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 two scheduled releases - 2022 Panini Capstone Baseball and 2022 Bowman Transcendent Collection. 2022 Bowman Draft Lite Hobby Edition will also be available for sale this week starting on Wednesday, December 28th. You can see last week’s This Week in Baseball Cards as well as my full 2022 Bowman Draft Product Preview for more info on the product and configuration. This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
***Update - Topps put 2022 Bowman Draft Lite Hobby Edition on their website for $145 with a customer limit of 12 boxes.
2022 Panini Capstone Baseball
The new product from Panini is scheduled to release on Friday, December 30th.
There are two hobby configurations - a regular Hobby box and a First Off The Line (FOTL) Hobby box. The only difference is that there are two exclusive FOTL orange parallels in the FOTL box. Otherwise, both come with two autos and two relic cards on average. The FOTL Hobby box was sold via Dutch Auction on Panini’s website on Tuesday, December 20th. It started at $300 and hit the bottom at $120. Hobby boxes are currently on pre-sale for $120 and is scheduled to go on sale on Friday, December 30th on the Panini website for a to be announced price point. ***Update - Panini is selling regular Hobby boxes for $120 on their website.
The base design is very simple. A dark background with a huge, real-life baseball in the background given the full-bleed/zero border treatment. A product logo (Capstone) in the upper left and the player’s name and team city (Panini does not have the license to use team name or logo) in the bottom center of the card. Not bad, and I’ve seen worse, but for whatever reason, it doesn’t really connect for me. There are quite a few inserts, of various degrees of interest, fun, and odds to hit. The reported ultra rare inserts, likely case hits or even longer odds (but we shall see), are Blue Steel and Graffiti. I do like the look of the Blue Steel insert, but it’s not something I would pay much for, so it’s likely I wont be owning any. Some of the relic and auto subsets look to be interesting designs. The rookie materials look to be a space backdrop with a rainbow light-speed type effect in the center of the card. The Summit and Peak auto themes have mountain backdrops which are nice (although I feel like it could be better somehow).
The checklist is split into 100 base and 100 “luxury suite” base cards, kind of like what Panini does with its Select and Prizm products. Given the sell sheet images, the cards have the same design between the two types of base cards, which is more like Prizm than Select. The base set is rookies and vets while inserts and autos/relics will include some players that are prospects yet to debut like Jaxx Groshans (this might be the first product I’ve ever seen him in and he was a 2019 draft guy) and others that were called up after the rookie card line was drawn like Adley Rutschman and Miguel Vargas. Those call-up guys will be getting rookie cards in 2023. All of the rookie chase cards are there including Julio Rodriguez, Bobby Witt, Jr., Jeremy Peña, Oneil Cruz, Wander Franco, CJ Abrams, Spencer Torkelson, Seiya Suzuki, Hunter Greene, Spencer Strider, and more.
An unlicensed baseball product hitting at the wrong time of year can only do so well. A debut product can drive some interest, but the fact that the FOTL didn’t buck the recent trend of Panini baseball products hitting the bottom dollar of the Dutch Auction isn’t a great sign. There’s nothing really of interest for my here, and I doubt I get any of this product. If it was under that magical $100 a box threshold, it may have been a bit more interesting.
2022 Bowman Transcendent Collection
Back for it’s third year, the super high end prospect release, 2022 Bowman Transcendent Collection, is scheduled to release on Friday, December 30th.
There is a single hobby configuration, a “Hobby” box which is actually a lockable briefcase with the contents stored within, protected by foam inserts. There are only 100 boxes being made in this year’s print run which is the same as the first two year of this product. Each box contains 34 autos, 1 Transcendent VIP Party invitation, and a 50 card base set (each card in the base set is numbered to 50). Currently Blowout is selling these boxes for $22,995.95. It is highly unlikely Topps will be listing these for sale on their own website.
The design is typically the least interesting thing about the product, and last year’s was particularly meh. This year is a bit better with a soft rainbow hue of colors. Ultimately it looks like it was a ton of design elements on photoshop that were thrown at a card. While I’ve seen worse with this same approach, it doesn’t give me an idea of a card that is from a product that costs five figures. The true design element is that each card comes in a metallic gold frame and that is the "high-end” aspect to the design. It’s nice, but as it’s not unique to the product, it loses some of its impact. We will also see one 1990 Bowman style superfractor 1/1 per box. Finally there is one through the years card in each box which uses a historical Topps or Bowman design and the player will either be Bobby Witt Jr. or Marcelo Mayer.
The checklist is not yet announced, but there are some pieces of the puzzle to infer from the sell sheet photos and information. First the checklist will likely be spread across prospects and rookies like it has been previously. Rookies look to include Julio Rodriguez, Bobby Witt Jr., and Wander Franco. Prospects will include Oscar Colas and Marcelo Mayer. There will also be cut autos, often the second most valuable hit in the product. The sell sheet has an Abraham Lincoln cut auto as part of the image set.
Outside of the VIP Party invitation and the cut auto, these cards often sell below expectations. I’ve seen some autos sell for under $20 with a lot of them selling between $50 - $100 for the autos. Base cards can often be found for $10 or less in scenarios where people are breaking up the base set. I haven’t gone out and bought a single, but one day I may. One thing is for sure - I won’t ever buy into a break and I for sure won’t ever be buying a box (unless I hit the lottery).