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 two scheduled releases - 2023 Topps Archives Signature Series - Active Player Edition and 2023 Bowman Baseball 1st Edition.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2023 Topps Archives Signature SerieS - Active Player Edition
The one card, auto-only product from Topps is scheduled for release on Friday, April 21st.
There is a single configuration - a regular Hobby box. As mentioned, it comes with one card, signed on card, and encased in a sticker-sealed one touch. Last year, Topps sold boxes on their website for $69.99, essentially a $20 increase from the $50 per box they sold them for in 2021. Pre-sale has typically been around $70 - $80 and I expect these boxes to land in a similar price point of $70 give or take $10 direct from Topps. ***Update - Topps is selling boxes for $69.99 on its website with a customer limit of 5, identical to the 2022 price point.
The design is entirely made up of cards from past Topps/Bowman products, hence the “archive” term. Since there is no “design”, I’ll simply say that it’s often a trip down memory lane as we get to see autos on cards from the past 10 years or so. And it’s interesting to see active players on teams they haven’t been on for quite a while.
The checklist is typically made up of veteran players, but for the first time that I can remember, they are including rookies in the checklist. I have to assume they are using the prospects cards (mostly of the Bowman variety, perhaps some Topps Pro Debut) of those players - Brett Baty, Triston Casas, Nolan Gorman, Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, and others. There are plenty of desirable vets including Aaron Judge, Ronald Acuña Jr., Julio Rodriguez, Bobby Witt Jr., Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout, Juan Soto, etc. Unfortunately, there are plenty of vets that, outside of PC collectors, you wont want to hit. Patrick Wisdom, Mike Yastrzemski, Chris Taylor, Max Muncy, Connor Joe, and plenty of others fall into that bucket. And unlike those desirable vet names mentioned above, they wont be short printed. While they don’t announce the print runs for each player, rest assured that the big names are going to be hit very infrequently.
I remember when I got back into the hobby and you can buy these boxes for about half the current going rate. At that price, they were a fun gamble. At the prices now, the gamble is a lot more expensive, often leading to a lot less fun. Typically, in a 20 box case, you get 1 to 2 desirable players/cards. We’ll see if that miraculously changes, but I’m not betting on it.
2023 Bowman Baseball 1st Edition
2023 Bowman Baseball 1st Edition is back for it’s third year and is scheduled for release on Friday, April 21st.
There is a single configuration - a regular Hobby box. The are no guaranteed hits with autos falling one in 256 packs, or likely one in roughly 11 boxes. There are also even harder to hit die-cut inserts that fall 1 in 1,486 packs, or roughly one in 62 boxes. Box prices are unknown at the moment - last year they sold them for $399.99. I anticipate prices to be a lot lower this year given what I heard about Topps Direct prices. ***Update - Topps is selling boxes on their website for $279.99 with a customer limit of 4.
The design is going to be the same as the 2023 Bowman design which we get to see in full with the core product being released next week. I won’t dwell on it here, but the main difference is that we’ll see a “1st Edition” logo on the cards and the parallels are foil parallels rather than chrome parallels as the all the cards are paper, unlike the core release which will be a mix of paper and chrome.
The checklist is going to be just the prospects, unlike the core release, which will also include rookies and vets. The auto checklist will also be a lot shorter than the core product with just 20 players signing for 1st Edition. We do get some good names in the auto checklist with Druw Jones, Lazaro Montes, Matt Mervis, and Kyle Harrison, but like I said, they are hard to hit. For a full breakdown of everyone with a 1st Bowman in this product as well as the core product, check out our 2023 Bowman Preview.
In the first year of the product (2020), we could by this by the pack ($15), and I picked up a few for a fun rip. Last year a $400 price point kept me FAR away from it. I really am not a fan of this product unless it’s available for really cheap, and even though I anticipate a price drop, I know it won’t be anywhere near where I would be interested.