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 is one scheduled release - 2023 Topps Chrome Baseball.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2023 Topps Chrome
The chrome version of the Topps flagship product and one of if not the most popular Topps baseball releases every year, 2023 Topps Chrome is scheduled to release on Wednesday, June 26th to coincide with the beginning of “The National” (the National Sports Collectors Convention).
There are two Hobby configurations - a regular Hobby box and a Jumbo Hobby box. These configurations have changed from years past. Regular Hobby boxes used to be two autos per box and are now one auto per box. Jumbo Hobby boxes used to be five autos per box and they are now three autos per box. Prices have been dropped to reflect these changes year over year, and supposedly the auto checklist was going to be much more “impactful” according to Topps message to their direct buyers as part of their justification of the change. Topps pre-sold regular Hobby boxes for $124.99 and Jumbo Hobby boxes for $299.99. Currently Blowout has regular Hobby boxes for $149.95 and Jumbo Hobby boxes for $359.95. There will be all of the retail formats - Value (blaster) boxes and Monster boxes are already being pre-sold, with Hanger boxes and possibly other formats like retail packs likely happening. Topps pre-sold Value boxes for $34.99 and Fanatics is currently selling Monster boxes for $59.99. Finally, there is supposed to be a “Breaker Box” configuration which we have no details on other that Topps saying it is supposed to be legend and rookie heavy with dual-rookie autos. I am guessing we see these debuted at the National. ***Update - Breaker Boxes are being referred to as Breaker’s Delight Boxes - it is very reminiscent of a Bowman Chrome HTA approach with no base cards. It comes with 12 cards - one Youthquake insert, 6 base refractor parallels, 3 color parallels (base and/or inserts), and two autos, all packaged in a single hard shell pack. Pakman opened one on his channel and said that he thinks they are priced similar to Jumbo Hobby boxes.
******Update - Topps is selling Value boxes, regular Hobby boxes, and Jumbo Hobby boxes on their website on release day. Value boxes are still $34.99 with a customer limit of 10. Regular Hobby boxes have gone up $25 from pre-sale to $149.99 with a customer limit of 4. Jumbo Hobby boxes have gone up $30 from pre-sale to $329.99 with a customer limit of 2. No cases have been posted and no Breaker Boxes. Rumor is that Fanatics/Topps have been using strong language with the lucky ones to have Breaker Boxes that they are not allowed to resell them.
The design for the base is what we have already seen with Topps Flagship Series 1 and Series 2 products but given the chrome treatment. As we know the base design, I won’t go into it further. On card autos is the norm in Chrome, which is great. Various inserts have been the talk of the design with Topps going with a card called a Tacofractor. And now that the hobby has seen the Tacofractor, it’s being universally panned, which I agree with. As I said in the Prospects Live discord, it seems like Topps was trying to have fun with this insert, which I applaud (the having fun part). However, they completely missed the mark - it feels like a poorly designed 90’s photoshop done by a high school student for a class assignment. Other inserts may attract various levels of interest, and I like the Titans insert because it overlays a player’s photo on their home stadium. I am always a sucker for stadium shots. The parallels again will be extending, as Topps seems to do yearly. More speckle colors and we get a Sonar-based parallel this year, plus a Sub-Zero FrozenFractor numbered to negative five (Topps doing Dad Math jokes). Finally, of the numbered parallels popping up on eBay already, I am thrown off by the location of the numbering. The base numbering looks to be front side dead-center at the bottom of the photo, while the autos are front-side on the bottom right. If they are going to be on the card, get them out of the way, especially of the auto, and the bottom of the card where guys are signing is often right in the way of guys who do full sigs. Probably much ado about nothing and eventually it may grow on me, but on first impression I am not a fan. ***Update - Tacofractor cards teased a website on the back of the card and that website was showing an error when I checked previously, but it is now (as of Tuesday evening) showing a live page teasing an exciting announcement coming on Topps Social Media channels and to “hold on to your Tacofractor cards” implying not to sell them because the value will be worth it. More to come on this I am sure…
The checklist is rookies, vets, and ex-MLB players. The ex-MLB players are only going to be found in inserts and insert autos and are essentially classified as Legends with some strong names like Derek Jeter, Nolan Ryan, Ichiro, and various others. The rookies are the main attraction, with a strong list of the majority of 2023 rookies everyone is chasing. In either base, autos, or both, you will find Corbin Carroll, Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Anthony Volpe, Michael Harris II, Josh Jung, Brett Baty, Masataka Yoshida, Kodai Senga, Nolan Gorman, Triston Casas, and many others. Now, going back to the point that we won’t be seeing reliever autos and that Topps has shifted the checklist to more impactful autos - well, I just don’t see it. Jason Alexander and Brandon Hughes are relievers last time I checked. Backup catcher autos abound, including 30 year old rookie backup catchers (Brian O’Keefe). I’m not going to do a full comparison over the years of Chrome products, but Topps wasn’t completely correct in what they told their direct customers (and is probably why this wasn’t a general public commentary). The final thought on the checklist is that the MVP buyback program is back, and the 2022 MVP buyback cards - Aaron Judge and Paul Goldschmidt - can be found in the 2023 product stamped and serial numbered - both base and short printed autos out of 22 (because of the year 2022). Once the AL and NL MVP’s are announced, Topps will be providing the fulls details of the 2023 program, likely just specifying the start and end dates, but most of the details are already on the Topps website. As it stands today, Ronald Acuna Jr. and Shohei Ohtani are the odds on favorites to take those honors.
Topps Chrome is almost an essential product to the baseball card collecting experience year after year. Rookie cards from this product hold value much better than the paper flagship versions as well as secondary and tertiary products. Buying and ripping personal boxes often end in sadness, but the MVP buyback program does juice the value a bit. Breaks and even more-so aftermarket singles are often the smartest play, but any approach is probably worth a shot given the nature of the product. Buyer beware that print runs are huge, so if you go ham, do it smartly.