player is framed in a spotlight. Top it off with the Steve Aoki card spinning his turntables to complete the club feel.
The checklist is a 100 player base set of rookies, vets, and ex-MLB players. The 10 rookies in the base set are Wander Franco, Reid Detmers, Josiah Gray, MacKenzie Gore, MJ Melendez, Seiya Suzuki, Hunter Greene, Jeremy Peña, Jarren Duran, and Bobby Witt Jr. Noticeable omissions are Spencer Torkelson, Oneil Cruz, and Julio Rodriguez. Oneil Cruz does get a Bushido insert, however. On the other hand, none of the rookies are in the auto checklist, which is a major detractor from the product.
The Aoki products do tend to get some interest above just standard releases, so I am mildly curious to see how this one does. And given the price point, it’s not altogether the worst purchase, although it would be nice to get a guaranteed auto. If we come to find out the auto odds are better than one per case, this becomes a better buy, but I doubt that will be the “case”. I can see taking a shot on this, but also think that not having rookie autos and not including J-Rod significantly cap the upside overall.