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 Bowman Draft, 2023 Heritage High Number, 2023 Topps Chrome Black, and 2023 Topps Xpectations.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2023 Bowman Draft
The biggest product of the prospect collecting world is scheduled to release on Tuesday, December 12th.
There are four Hobby configurations this year, one more than last year, as Topps has added the HTA Breakers Delight Choice format. The four formats are Hobby Jumbo (sometimes referred to as HTA), Super Jumbo, Asia Edition, and HTA Choice. Hobby Jumbo boxes come with 3 autos and were sold at pre-sale for $479.99 with a customer limit of 2. Hobby Jumbo cases (8 boxes per case) were pre-sold for $3,650 with a customer limit of 1. Super Jumbo boxes come with 5 autos and were sold at pre-sale for $649.99 with a customer limit of 1. Super Jumbo cases (6 boxes per case) were pre-sold for $3,782.94 with a customer limit of 1. Asia Edition come with 1 auto and the chrome cards are given the mojo/choice finish. The HTA Choice format comes with 3 autos and that’s it - similar to the HTA Choice format we’ve seen with Bowman Chrome through the years. Currently Blowout has boxes of HTA Choice listed for $439.95. ***Update - Topps is selling Hobby Jumbo boxes for $524.99 with a customer limit of 4. Cases of Hobby boxes (8 boxes per case) are $3,999 with a customer limit 2. Super Jumbo boxes are $749.99 with a customer limit of 2.
The design is what we’ve already seen from Bowman in previous releases this year. You get some exclusive parallels (black refractor autos) and things like that, so the main difference is in the inserts. We get the return of the psychedelic mood ring and as usual, the small checklist Under Armor cards. The auto version of the Under Armor cards are often bonus hits on the rare occasion they are pulled. Even with the rarity, they don’t sell as well as you would expect. New this year we have what is a take on the stained glass theme with Glass - I haven’t been that impressed with them on my first look. Transformative Talent is somewhat fun, but it’s a common insert, lessening the interest. Drat Picks and Prospects are boring. 1954 Bowman Flags are much rarer hits, falling less than 1 per case. I’m a sucker for flag cards, so I like these a lot. Wish we didn’t have the facsimile signature to potentially fool secondary buyers, but it is what it is since that was the 1954 Bowman design (the facsimile signature, not the flag part). And then we have the all important retrofractors. We have Carl Yastrzemski and Josh Gibson, with Yaz getting an autographed version. But the most important one is Tom Brady, and he gets a special version since he was never a baseball player. However, he was drafted by the Expos in 1995, so he gets a “Dream” Draft Pick card in the 1995 Bowman design. There will be bounties and there are fun inscription signatures that have already been teased. There are also non-auto base and base parallels of this card which have very long odds.
The checklist is almost exclusively composed of 2023 MLB Draft picks and filler prospects with exception of the retrofractor guys. For my and Max Arterburn’s thoughts on all the 1st Bowman prospects, check out our write ups here.
I love Bowman Draft, but somehow Topps has found a way to make it a lot less appealing this year. A lot more of the big names, first rounders, etc. did not make it into this checklist than we typically are used to, and that has led to just four players as Tier 1 players in mine and Max’s opinion. There’s still some opportunities to grab interesting lower Tier guys, but there just isn’t enough Tier 1 hits to hide them in the checklist, making the under the radar values even harder to come by. It is what it is, and even though I complain about it, I still want a piece of it in one way or another.
2023 Topps Heritage High Number
The second and final installment of the yearly nostalgic product, 2023 Topps Heritage High Number is scheduled to release on Wednesday, December 13th.
There is one Hobby format - a regular Hobby box. It comes with one guaranteed hit, either an auto OR relic, with the odds weighted towards it being a relic. There will be various retail formats, with blaster/value boxes at the very least and perhaps others as well. Last year Topps sold Hobby boxes for $79.99 and blaster/value boxes for $24.99. This year, Topps sold Heritage for $89.99 and Heritage High Number usually follows the same pricing methodology, so it may be getting a slight increase from last year. Interestingly, Blowout currently has Hobby boxes listed for $64.95. ***Topps is selling Hobby boxes for $69.99 (Nice) with a customer limit of 10. They are selling Mega boxes (comes with 3 exclusive Chrome Blue Sparkle parallels but no guaranteed hits) for $50 with a customer limit of 10. They are selling blaster/value boxes for $24.99 with a customer limit of 10.
The design is the same as what we saw in 2023 Topps Heritage earlier in the year. The base design is the 1974 Topps baseball, a really nice and clean base design. While the cards are paper stock, there is a chrome subset for all the base cards as a nice bonus for those that prefer chrome. The only other thing worth mentioning with the design is that autographs are on card, and the Real One Autographs (essentially the base autographs) have really nice red ink, hand numbered parallels. Red Ink Heritage autos are a sneaky, under the radar approach to collecting as they are highly sought after.
