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 Tribute and 2022 Panini Diamond Kings. This post will be updated if more news and/or product drops occur throughout the week. ***Updated for 2022 Topps Dynamic Duels, the Topps Project 100 tease, and 2021 Bowman Chrome Sapphire Edition.
2022 Topps Tribute
2022 Topps Tribute is a mid-tier product scheduled to release on Wednesday, May 11th.
There is one configuration - a regular Hobby box. There are six packs in a hobby box, each with a hit included. Three packs will have an auto/auto-relic hit and three packs will have a relic hit for a total of six hits. Boxes are selling for around $430 pre-sale. Last year Topps sold these boxes direct to the public for $400 and I would expect something similar this year. ***Update - Topps is selling this direct for the same price as last year at $400 per hobby box.
The design is typical Tribute with a full border that isn’t ever great but isn’t ever terrible. It’s just fine. The curving nameplate feels like it clashes with the rest of the design, but it’s whatever. Tribute typically excels with its relics, insert autos, and auto relics and 2022 is no different. Returning is Stamp of Approval where the relic is given a hologram sticker that you can use to lookup the actual game where that relic has come from. Unfortunately that has shown in the past to not be 100% accurate, but that is for another day. In 2021, we got Green Monster Graphs as the Stadium Relic Auto which were awesome and this year we get another Stadium Relic Auto but its spread across a couple teams - Orioles, Braves, Angels, Twins, Brewers, and Cubs. Autos are usually on card, which is another bonus.
The checklist is full of rookies, current stars, and ex-MLB players. This product is often less about the rookies and more about the Stars of today and yesteryear. To that end, the base rookie cards are short printed and average 1 in 18 packs. Wander Franco is the obvious rookie card chase here. Outside of that, Brandon Marsh and Jarren Duran are probably the other interesting names out of the short list of 10 rookies with base cards. More rookies can be found with autos in the set, but it’s still all about Wander there and the rest of the rookie autos aren’t great Bob. ***Update to add that Bobby Witt Jr. and Julio Rodriguez are present in the League Inauguration Autographs set which are numbered to 99 with a few shorter print versions as well, so something else to chase, but hard to hit more than likely. Current stars with autos to chase include Bryce Harper, Juan Soto, Mike Trout, and Shohei Ohtani. Ex-MLB players with autos to chase include Cal Ripken Jr., Derek Jeter, Nolan Ryan, etc.
Overall I think Tribute is a great product at a price point that is hard to stomach. There are really great cards, especially booklets and the Stadium Relic inserts. There are a bunch of current and ex-players I would love to have autographed cards of in this product, but there are a lot of ones that would be deflating as well. To me, this is an aftermarket singles purchase product rather than a break or box ripping product because of the price point. At half the price, that opinion is a lot different, but until then, I doubt I will be buying anything outside of singles, if that.
2022 Panini Diamond Kings
2022 Panini Diamond Kings is a low-tier product that is scheduled for release on Wednesday, May 11th.
There are two hobby formats - a regular Hobby box and a First Off The Line (FOTL) Hobby box. Each hobby format will have one auto and one relic on average with the FOTL having exclusive parallels. FOTL went on sale last week in a dutch auction and hit the floor price of $100. Regular Hobby boxes will likely end up somewhere lower than that and are currently around $90 pre-sale. There are all of the various retail formats and is traditionally sits on the retail shelves for days on end. ***Update - Panini is selling Hobby boxes for $80.95 direct from their website.
The design is typical Diamond Kings where you get a kind of painted feel to the majority of the product. While it does give it a different feel than most other Panini releases, I’d rather go get Topps Inception if I am looking for that artistic feel. On the other hand, that can be some inserts that are really cool. The Aurora insert is usually pretty good and the Blank Slates are really cool but tend to be really hard to hit. We don’t have examples on the sell sheet this year of those, but I think we can expect to see something similar from years past. There is no mention of Downtowns on the sell sheet, which is going to be a significant drag on the product if they are no longer part of it. Those are big sellers and not to have that for whatever reason is a bit of a head-scratcher. Finally, autos are almost always stickers. ***Update - now that the checklist is live, Downtowns are indeed included in this year’s product and most importantly Wander Franco has one, given the product a minor value bump as that will be a very sought after card.
The checklist is yet to be announced two days before release, but the main driver here is Wander Franco. It will have the usual grouping of rookies, current MLB players, and ex-MLB players from long ago that carry very little interest.
I know plenty of people in the hobby that enjoy Diamond Kings and it is often one of the gateway products to the hobby given its wide availability and cheap price point. I’ve never been into it and used to not even buy it even when it was the last thing on the retail shelves. Nowadays, if it’s on the shelf and nothing else is, I might buy it depending on how desperate I am to rip. Overall, unlicensed with very little ROI and a typically weak checklist have and will continue to keep my interest on anything but Diamond Kings.
