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 release - 2022 Panini Flawless Baseball. I anticipate some form of an online drop as they don’t have any scheduled releases besides 2022 F1 Chrome - I would bet we see 2022 Bowman Chrome Sapphire, and I guess maybe even 2022 Bowman Draft Sapphire if they are feeling spicy. This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week. Link to the This Week in Baseball Cards for the week it actually came out.
2022 Panini Flawless Baseball
The highest end Panini baseball release every year, 2022 Panini Flawless Baseball is scheduled for release on Wednesday, January 4th. ***UPDATE - Panini has delayed the release to Wednesday, January 18th.
There is a single configuration - a regular Hobby “box”. This is one of a few different high end products that instead of being a traditional box, it gets the briefcase treatment, which is why I’ve included the quotes around box. Each box comes with seven autos, one of which is an encased auto, two relics, and an encased gem card, for a total of 10 cards per box/briefcase (there are no true “base” cards). Boxes are currently available from select online retailers for around $1,500. Last year Panini sold these from their website for $1,400 and have them posted to their website currently. Their price point will likely show up 24 hours prior to release. There was no First Off The Line (FOTL) release this year even though there was one last year. Not sure why as I haven’t heard any mention of it. ***Update - With the delay, we do end up getting a FOTL configuration that went to dutch auction on Panini’s website on Friday, January 13th. Price starts at $2,250 and the floor is $1,350 - it sold out at $1,612.50. Two cards are FOTL Pink parallel exclusives - one auto and one base - other than that there is no difference. ***Update - Panini is selling the regular Hobby boxes for $1,499.95 on its website.
The design is typical Flawless baseball. Thick stock cards with a white border and colored elements of lines and shapes highlighting the cards and parallels. Depending on if it’s a base or an various subset, the design will change to have more or less of those elements. Patches are almost always really good looking, although they are typically player worn rather than game worn. Some of the legend patches will be game worn, but more often than not they are from their coaching days for the older players or simply lumber relics as bats are typically easier to acquire. Other really cool relics are in the product including bat knobs, bat barrels, cleat spikes, and batting gloves with the brand logo showcased.
The checklist encompasses the full breadth of prospects, rookies, vets, and ex-MLB players. For the rookies, we get Julio Rodriguez, Bobby Witt Jr., Wander Franco, Tork, Oneil Cruz, Jeremy Peña, Seiya Suzuki, CJ Abrams, etc. For the prospects, we have players like Gunnar Henderson, Colson Montgomery, Andrew Painter, Adley Rutschman (insomuch as he won’t be a rookie until 2023 products), Triston Casas, George Valera, Jackson Merrill, Emmanuel Rodriguez, Won-Bin Cho, Jack Leiter (this is his first non-Leaf product since becoming a pro I believe), Elly De La Cruz, Cristian Hernandez, Blaze Jordan, James Wood, Henry Davis, Jordan Lawlar, and others. Vets include Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto (mostly Nationals, but some Padres as well), Albert Pujols (Cardinals), Yordan Alvarez, Ronald Acuña Jr., and more. Some of the legends with relics (typically 1/1) include Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Jackie Robinson, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, Stan Musial, and others.
I really like Flawless Baseball. I really don’t like the price of Flawless Baseball. I understand that if this was a licensed Topps product, we are easily looking at anywhere from two to five times the price point. So it’s not a complaint about the price of the product in general, it’s more about how it’s out of my own price range. That being said, I do own a couple of cards from Flawless because you can get less desirable cards from it for relatively cheap. I’ve purchased a cheaper vet auto from it for under $25 and gem relics for under $50. And if I run across some PC cards from the 2022 product in those price ranges in the secondary market, I probably will buy some more. So buyer beware on primary purchases via sealed product or breaks given the unlicensed nature and potential lack of ROI, but on the other hand there are some big hits in the product.