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 unscheduled hobby product online release - 2022 Bowman Baseball Sapphire Edition - and the launch of Project 100 Season 1. This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2022 Bowman Baseball Sapphire Edition
2022 Bowman Baseball Sapphire Edition is the slimmed down Sapphire release of the full 2022 Bowman Baseball release from earlier this month and went live to 582 Montgomery Club members on Tuesday, 5/24. The expectation is that it will go live to the Public on Wednesday, 5/25.
There is a single regular Hobby box configuration. It has the standard format we have seen in previous Bowman Sapphire Editions with 32 cards per box and one guaranteed auto. Parallels of base and autos are present, but base parallels are almost assuredly not guaranteed as they were not last year. Last year the best parallel odds were green out of 125 and fell 1 in 21 packs, which is roughly one in three boxes. The only way this could change is if they add a more numerous parallel that would fall 1 in 8 packs, perhaps un-numbered or out of /299, /399, or /499. At the moment we do not know any information about the parallels and this section will be updated when this info comes out. The price point from Topps is $199.99 per box, a $50 increase from 2021. In addition, it is now a limit of 1 box per account, whereas last year it was 2 per account. Given the demand in 2021, the public release was a mess and Topps pulled it off the site and then went with the raffle method. It is TBD to see their approach this year.
The design is the base 2022 Bowman design with the Sapphire finish. Nothing much to say here other than it’s a base only product - none of the inserts, etc. that you found in the core release will be present here.
The checklist is the 150 chrome prospect checklist and the auto checklist is a slimmed down version of the 2022 Bowman Baseball chrome prospect auto checklist. We go from 89 chrome prospect autos in the core release down to 54 in the Sapphire Edition. Most of the names cut out are Tier 3/4 players, especially on the pitching side. The biggest omission and only Tier 2 player for me that is getting cut out is Dustin Harris. Overall a really good job by Topps here on the choices of who to cut out for the auto checklist.
In collecting today, Sapphire is king. I expect this product to be a very hot ticket and to be holding well above the initial Topps selling process for the foreseeable future for sealed boxes. The checklist is strong and has a lot of depth. If you can stomach the $200 price point AND acquire it at that price (a potential tall ask outside of the Montgomery Club members), it is a very good buy.
Topps Project 100 Season 1
Project 100 Season 1 launched on Tuesday, May 24th and is the third artist focused online Project that Topps has curated.
Season 1 features 5 artists, each scheduled to produce 5 cards for a total of 25 cards in Season 1. The first 5 cards released on Tuesday, May 24th as follows:
Mookie Betts by Andre Power
Shohei Ohtani by J. Demsky
Roberto Clemente by John Geiger
Wander Franco by Malik Roberts
Derek Jeter by No Pattern
Each card has three scenarios - a Base Edition limited to 3,999, a Deluxe Parallel Edition limited to 100, and an Artist Signed Artist Proof Edition limited to 20. In this first drop of 5 cards, pricing is as follows - Base Edition at $20 per card or $95 for a bundle of all 5 cards, Deluxe Parallel Edition at $150 per card, and Artist Proof Edition at $500 per card. Unlike Project 2020 and especially Project 70, there are no chase or randomly inserted parallels to chase. This likely has a significant impact on purchasing cheaper versions on the secondary market from the volume buyers who were chasing the foils and chase cards that we saw in previous Project iterations. There are also ancillary Season 1 products that you can purchase as collector items - posters, artist-signed and unsigned, and a catalog.
The design of the cards and the players chosen appear to all be up to the artist. There appear to be no restrictions to attempt to conform to a set list of players and a historic Topps design. However, there likely is still the required layers of approval with Topps, MLB, and MLBPA sign offs required. An additional interesting twist is that the artists have been given options with foil and atomic/cracked ice type elements and that it can vary depending on the edition. For example, the Wander Franco Base and Artist Proof Editions will have a black foil background while the Deluxe Parallel Edition will rainbow foil gold frame and blue line work.
The checklist, like Project 70, is basically unknown until the cards are dropped unless we get artist sneak peaks. We knew Geiger’s first card was going to be Clemente since the Project announcement a few weeks ago, for example.
Unless there is something that strikes my fancy, I am not going out of my way for this Project. And nothing with the first five cards dropped hit home with me, so my wallet is relatively happy. We’ll see how this plays out, but I likely wont be revisiting Project 100 Season 1 in This Week in Baseball Cards unless there is news to touch upon.