2022 Topps Dynamic Duels
2022 Topps Dynamic Duels was a surprise online drop on Tuesday, May 10th and will remain on sale for seven days before the window closes.
Like most Topps online exclusives, there is only a single format that is being sold for $149.99. It comes with an ever-increasing base checklist up to 30 base cards from 25 last year and 22 years prior to that. In addition to receiving the full base set, you get two parallels or chase cards (short printed inserts). Finally, it will come with the main attraction, a dual autographed card. Unfortunately the autos are stickers which is often the case with mutli-signed cards unless it’s a high end product.
The design hasn’t changed much and the base is focused on two players (as are all the inserts) facing each other with a nice, classic white-marbley background and gold lines and text. All the inserts are really good with the Talk of the Town insert being my favorite. I am a sucker for city skylines being included in baseball cards and they do it very well here.
The checklist is mostly about the dual autos and there are huge chase ones - Juan Soto/Wander Franco and Ichiro/Ohtani, some really cool ones - Bo Jackson/Deion Sanders, and some rough ones like Casey Mize/Matt Manning and Keibert Ruiz/Josh Bell. Definitely a spread of current and ex-players across the checklist with the only 2022 rookie being Wander Franco (no RC logo though since it’s a dual card). Interestingly card number 30 in the base checklist is the only one without an auto and that is the Derek Jeter/Cal Ripken, Jr. dual. Even more interesting, Jeter and Ripken both have autographed cards in the other Topps release this week with 2022 Topps Tribute. Last year each base card had an equivalent dual auto card.
I really like this product but the two main drawbacks for me are the sticker autos and the price point. At something like a $100, I think even the lesser dual auto cards wouldn’t feel so painful. But at $150, I could see it tough to get half that value back on the lesser dual autos. This product has been sticker autos since I remember it back from 2018, so it’s not surprising it continues to be sticker autos. Still doesn’t make me happy about it though. There’s definitely worse products out there and would recommend it if this product doesn’t put a large dent in your monthly hobby budget.
Topps Project 100
On Tuesday, May 10th, Topps teased Project 100 for Spring 2022 (even though we are already half way through it). The assumption is that it follows in the footsteps of Project 2020 and Project 70, but absolutely nothing is known about it at the moment. Hoping for the best but also fearing the worst. We shall see. ***Update from Topps on 5/11 (with more to follow) - 20 artists will be involved for “Season 1” of Project 100. Speculation is that we will get 5 cards per artist. The 20 artists will be announced on Thursday, 5/12.
***Update from Topps on 5/12 - turns out the assumption of 20 artists could be incorrect? Topps announced Season 1 is “featuring” these five artists
Malik Roberts (Painter & Multimedia Artist - Brooklyn, NY)
John Geiger (Fashion Designer - Pittsburgh, PA)
NoPattern (Artist, Designer, Photographer - Chicago, IL)
Andre Power (DJ & Creative Director - Los Angeles, CA)
Demsky (Studio & Street Artist - Spain)
John Geiger went on to tweet that he will be releasing five designs all based on the same theme and that being from Pittsburgh, a Legend will be including which looks likely to be Roberto Clemente.
Assuming he gets either five cards each with their own design or sets of cards (four each perhaps so that five artists can produce 100 cards) with each set having its own design. Still lots of speculation in the air on this.
2021 Bowman Chrome Sapphire Edition
A surprise announcement on Wednesday, May 11th from Topps that 2021 Bowman Chrome Sapphire Edition will be going live to 582 Montgomery Club members on Thursday, May 12th. The checklist and price have not yet been announced, but we will get pricing at the least and possibly a checklist at the drop. It’s safe to assume that the checklist will be equivalent to the Bowman Chrome Prospects set in the full product (rookies and vets unlikely to be included). The picture from Topps implies the Bowman Draft Sapphire format - 32 cards, 2 parallels, no autos (confirmed with the MC release info). To be updated as more info becomes available.
See my 2021 Bowman Chrome full product preview for a write up on all the prospects with some form of 1st Bowman in the product. Keep in mind this article was written 8 months ago, so some of these opinions have evolved/changed. But if you can create a Sapphire Edition of a product 8 months after release, why the heck not?
***Update - This went live with MC members for $199 per box with a limit of 1 box per account. In addition, we found out that the entire 200 card base set will be in the checklist even if no actual checklist was released. This implies the full base checklist of rookies and vets (100 players) plus the full chrome prospect checklist (100 players) will comprise the final checklist. This is the first time we’ve seen a Bowman Sapphire product have anything other than just the prospects in the product. I’m not a fan of this and it is obviously done to be able to increase the print run. I get it from Topps perspective and it does potentially enable more people to get hands on the product, but then the price point should reflect that, which it does not in my opinion. If your two parallels are vets, it’s going to be a punch to the gut.