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 there are four scheduled releases - 2023 Topps Archives, 2023 Topps Definitive, 2023 Panini Chronicles, and 2023 Onyx Vintage Extended.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week. ***Updated for the 2023 Topps Inception Baseball pre-sale.
2023 Topps Archives
The low-end release focused on historic Topps designs, 2023 Topps Archives Baseball is scheduled for release on Wednesday, November 8th.
There are two Hobby configurations - a regular Hobby box and a Collector’s box. The regular Hobby box comes with two autos and one pair of 3D glasses for use with the Hobby box exclusive 3D inserts. The Collector’s box comes with one auto, a lunch box, and a team postcard poster. Currently Blowout has regular Hobby boxes for $127.95 and Collector’s boxes for $69.95. There should be various retail formats as well - Value/Blaster boxes at the very least. Last year Topps sold Hobby boxes for $124.99 and Value/Blaster boxes for $24.99. ***Update - as scheduled, Topps released this product for sale on their website. Regular Hobby boxes are selling for $134.99 with a customer limit of 4. Collector’s boxes are selling for $69.99 with a customer limit of 4. Value/Blaster boxes are selling for $24.99 with a customer limit of 10.
The design for the base, as is usual with Archives, uses three different historical Topps baseball sets - this year we get 1956 Topps, 1965 Topps, and 2003 Topps. 1956 Topps is a horizontal design with an action shot of the player coupled with a very large head-shot - there’s not any real big rookies in that original set, with the most well known name probably being Luis Aparicio. 1965 Topps is a classic full border with the position and player name in the inner border while the team name is displayed on a waving pennant. Rookies back then were mostly multi-player cards, which is never the best situation. Some of the more well-known rookies on multi-player cards back then were Steve Carlton, Phil Niekro, Joe Morgan, Jim Catfish Hunter, and Tony Perez. A few notable rookies did get solo cards like Luis Tiant, Denny McLain, and Bert Campaneris. The 2003 base design is a full border in dark blue with an action shot of the player and a mini head-shot in the bottom inset into the shape of a baseball diamond. The most well-known card from this set is the Bong Puffer dual future stars card. Of the three, 1965 is easily my favorite and 1956 and 2003 aren’t even close - I could do without them. As usual, there are a TON of inserts, all referencing different Topps inserts throughout history. The 1997 version of Hobby Masters appears here and that’s probably my favorite of the bunch.
The checklist is comprised of rookies, vets, and ex-MLB players. The main rookie chases are there including Corbin Carroll, Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, Michael Harris II, Masataka Yoshida, Anthony Volpe, Jordan Walker, Kodai Senga, Francisco Álvarez, Eury Pérez, Josh Jung, and others.
Of the two main nostalgic low-end products from Topps, Heritage and Archives, I almost always prefer Heritage nowadays. In the past, when Archives had unexpected inserts like Bull Durham (2016) and the Sandlot (2018), it gave it enough juice for me to get into it. Absent that, it’s pretty easy for me to not really do much if anything with it. There are some collectors who enjoy it, but it’s typically one of the products that doesn’t have much popularity in the hobby.
2023 Topps Definitive Collection Baseball
One of the higher end products, 2023 Topps Definitive Collection will be going through the Dutch Auction process on the Topps website on Wednesday, November 8th. ***Update - Topps sent an email to collectors on the morning of Wednesday, November 8th that the Topps Definitive Dutch Auction has been postponed with no new date provided. *****Update 2 - Topps sent an email to collectors on the morning of Thursday, November 9th that Topps Definitive will go on sale on Friday, November 10th at 12 PM EST. Curiously, there was no mention of it being a Dutch Auction or not.
