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 releases - 2023 Panini National Treasures Baseball and 2023 Onyx Premium Baseball.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2023 Panini National Treasures
One of Panini’s higher end products, 2023 Panini Naitonal Treasures is scheduled to release on Friday, December 29th.
There are two Hobby formats - a regular Hobby box and a 1st Off The Line (FOTL) Hobby box. Both formats come with 8 cards on average with all cards typically of the auto, relic, or auto-relic variety. There are non-auto/non-relic cards in the form of base cards or some inserts like Treasured Stats, but those are typically short printed. I typically will see the breakdown be something like 4 autos and 4 relics or 5 autos and 3 relics, but there really is no guarantee on the minimum number of autos or relics. The only difference between the regular Hobby boxes and the FOTL Hobby boxes are that FOTL has two low-numbered exclusives - one auto and one relic. Similar to last year, the FOTL boxes went to Dutch auction with the same floor ($800) and ceiling ($525). This year the boxes sold out around $550 - $575. Last year Panini sold regular Hobby boxes on their website for $525. Currently Blowout is selling boxes for $675.
The design is pretty much the same as what we are used to - thick cards with a lot of white and a LOT of different designs. Relics can be really cool, but the cool ones tend to be for the prospects and are player worn while the ex-MLB players with the game worn stuff tend to just be small bat slices or single color swatches. Autos are a relatively equal mix of stickers and autos. Booklets also seem to pop up regularly, and they may even fall one per box if you believe the odds, although they can tend to be pretty boring as far as booklets go.
The checklist is what we’ve seen from Panini all year - prospects and ex-MLB players with one active player as of the 2022 season, with that being Bobby Witt Jr. Prospects include Jackson Holliday, Jordan Lawlar, Junior Caminero, Jasson Dominguez, Jackson Chourio, and a ton more. As we saw with 2023 Panini Chronicles, Panini has absolutely stopped caring about the correct assignment of the rookie card logo as defined by the MLB Players Association with player like Elly De La Cruz getting it. Maybe they don’t care, or an even more petulant theory, is that they are getting back at the MLBPA or Fanatics/Topps or both now that they no longer have the MLBPA licensing by trying to add further confusion on this already confusing topic.
I like National Treasures cards quite a bit, but I’ve never felt the value was there for the price charged. Add in the sticker autos and player worn material found in some of the cards and it just takes away from the overall value. I don’t mind grabbing cards in the singles market and have done it before for my PC, but breaks and personal box rips are too high risk for the money you usually have to pay. Unlicensed, incorrectly attributed rookie card logos, and a lack of current star players in the product seal the deal as this being an easy pass.
2023 Onyx Premium
The slightly more expensive Onyx product back for its third year, 2023 Onyx Premium is scheduled to release on Friday, December 29th.
There is only one configuration - a regular Hobby box. It comes with two cards, both autographs. There are no base cards in the product. In years past, the boxes were selling around $50 - $60. Currently Blowout is selling boxes for $49.95. As Onyx does not sell any of their boxes direct to the public, this price point is likely what we see on release day.
The design isn’t anything to dive much into - a player portrait over a blurred out background of a crowd (which is the same on every card), a white area three quarters of the way down for the auto, and then a ribbon for a break between that down to a black area at the bottom for the player name and team/position (missing this info for some of the non-baseball cards). Inscription autos will be found here although none were teased - however, Charlee Soto did post one of his which read “Gave up 1st HR to Walker J.” (Jenkins). As with all Onyx releases, autographs are on card. This product is a paper stock with a foil finish.
The checklist is very short, as usual. It’s heavily baseball prospect focused, highlighted by Ethan Salas, Evan Carter, Jackson Chourio, Jordan Lawlar, Junior Caminero, and Paul Skenes. It also includes amateur players like Tommy White a.k.a. Tommy Tanks and potential top overall pick in the 2024 MLB draft Nick Kurtz. There are a few rookie/veteran MLB players (excluding any player that debuted late in the season like Caminero and Lawlar) with Juan Soto, Julio Rodriguez, and Bobby Miller as well. Finally there are three non-baseball athletes on the checklist with Indiana University basketballer Mackenzie Mgbako and NWSL/USWNT soccer players Alyssa Thompson and Trinity Rodman.
For the price, as almost is always the case with Onyx products, this is a fun and not terribly negative value rip. A ton of players on the checklist are probably going to sell for equal to or more than half the price of a box. Even if you don’t make your money back, you’re not into it for a lot like a majority of products nowadays. I definitely wouldn’t mind ending up with a box or two here, and I may try and grab some cheap singles. As with any Onyx release, the release date isn’t always reliable, but I’ve started to see singles on eBay, so this current release date is likely going to happen as scheduled.