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 three scheduled releases - 2023 Topps Dynamic Duals, 2023 Bowman Baseball Mega Boxes, and 2023 Panini Donruss Baseball.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2023 Topps Dynamic Duals
An online exclusive, Topps announced last week that 2023 Topps Dynamic Duals is scheduled for an online release on Tuesday, May 30th.
There is only one configuration - a regular Hobby box. As with past years, it comes with a complete base set, two additional cards that are either parallels or inserts, and a dual autograph. New this year are booklet dual autographs. In the two boxes I saw opened on the sponsored Jaspy’s Breaks stream on Monday, it was one parallel and one insert for the additional cards. Dual autographs have stated odds of 1 in 10 boxes. Not too surprising given the nature of a sponsored setup, but surprising given the odds, Jaspy did pull a booklet autograph in one of the two boxes he opened. No prices were announced before hand - they were posted by Topps for a price of $150 a box and sold out in less than an hour.
The design is pretty similar to last year, and the main design ethos hasn’t changed through the years - get both players on a mostly white/grey background with gold design elements. None of the insert images were provided by Topps, but in the Jaspy break, two inserts were shown - a Cooperstown insert that was really blah, and then a Bash Battle insert that looks fun, but not really compelling. The third insert is Revered Rookies which is nice simply because they are rookie-based, but no idea on the look of it. The booklets, on the other hand, have local skylines and/or stadium backdrops that are really compelling. The final discussion point is that, like previous, the autographs are sticker autos, putting a slight dent in the value.
The checklist is generally good and is comprised of rookies, vets, and ex-MLB players. The dual autos are typically good, but there are also going to be some rough ones unless you are a fan of that team/players. No one is really looking for a Miguel Tejada/Barry Zito dual auto or Ke’Bryan Hayes/Cal Mitchell dual auto. Mariners fans get a base card dual of J-Rod and Ichiro as well as a base card dual of Luis Castillo and George Kirby, but the dual auto is Castillo/Kirby and not J-Rod/Ichiro. Because this is stickers, we do get a couple of recently deceased ex-MLB players in the dual auto set - Bob Gibson (with Albert Pujols) and Tim McCarver (with Steve Carlton).
I tend not to get any of this given the price point, sticker autos, and how dual autos can often be less valuable. Typically one player is most desirable than the other player on the card, although with this product they tend to do a decent job with that. Ultimately this is a niche product that is fun for a minute, but often fades into the background of the million other releases a few weeks post-release.
2023 Bowman Baseball Mega Box
Whether you consider it a standalone product or an edition of 2023 Bowman Baseball (I consider it an edition), 2023 Bowman Baseball Mega Box is scheduled to release on Wednesday, May 31st.
There used to be just one configuration - a retail “Mega” box, but Topps has introduced a Hobby box version in 2023. It’s very similar to the pattern they followed with the used-to-be-retail-only Topps Chrome Update, which also got it’s first “Hobby” box format 6 months ago. I still haven’t seen what the “Hobby” box format is as far as a configuration, but I am guessing it will be something like 5 mojo packs for probably just over the cost of 2 mega boxes. I am probably way off here (More than you knew!). I will update this when we have that info. Retail Mega Boxes are being sold on Target currently for $44.99 and have already started landing in pre-order purchasers hands as of May 30th. These boxes come with base packs plus 2 mojo packs. Base packs will contain base paper and base chrome cards from the 2023 Bowman Baseball release while the mojo packs will have 5 mojo refractors each. ***Update - I originally thought Topps was doing a retail AND a Hobby box format, but realized it was simply that Topps had chosen to do retail and hobby store/topps direct customer distribution of the single Mega Box configuration. Basically ignore the above speculation on the “Hobby” configuration.
