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 - 2022 Topps Opening Day and 2022 Topps Heritage. 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 potentially in the pipeline. Retail releases this week and last week were 2021 Leaf Draft Baseball and 2021 Pro Set Baseball.
2022 Topps Opening Day
2022 Topps Opening Day is low end release that is scheduled to release on Wednesday, March 9th.
There is one “hobby” configuration and then the standard retail formats (blasters, cellos, loose retail packs, etc.). “Hobby” is in quotation marks because it is more like a mega box with no guaranteed hits, just more cards than what you would find in a typical retail blaster box. You get 36 packs with 7 cards per pack which includes 1 insert per pack. They are running around $55 at the moment although they were cheaper in previous weeks. Last year, Topps sold these direct from their website for $39.99. ***Update - Topps again sold these boxes on their website for $39.99
The base design is exactly the same as Flagship which you have already seen with 2022 Series 1 with the addition of an Opening Day logo on the front of the card. The base has an non-numbered blue parallel that is 2,022 copies and a 1/1 black parallel with the date of what was supposed to be the Opening Day of the MLB this year, March 31st 2022 (R.I.P.), on the front of the card. Various inserts, image variations, and mascot cards highlight the rest of the design content. A triple player card is a fun one to get your teams best players all on one card. A Luck of the Irish insert with a clover design also looks fun to collect. The mascots are often the highlight for myself as I get to share these with my daughter - definitely cards that I’ve found kids to enjoy a lot.
The checklist is a slimmed down version of the 2022 Series 1 checklist going from 330 base cards down to 220 base cards. It does appear all of the base rookie cards from Series 1 are represented in the Opening Day checklist which is nice. Obviously the chase here is Wander Franco and that’s about it - you can see my opinion on all the Series 1 and Opening Day rookies in my 2022 Series 1 Product Preview article.
Opening Day is typically a product “for the kids”. Cheap with high print runs so it is plentiful on retail shelves. Mascot base, relics, and autographed cards to get the kids smiling. Occasionally there is some ROI potential depending on the strength of the rookie class and, in the case of 2020 and Luis Robert, sought after short prints. This year, it’s all about the Wander hunt, but with parallels being in short supply and no guaranteed hits regardless of product configuration, this is going to be long odds on making your money back. I tend to try and get some retail every year of this product for ripping with my daughter and hope to do so again this year, but won’t do much more than that with it.
2022 Topps Heritage
2022 Topps Heritage is the first half of the yearly Heritage release looking back at a historic Topps design and is scheduled to release on Friday, March 11th.
There is one Hobby configuration. It is currently selling for around $110 pre-sale online. Last year Topps sold these direct from their website for $99.99. Each box will guarantee one auto OR relic. There will also be all of the standard retail formats from blasters, hangers, fat packs, etc. ***Update - Topps sold Hobby boxes for $99 direct from their website again this year.
The design is one of the major selling points here as it is a throwback to the set Topps produced in 1973. It’s actually strongly reminiscent of the 2022 Flagship design and it makes you wonder how much they took cues from that 1973 design for this year’s Flagship products. As has become standard with the Heritage products, the “error” variations are another throwback element that drive a lot of collector interest. You will see image variations, team and player name color swaps, nickname variations, etc. These variations tend to be highly sought after, especially for the in demand rookies. Even though this is a paper-based product, there are also chrome versions that also do well with resale. One other thing to be aware of that is tangentially related to design is that this is a set-collector product. This goes back to the roots of collecting when it was more about collecting the entire set of a product, and a lot of that mentality holds strong with the yearly Heritage releases.
The checklist was just released and we surprisingly got a couple of rookies that were not part of the 2022 Series 1 base rookies. The biggest name in that group is Oneil Cruz, which is a good sign he will be included in 2022 Series 2 as a base rookie. The other name of some interest is Josh Lowe. Other than that, it is mostly the same players you were chasing in 2022 Series 1 headlined by Wander Franco. Wander has error variations of almost every type which should drive a significant chase for those cards even with typically large print runs of this product.
While the 1973 design isn’t in my Top 10 Topps designs of all time, it probably is in my top 20-ish off the top of my head. I mostly stayed away from last year’s Heritage and Heritage High Number products, and a lot of that was because I was not a fan of the 1972 design. Being a fan of the 1973 design likely will lead me to picking up this product when I come across it in retail formats. With the hobby box more than likely weighted heavily towards relics over autos, that configuration is mostly an avoid from my side. Although the chase is really the chrome and variations rather than the hit, but even then the desirable ones are going to be really tough to pull.
Retail Releases
2021 Leaf Draft Baseball, not to be confused with the hobby chrome version Leaf Metal Draft, is a retail-only release that started showing up last week, but I am including it in this week’s article since I did not publish one last week due to the lack of hobby releases. It will be called a “hobby” box since it does guarantee 3 autos along with the 50 card base set, but the price point of $29.95 is typically what you find on retail shelves. You don’t typically find an autograph checklist longer than a base set checklist, but that is how you get a product that guarantees 3 autos for $30. 141 players with autos leads to a LOT of low value autographed cards, and even the bigger hits don’t really drive much value. Unlicensed paper cards with sticker autos make it more of a product that tends to sit around on shelves than fly off of them.
2021 Pro Set Baseball, not to be confused with the hobby chrome version Pro Set Metal, is a retail-only release that is expected to start showing up this week. Similar to Leaf Draft, this is classified as a “hobby” box. It is literally the same rinse and repeat information as Leaf Draft above but you get 144 players with autos and the design is based off of the Pro Set Metal design. Probably slightly more desirable than Leaf Draft as this is the inaugural year of Pro Set baseball. But easily something you really only should be ripping for fun or picking up cards for your PC than trying to flip or opening for flipping singles.