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 hobby products scheduled for release - 2021 Onyx Gems Baseball and 2022 Topps Series 1. This post will be updated if more news and/or product drops occur throughout the week - we possibly could see 2021 Bowman Heritage but Topps has delayed that drop until an unknown date. We may see other online releases with 2021 Topps Chrome Update Sapphire Edition also likely on tap for sometime soon. Retail possibilities include 2021 Leaf Draft Baseball.
2021 Onyx Gems
2021 Onyx Gems Baseball is scheduled to release on Wednesday, February 16th and is a new product that takes the familiar Onyx formula and slabs the auto cards.
There is one configuration - a regular Hobby box. They are running around $90 pre-sale. They include 2 CSG slabbed autographed cards, nothing more nothing less. The cards are slabbed “Authentic” with no grade being given. No grade and just an authentic auto is likely the cheapest and quickest option for Onyx even if it is unfortunate that we don’t get the card grades.
The design is a photo of the player with a solid color background that represents the gem color (Sapphire for blue, Ruby for red, etc.) and a circle pattern design in white behind the player in the center of the card. I’ve seen better, and I’ve seen a lot worse. Would’ve preferred the background design to represent the gem parallel/color, but maybe next year.
The checklist is at the moment just a short list of 30 prospects highlighted by Bobby Witt Jr., Adley Rutschman, Jasson Dominguez, and Julio Rodriguez. More than likely about a third to half the cards are going to make the box opener happy, which is a nice ratio.
This product snuck up on me a few weeks ago when I saw it on the release schedule. Not sure if I missed Onyx pumping it or what, but it isn’t something to be overly excited about. CSG has been quite an interesting topic in the hobby lately given the perception of how hard they grade. With this product not including those grades, it helps and hurts all at the same time. You won’t be seeing in 7 grades out of the box, but you also wont have any 10’s either which would potentially provide some added value. As is with just being an Authentic grade, the added value is probably minimal to none. I like the idea and wouldn’t mind these boxes being in a mixer break, but it’s not something I will go out of my way to acquire.
2022 Topps Series 1
2022 Topps Series 1 is scheduled to release on Wednesday, February 16th and is the kickoff to the 2022 collecting season.
There are two hobby configurations - a regular Hobby Box and a Jumbo Hobby Box. A regular Hobby box is running about $125 - $135 pre-sale while a Jumbo Hobby box is around $250 (Direct Topps prices to be added when product is live). Regular Hobby boxes guarantee one auto OR relic and one silver pack. Jumbo Hobby boxes guarantee one auto AND two relics plus two silver packs. You will find the majority of retail formats but flagship retail never has any guaranteed hits. ***Update: Topps posted Regular Hobby boxes on their website for $79.99 a box.
The design for the base is a full border white with a heavy bottom prominently displaying the player name and to a lesser degree, team name. The throwback 35th Anniversary inserts are the 1987 Topps design, an iconic design loved by collectors. Other inserts of note are the new Flashiest Feet and the unannounced Home Field Advantage insert that is almost a carbon copy of the Panini Downtown inserts.
The checklist is standard flagship with a 330 card base set with about 45 rookie cards. This product is really all about the Wander Franco base rookie card and everything else is secondary. Unfortunately the rest of the rookie checklist leaves quite a bit to be desired. I’ll have every single base rookie card written up in my full product preview (link to be added when article is live).
A couple of the inserts have my attention, but outside of that, this product is a complete avoid for me. The weak rookie class and the huge print run are significant detractors. I’ll probably grab a retail hanger here or there if I run across them, but I don’t really plan on much else.
2021 Topps Series 1 First Edition
2021 Topps Series 1 First Edition was a surprise drop Tuesday morning for 582 Montgomery Club members. It takes the base set (330 cards) and gives it a “1st Edition” foil stamp. There are rare auto hits but no guaranteed hits in the hobby box. There are nine different foil parallels and three different auto parallels - given the pack odds, it looks to be just under 7,500 boxes. A box costs $350 direct from Topps and is limited to 1 box per club membership. The assumption is that this will go on sale to the general public later in the week. We last saw 1st Edition for a Topps Flagship set back in 2014 and it was a limited edition of 10 complete sets. 2022 Series 1 First Edition is taking the approach that we have seen recently with the various Bowman 1st Editions - a pre-release paper set that has come to be seen by a lot in the hobby to be a cash grab. In my opinion, this isn’t anything I am interested in and is priced exceedingly high for what you get. On the other hand, if the print run is truly just under 7,500 boxes, the lack of supply will drive significant demand for sealed product as well as desirable singles (Wander Franco, etc.).