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 Heritage and 2023 Topps Sterling. In addition, 2023 Topps Series 2 pre-sale for Hobby and Jumbo boxes are set to happen on the Topps website Monday, May 22nd.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week. ***Updated below for the PWCC news.
2023 Topps Heritage
The yearly nostalgic throwback product is scheduled to release on Wednesday, May 24th.
There is one hobby configuration - a regular Hobby box. Each Hobby box is guaranteed one relic OR auto, with the odds heavily favoring the relic. Boxes are currently going for around $85 - $90 at the moment for pre-sale. Last year Topps sold Hobby boxes for $99 on their website. Given the pre-sale prices, I am going to guess we see a $89.99 this year, but it’s almost assuredly a range of $80 - $100. There are going to be plenty of retail formats from Blaster boxes, Hanger boxes, and Fat Packs at the very least. ***Update - Topps is selling blasters for $24.99 (max 8), Hobby boxes for $89.99 (max 4), and cases of Hobby boxes for $999.99 (max 1).
The design is a throwback to the 1974 Topps design. An off-white border with an inner thin border with rounded edges surrounding the player. Colored rounded on one end and triangular cut-outs on the other sit right on the edge of the inner border - one on the top and one on the bottom, with team location and team name. Opposite those elements in the white space will be the player name (on the bottom) and the player position (on the top). As is usual with these older sets, there will be dual and triple player cards and relics/inserts from the time - stamps, coins, deckle-edge cards, etc. As is usual with the Heritage products, you will also find chrome versions of select players in the base set which are very popular for the rookie chases.
The checklist is long and full of vets and rookies. The first four cards in the checklist are a throwback to 1974 - in this case it’s a tribute to Aaron Judge and likely focused on him getting the record for the American League Home Run record. Back in 1974, the first 6 cards in the checklist were a tribute to Hank Aaron breaking the Career Home Run Record, which was 714 by Babe Ruth. The funny thing is that Aaron only had gotten up to 713 home runs by the end of the 1973 season. I don’t know exactly when the 1974 Topps product released, but you can bet it was at the very least printed prior to the season starting. Aaron didn’t break the record until April 8th, 1974, when, in theory, these cards were already being sold (I assume). The rookies include mostly the 2023 Topps Series 1 base rookies - Adley Rutschman, Nolan Gorman, Michael Harris II, Gunnar Henderson, Vaughn Grissom, Christopher Morel, Vinnie Pasquantino, Riley Greene, and Brett Baty. Some guys that didn’t have base, but had inserts and/or autos include Corbin Carroll, James Outman, Garrett Mitchell, and Francisco Álvarez. One of the biggest deals in the product in my opinion are the 5 short print rookie cards - not the traditional Heritage Short Print where the backend of the checklist is short printed. This is like the errors and variations, lower print run true Short Prints. The big ones are Anthony Volpe and Jordan Walker, followed by Kodai Senga and Masataka Yoshida. The final one is Shintaro Fujinami, which is the least desirable of the 5. In the short term, before the market gets overly flooded with these guys’ rookie cards as more 2023 products hits the shelves, these Rookie Short Prints are going to be hot properties.
In general, I like to get some Heritage every year. Depending on the throwback design used, and to a certain degree, the checklist, will drive how deep I go. The 1974 design isn’t my favorite, but I also don’t mind it. It doesn’t have any of the black stock problems like we saw last year on the back of the card or from 2020 with the front of the card as black stock. Black stock for paper cards that are mass produced is a really bad idea. Anyways, given the strength of the checklist, I will likely be getting a decent piece of this product.
2023 Topps Sterling Baseball
One of Topps higher end products, 2023 Topps Sterling Baseball is scheduled to release on Wednesday, May 24th.