There is only one format - a regular Hobby box. Each box typically comes with 8 cards - 6 auto/auto-relics plus 2 relic only cards. There are no base cards in the product. As mentioned above, this product will go through the Dutch Auction process - as of writing, neither the ceiling or floor have been publicly released. Topps has done a few Dutch Auctions, with the first baseball product being 2023 Bowman Sapphire, which was a comedy of errors. We shall see how it works this time around. Last year Topps sold Hobby boxes for $1,999.99 ****Update - boxes and cases went live on the Topps website on Friday, November 10th as a straight sale rather than the previously advertised Dutch Auction. Matching last year’s prices, Hobby boxes are are $1,999.99 with a customer limit of 15. Cases of Hobby boxes (3 boxes per case) are actually two cents more expensive than buying the three boxes individually, at $5,999.99 with a customer limit of 5 cases.
The design is likely typical Definitive - we don’t get any images of the base autos, but we can infer that it will be the typical white and grays with gold highlights that we have come to expect from Definitive.
The checklist is standard for high-end products with rookies, vets, and ex-MLB players. Still there are plenty of cards which are going to sell for under $50 a card, which is going to make it tough to get your money back. None of the Update rookies made it into this product, so big name pitchers like Eury Pérez and the various Millers aren’t in the product. But you do get Corbin Carrol, Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Anthony Volpe, Jordan Walker, Masataka Yoshida, Kodai Senga, Josh Jung, and others. ***Update - on Thursday, November 9th, Topps pushed an image of a chase card out to the usual influencers like Darren Rovell and The Collectibles Guru (“Eric Whiteback”) among others of a dual player card of Shohei Ohtani and Babe Ruth. The Shohei part has his auto on card, while the Babe Ruth part is a cut auto of the Babe.
I really like Definitive cards, I really hate the Definitive price. It tends to be relatively popular, but in the long run the cards just don’t hold the value in light of the prices you pay, especially around release time. Breaks are tough with a ton of swing and miss potential, and buying boxes can be quite expensive. For me, this is purely a singles product.
2023 Panini Chronicles Baseball
The multi-brand, lower end product is scheduled to release on Wednesday, November 8th.
Rather than repeat myself, you can see a lot of the info in last week’s This Week in Baseball Cards as I put together the majority of the info there due to the FOTL Dutch Auction. Still no checklist. Hobby boxes are the same setup minus the FOTL exclusives - 3 autos and 1 relic. Currently Blowout is selling Hobby boxes for $130.
One thing I either missed last week or it was not posted with the FOTL auction images is that Elly De La Cruz is getting a Rated Rookie card according to the cards being shown. He should not have a Rookie card until 2024. While the Marcelo Mayer Origins card I mentioned last week may have been a mistake with the image used, this certainly implies that it wasn’t a mistake and Panini just doesn’t care any more when it comes to their baseball products. ***Update - Panini indeed produced cards of 2024 “Baseball Card Rookies” that debuted in 2023 like Elly De La Cruz and Noelvi Marte with Rookie logos on them. In addition, the Origin Rookies like Marcelo Mayer do in fact have the Rookie Card logo and Rookies branding on them. Panini is showing that they aren’t interested in maintaining their baseball card products with any sense of care at this point now that they have lost the MLBPA licensing.
2023 Onyx Vintage Extended
Written up in last week’s This Week in Baseball Cards, 2023 Onyx Vintage Extended did not make the release date and is now looking to go live on Friday, November 10th. I’m not going to hold my breath.
2023 Topps Inception Pre-Sale
Normally a spring-time release, 2023 Topps Inception finally showed up on the release calendar for December (currently December 6th). Now Topps is going through the pre-sale on their website for single Hobby boxes at $139.99 with a customer limit of 4 boxes. That was the price they sold these boxes for in 2021. Last year, they sold these boxes for $150, and I would guess that’s what we see on the actual release date. Each box has one auto or auto-relic guaranteed. New this year in the tease are First Milestones Auto Relics - in this case the marketing images are showing it as “first career base hit” with the date on the card and the relic having the MLB hologram authentication sticker. Most Inception Auto Relics are stickers, but hopefully these ones are on card. And the production of these cards being for rookies in this product are one of the logical reasons why this product was pushed from a Spring release to a Winter release.