The checklist has yet to be released, but we can expect the standard, rookies, vets, and ex-MLB players. The approach for the base set is similar to that of Update - later rookie debuts that happened before the June 1st cutoff and traded players in new uniforms. I will update this section if there are any major checklist surprises. ***No real surprises with the checklist - most of the rookies are weighted towards the Series 2 and Update Series checklist. Kodai Senga, Masataka Yoshida, Anthony Volpe, Jordan Walker, Josh Jung, and Triston Casas are among the main rookie chases included.
Heritage and Heritage High Number are often favorites of mine. A cheaper price point, nostalgic design, and I’m a sucker for the Red Ink autos. Add in the chrome cards as a nice bonus since the mass produced paper cards can have condition issues and there’s not much to complain about. Well, pending the checklist, that is. And the fact that Hobby boxes don’t guarantee an auto. But for cheaper price points, this is often an approach that Topps will take.
2023 Topps Chrome Black
The mid-tier product introduced in 2020 is back for its fourth year, scheduled to release on Friday, December 15th.
There is only one format - a regular Hobby box. Each Hobby box comes with one encased autograph card. You will also get 2 base cards and 1 refractor parallel. The past few years Topps has sold these boxes for $150 each. Blowout is currently selling them for $159.95. There are no retail formats of this product. ***Update - Topps is selling Hobby boxes for $149.99 with a customer limit of 10. They are also selling Cases of Hobby boxes (12 boxes per case) for $1,745.88 with a customer limit of 2.
The design is what we’ve come to expect from Chrome Black - a border-less full black card with an action silhouette of the player with various geometric designs that are highlighted with the color parallels. New this year is the Ivory Autographs subset which gives us somewhat of the opposite design. Rather than black dominant color scheme, it will be a white/ivory dominant color scheme. I like the idea a lot, but we will see how well it is executed. Autographs are on card.
The checklist is not yet available. We have a base Corbin Carroll, an autograph of Gunnar Henderson, and an Ivory Autograph of Aaron Judge shown in the marketing material. Typically the checklist is rookies, vets, and ex-MLB players. I expect the same this year. I will update this if there are any major surprises.
I like Topps Chrome black. Encased autos from the manufacturer are an idea I still enjoy - in most cases this means the cards are in better shape than usual. I don’t think the $150 price point is justified. Usually this only works out in one or two boxes per case, and I’m not a case buyer, so I’ve never bought a box for a personal rip. With only 12 boxes per case, even case breaks leave a lot of people with empty hands, so I rarely have gotten in breaks of this either. For me, I prefer others take this risk and I simply grab the PC cards I want in the after market.
2023 Topps Xpectations
Announced on Monday, December 11th, 2023 Topps Xpectations is scheduled to release on Thursday, Deccember 14th.
Formerly a basketball brand in the early 2000’s, Topps is introducing this “new” product for baseball in 2023 as an online exclusive release. It comes with 2 autographed cards per box and 5 additional base/parallel cards. All cards are numbered to 99 or less. More information to come as it become available. See the details from Topps here.
***Update - Topps released the product as expected on Thursday, December 14th. They were selling Hobby boxes for $199.99 with a cart limit of 10. They were selling cases of Hobby boxes (10 boxes per case) for $1,949.99 with a cart limit of 1. The checklist is solid, with all of the chase rookies - Adley, Gunnar, Carroll, Walker, Volpe, Eury, Yoshida, Senga, Harris, Jung, Álvarez, and others.
2023 Topps Japan Edition
In it’s third year of existence, 2023 Topps Japan Edition is scheduled to release on Saturday, December 16th. I assume this will only be available on the Topps Japan website, as it has in previous years.
The product configuration is the same with Hobby boxes not guaranteeing any hits - you get 24 packs of 10 cars each for a total of 240 cards per box. There are autos and relics that can be pulled - autos are likely sticker autos as we’ve seen in previous releases. It looks like they will be selling them for roughly $130.
The design is the paper flagship design with a Japanese flag icon beneath the Topps logo on the front of the card. The photos on the card are the exact same you would find in the Topps Flagship release. The best part of the product are the 35th anniversary cards cherry blossom parallel. Both the base and the throwback have the cherry blossom parallel, but last year, when it was introduced, it looked awesome on the 1987 throwback while the base didn’t get the baby blue background with it. It was good, but not great.
The checklist is mostly taken from Series 1 and Series 2 - you won’t find any of the 2023 Update Series rookies in the checklist. With the 2023 World Baseball Classic happening, just like in Topps Flagship, we get a focused insert, relic, and auto inserts just for Team Japan players.
I love the Cherry Blossoms parallel and will likely try and get at least one example of one like I did last year. Being unable to buy boxes direct from Topps Japan, that’s about the extent of what I’ll be doing. At what I believe the price point to be if google Yen to USD calculations are correct, it seems to be well above what I would pay for this type of box.