There is one hobby configuration - a regular Hobby box. It comes with two cards, each in their own mini-box. One card is guaranteed to be an autographed relic, while the second card isn’t specified. It can be a relic, but the relics are super attractive like bat knobs and bat nameplates. Currently boxes are going at pre-sale for $1K - $1.1K. Last year Topps sold boxes on their website for $849.99. I expect them to jump at least $100 if not more from Topps. ***Update - Topps sold Hobby boxes for $999.99 and cases of Hobby boxes for $3899.99.
The design is barely worth discussing. It’s a high end filigree, embossed, swoops and designs, but nothing really consistent among the various designs. Whites and blacks and greys are the main colors, but they’ll work in various other colors as well. Really, it’s all about the price point, on card autos, and desirable relics rather than the design.
The checklist is heavily focused on vets and ex-MLB players. All the big name vets are in there - Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, Ronald Acuña Jr., Bryce Harper, Bobby Witt Jr., Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis Jr., Aaron Judge, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Unfortunately the only place you'll’ find Julio Rodríguez is in a short printed All-Star Rookie team booklet with four other signers. A ton of desirable ex-MLB players like Derek Jeter, Ichiro, Cal Ripken Jr., Nolan Ryan, etc. There is one “Debut Auto Relic” set that should be carrying the rookie card badging, but we’ll see - it has Adley Rutschman, Brett Baty, Christopher Morel, Josh Jung, Michael Harris II, Nolan Gorman, Riley Greene, and Triston Casas.
I’ve never participated in this product, even in the singles market. I could probably pick up some relatively cheap of less popular vets and ex-MLB players, probably under $100, if I wanted, but just have never felt the motivation to do so. I’ve never been a fan because of the price and there is rarely anything design-wise that interests me. Ultimately I would love to have some cards from this product, but the ones I would be interested are always going to be way above my budget, so I tend to just watch from the sidelines.
2023 Topps Series 2 Pre-Sale
Topps’ second installment of their Flagship product went live for pre-sale on Monday, May 22nd.
The pre-sale was for regular Hobby boxes and Jumbo Hobby boxes. Regular Hobby boxes are being sold for $89.99 with a customer limit of 4. Jumbo Hobby boxes are being sold for $199.99 with a customer limit of 2. Jumbo Hobby boxes sold out within the first hour of the pre-sale. ***Update - as of 1:30 PM EST, regular Hobby boxes have sold out as well.
While Topps posts a link to their checklist page giving the impression that there is one published, no Series 2 checklist has been posted yet. Series 2 odds are posted.
On the sell-sheet, we do have two big name rookies being advertised - Anthony Volpe and Jordan Walker. This will be a VERY popular product because of their inclusion and Jumbo’s selling out quickly is likely do that.
***Update - the checklist has finally dropped. I will have a full article on all of the rookies with their first Flagship base card for release day. In addition to Volpe and Walker, other notables include Garrett Mitchell, Logan O’Hoppe, Kodai Senga, James Outman, Corbin Carroll, Masataka Yoshida, Josh Jung, Oscar Colás, Mark Vientos, Ezequiel Tovar, and Francisco Álvarez.
2023 Topps Tribute
Somewhat surprisingly, but also starting to become a pattern, Topps put 2023 Topps Tribute on pre-sale on Friday, May 26th. They pre-sold regular Hobby boxes for $425 and cases of Hobby boxes for $2,499.00.
Fanatics Acquires PWCC
Rumors were swirling heavily on Sunday, May 21st. that Fanatics was on the verge of acquiring Consigner, Vaulter, and Auction House PWCC. The news was confirmed on Monday, May 22nd. Nothing has been confirmed, but what has been spoken about the various outlets is that the purchase price was $20M. In addition, it has been reported that PWCC has liabilities in the $70M range, mainly (or perhaps all) from letting their customers purchase cards on credit.
For Fanatics, it helps their approach to vertically integrate the trading card space by getting a vault and auction platform on the cheap. For PWCC, getting anything at this point is probably a good thing as rumors were that things were going south fast for them.