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 two pre-sales - 2023 Topps Brooklyn Collection is releasing and 2023 Bowman’s Best is going on pre-sale. 2022 Leaf Perfect Game National Showcase is also potentially coming out this week. If and when this becomes a reality (Leaf release dates are tentative at best and they have yet to mention this product on their social media), this post will be updated with details. Also included is the 2023 Bowman Draft Stolen Superfractor issue. ***Updated to include the online exclusive 2023 Topps World Baseball Classic release.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2023 Topps Brooklyn Collection
On Monday, December 18th, Topps sent emails to the 582 Montgomery Club members that 2023 Topps Brooklyn Collection would be going on sale to Club members on Tuesday, December 19th. Topps is selling this product to Club members for $189.99 and the limit is 1 box per member. The past two years, this product has been sold for $150 a box. There are two guaranteed autos per box, as we’ve seen in the past. A popular product, I wouldn’t be surprised if it still sells out quickly when it goes live to the public even with the price increase. This will be updated as more information becomes available. ***Update - Topps sold boxes to the general public on Wednesday, December 20th for $199.99 with a customer limit of 4.
2023 Bowman’s Best
On Saturday, December 16th, Topps announced that 2023 Bowman’s Best would go on pre-sale on Monday, December 18th.
On December 18th, Topps dropped the pre-sale as scheduled. They were selling Hobby boxes for $269.99 with a customer limit of 2. They were selling Cases (8 boxes per case) of Hobby boxes for $2,159.92 with a customer limit of 1. Last year Topps sold Hobby boxes for $280 at release.
The checklist was released and it’s as expected - a fair amount of rookies, prospects, and vets. The prospects are a mix of some of the more well-known guys - Junior Caminero, Jackson Chourio, Jackson Holliday, and Spencer Jones plus the 2023 MLB Draft picks that were also found in 2023 Bowman Draft like Paul Skenes, Max Clark, and Wyatt Langford. All the big rookies across the year are here as well - Carroll, Adley, Gunnar, Walker, Volpe, Eury, Yoshida, Senga, etc.
More on Bowman’s Best in January when it’s going live (currently scheduled for January 17th, 2024). The on card autos, the bold designs, and the prospect and rookie heavy checklist have a lot of fans.
2023 Bowman Draft Stolen Superfractors
On Saturday, December 16th posts on twitter started to get traction about an account on eBay called dfwcardshark that had more than 10% of the 1/1 Superfractors from the just released 2023 Bowman Draft product. Mario Alejandro @BeisbolCardBlog on twitter/x amplified the story and reached out to Fanatics to get some answers. Topps posted that they were aware of the situation and investigating. One interesting thing of note was that the Superfractors posted by dfwcardshark had the 1/1 numbering stamped on the back of the card, while the packed out Superfractors that had already been pulled had the numbering on the front of the card. Through Mario (and perhaps elsewhere that I did not see), Fanatics Collectibles via their CEO Mike Mahan said that these were stolen from the production facility and should have been destroyed as they did not meet the Topps quality standards. Topps/Fanatics is reimbursing anyone that has purchased these cards from dfwcardshark. I recommend following Mario and looking through his twitter feed for more details if you’re interested.
2023 Topps World Baseball Classic
Announced on Tuesday, December 19th, 2023 Topps World Baseball Classic released on the Topps website on Wednesday, December 20th.
An online exclusive product that was not previously announced, this is the second set focused on the 2023 WBC that Topps released. Back in March of this year, Topps sold 2023 Topps World Baseball Classic Global Stars - a box was $29.99 with 20 cards and a 1 in 3 box shot at an autograph. This time around, 2023 Topps World Baseball Classic is being sold for $79.99 with a customer limit of 4 boxes. Each box contains 10 cards and guarantees one autograph or autograph relic card.
The design is colorful and uses a lot of the pallet that you see with the WBC logo, although we don’t get an actual example of a base card with the marketing material. The base look to be full border with a large team logo in the bottom right. It feels very “Flagship-y” and I don’t mind it. It’s paper stock with most of the parallels being of the foil variety. Various inserts are present and I particularly like the Roki Sasaki one we get to see - I am assuming it comes from the International Gems set. It appears that the autos are going to be stickers. The one piece of memorabilia we see does say it’s game used, so that’s a nice bonus.
The checklist is extensive and has representatives from all the qualifying teams. However, still no official Ondrej Satoria card, the Czech electrician that struck out Shohei Ohtani, which is a shame. The auto checklist is extensive and while there are plenty of desirable autos to hit along the lines of Ronald Acuña Jr., Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout, and Julio Rodriguez, but those ones are going to be short printed and tough to pull more than likely.
At $80 a box, this is mostly going to be a money-losing endeavor. With this product being sold 9 months after the event was held, it’s lost a lot of the immediacy effect. Add in that it comes when most people are low on funds due to holiday spending, and it’s all just a head-scratching release from Topps. While I like this type of product typically, it just misses the mark from a contextual perspective and I’ll only be grabbing a few PC singles at most.