This Week in Baseball Cards - 7/25 - 7/31

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 scheduled hobby product release - 2022 Topps Tier One Baseball. This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.

2022 Topps Tier One Baseball

2022 Topps Tier One Baseball is a mid-tier product from Topps scheduled for release on Wednesday, July 27th.

There is a single configuration - a regular Hobby box. The contents of a box are a single pack with two autographed cards and one relic card - no base cards in this product. In the past I have seen boxes come with an additional hit. Boxes are running around $200 pre-sale. Last year Topps sold these from their website for $179.99. Given the pre-sale prices and 2021 direct prices, I imagine Topps will likely be selling at a similar price point as last year. ***Update - Topps is selling Hobby boxes for $199.99 direct from their website.

The design is typical Tier One, focusing on grays, browns, and blacks on paper stock. With no base card, it’s hard to really comment on the design, but honestly it doesn’t really make an impact on the product. I don’t recall one person saying “I love the design of Tier One” and conversely “I hate the design of Tier One” - at least outside of the hawt-takers on release day. More importantly, Tier One provides a ton of great relics with plenty of variety as well as a decent amount of cut autos. Bat knobs, on bat autos, nameplates, and new this year, bat grip tape.

The checklist is comprised of rookies, vets, and retired players. You get the big four rookies - Wander, Witt, Julio, and Cruz. I am actually pretty impressed with the breadth of the checklist. I would be happy with the opportunity to own any team in a break of this product as every team has at least one player, if not a lot more, that I would enjoy owning a card of. As usual, there are some off-season traded guys here that make you scratch your head why they are still on their old team (Josh Donaldson - Twins, Matt Olson/Chapman - A’s) and some of the ex-player team choices can be strange (Scott Rolen was a Blue Jay?). But all in all, a checklist that I have very little complaints about.

At sub-$200 per box, this isn’t a terrible product, even if there are only three cards/hits per box. There are for sure a lot worse options on the market if you ask me. A good checklist and great relics lead me to have a positive opinion of the product overall. The product doesn’t have a strong following in the hobby, so once the next mid-tier product comes around, the aftermarket value tends to drift and drift. More of a product I like to get into from a breaks perspective rather than buy a hobby box and end up with an Alejo Lopez and Jake Cousins autos. Definitely something to have on your radar and perhaps grab some break spots if you can find good deals.