The design is the base 2023 Bowman design. Really not much to go into here other than the mojo refractors are the differentiator from regular Bowman. One other item of note is that the non-guaranteed autos that can be hit in the mojo packs are typically not 1st Bowman autos, devaluing them for the prospects. This is because they are using different photos than you find in the full 2023 Bowman release. It’s cool to see new photos, it’s dumb to not have the 1st Bowman logo on them, at least in my opinion. And sometimes Topps screws this up and DOES include the 1st Bowman logo, but that hasn’t happened for awhile now.
The checklist is yet to be released, but that is really only pertinent in regard to the auto checklist. The auto checklist will be a slimmed down version of the 2023 Bowman Baseball auto checklist. I’ll add any notes here if something interesting pops up on this front. ***Update - the checklist finally dropped the day after release and there wasn’t too much of interest. The base checklist, unlike previous years, doesn’t match the full product release. It gets chopped down to 50 prospects and 50 rookies/vets. A strange choice to make, when the main improvement should be to either eliminate the base packs (and add more mojo packs) or change the base packs to actually contain parallels/hits in them.
I like grabbing a box or two if I come across it at retail, but the base packs really leave a bad taste in the mouth. Because of that, I tend to not go hard on it (at least since 2020 - I went real hard in 2019). I don’t see that changing this year even though I do have some prospects I’d like to pick up cards in the mojo refractor style this year. Regardless, it tends to be a really popular product as even base mojo refractors of the bigger names sell really well.
2023 Panini Donruss Baseball
It was an open question for the first months of 2023, but then Panini did confirm that Donruss Baseball would be coming out in 2023 without any licensing to back it up like years previous. The release date has moved multiple times, but it looks like it will stick this time with a Friday, June 2nd release date.
There is one hobby configuration - a regular Hobby box. It will give you three hits on average that can be a mixture of autos or relics and it is currently being sold for around $125 pre-sale. Panini will be selling it on its website on Friday with a price point not yet announced. There is every configuration under the sun for retail - mega boxes, blaster boxes, cello packs, fat packs, retail packs, and probably configurations I’ve never heard of. ***Update - Panini will be selling Hobby boxes on their website for $99.95.
The design is reminiscent of past Donruss designs, thankfully not last year, but years previous. A full border with a large chevron inner border. The Rated Prospect logo is in the sell sheet, but the Rated Rookie is not. I fear that may be gone with baseball due to the approach Panini has to take now lacking the MLBPA license. Donruss always has a ton of inserts and differing designs including retro designs. It looks like there will be a retro 1990 design for autos at the very least. That product may be the Junk Wax Era set I most had in my collection simply because it was mass printed and it was so cheap. That design gives me bad memories - I am really not looking forward to seeing it again. Anyways, other inserts should be popular, especially the comic book like Marvels insert.
The checklist has yet to be released, but this is where the big change is happening. No active MLB player as of the end of the 2022 season is on the checklist. We do see a Jordan Walker auto, but he didn’t debut until 2023, after when this checklist was made and when he signed his cards (or more likely, stickers). The approach is likely what Leaf and Onyx have done sans MLB/MLBPA licenses - individual deals with all the players in the checklist with no team logos or team names on the card. And that often means a lot of work and a lot of cost management, so the target is typically prospects and ex-MLB players, which is what we’ve seen in the sell sheet. I’ll update this with anything noteworthy once the checklist is dropped. ***Update - the checklist has partially dropped and as expected, no active MLB players in 2022 are included in the product with the exception of Bobby Witt Jr. and Fernando Tatis Jr. While others may get added when the full checklist is known, it will likely be a couple more at most. Overall the prospect list is very strong and should give an interesting feel to the product this year.
I don’t mind picking up a little bit of retail of this product, but usually that’s enough for me. I liked it simply because I liked the Rated Rookie logo, mostly for nostalgia, and some of the inserts are usually fun. But beyond that, there is little to no value in the cards, which often keeps me from buying much of it. And this year we don’t likely see the Rated Rookie logo at all, so I probably won’t buy more than a single blaster. ***Update - given how strong the prospect list is, I might dabble in a bit more retail than I thought. If Hobby boxes were a bit cheaper, say in the $80 range, then it would definitely be a strong consideration as well.