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 are two scheduled releases - 2023 Topps Cosmic Chrome and 2023 Topps Pro Debut. In addition, 2023 Topps Chrome Logofractor Edition arrived out of nowhere at the Topps MLB store. ***2023 Topps Pro Debut has been pushed back to mid-October
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2023 Topps Cosmic Chrome
The space-themed version of Topps Chrome is back for its second year and is scheduled to release on Wednesday, August 30th.
There is a single configuration - a regular Hobby box. Similar to last year, there are no guaranteed hits in a hobby box. You will get one Nucleus Refractor Parallel per box, but autographs are supposed to fall 1 in 3 hobby boxes (4 per case). Topps had a pre-order for Cosmic Chrome back on August 3rd at a price of $249.99 per Hobby box with a customer limit of 2, which sold out quickly. Currently Blowout is selling boxes for a significant premium at $375. Last year Topps sold boxes for $199.99. ***Update - Topps is selling regular Hobby boxes for $274.99 with a customer limit of 4 and Cases of Hobby boxes for $3,199.99 with a customer limit of 2.
The design, as mentioned above, is chrome cards given a space design. Planets, stars, extra terrestrials, and various other design elements alluding to that theme are present in spades. Ultimately it’s a love it or hate it design, but I think it plays a minor part in the allure of the product. Similar to Finest Flashbacks, the lower auto totals are more of the draw, as well as the on card autos from a short auto checklist. The final thing to mention which is completely unrelated to the space theme but part of the overall Topps Chrome relation is that this product will also come with Tacofractors (Yay?).
Speaking of the checklist, it’s mostly rookies and vets with a token few ex-players thrown into the autos with Mark McGwire, Vladdy Sr., and David Ortiz. Pretty similar to Topps Chrome, all the rookies you’re chasing there should be found here - Adley Rutschman, Corbin Carroll, Gunnar Henderson, Anthony Volpe, Michael Harris II, Jordan Walker, Josh Jung, Brett Baty, Francisco Álvarez, Masataka Yoshida, Kodai Senga, Nolan Gorman, Trsiton Casas, Riley Greene, Zach Neto, Grayson Rodriguez, etc. A relatively strong group that should keep collectors happy.
This product should be quite desirable given last year’s debut performance coupled with a strong checklist. Expect prices to be high both on sealed product as well as singles although I anticipate singles may slide over time as more and more supply of a product backlog continues to hit in the second half of the year.
2023 Topps Pro Debut
The prospect-focused product is scheduled to be released on Friday, September 1st. ***This has been delayed, currently with an October 18th release date.
There are 2 hobby configurations - a regular Hobby box and a Jumbo Hobby box. Regular Hobby boxes are guaranteed 4 autos while Jumbo Hobby boxes are guaranteed 3 autos. In the past, the main differentiator was that chrome versions of the base cards were exclusive to the Jumbo boxes. However, this year, chrome cards will be found in regular Hobby boxes, with 1 chrome card in every other pack leading to 12 chrome cards in a box (24 packs per box). The Jumbo format will still find 6 chrome cards per pack for a total of 36 chrome cards per box (8 packs per box). Currently Blowout is selling Hobby boxes for $68 and Jumbo boxes for $98. Last year Topps sold Hobby boxes for $79.99 and Jumbo Hobby boxes for $99.99.
The design is based on the flagship design, so no new ground to cover there. Inserts will include family tie-ins (Jackson and Matt Holliday for example) along with ex-MLB players in their Minor League team gear like Albert Pujols. In the past, Pro Debut had really fun inserts that were tied into the minor league fun - cultural nights, bat-dog cards, etc. Those unfortunately have fallen by the wayside in the past year and I don’t see anything along those lines in this year’s edition, although the checklist isn’t out, so I suppose something could show up like that. Autographs will be all stickers, and team gear and logos will be minor league teams, not the major league teams.
As mentioned above, the checklist is not yet out. However, checklists tend to grab the majority of the high end prospects that were on Complex through Triple-A teams at the beginning of the year including Jackson Holliday, Jackson Chourio, Druw Jones, and Diego Cartaya are all teased in the sell sheet. DSL players and the most recent draft picks in the 2023 MLB Draft (Dylan Crews, Paul Skenes, etc.) are traditionally not in the product.
I am guessing the change to add chrome cards to the Hobby boxes is to help sell through that product because if memory serves me correctly, it sat for a while on Topps’ website (I could be wrong because my memory barely extends past the last 12 hours, let alone the last 12 months). I honestly don’t see a reason to buy Jumbo boxes personally now that Chrome cards are part of Hobby boxes, even if it’s just a third of what you get out of Jumbos. I much prefer the fourth auto. A strange choice, but we’ll see how it plays out. A final thought - with no checklist this close to release, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see this release date get delayed.
2023 Topps Chrome Logofractor Edition
A surprise tweet (I likely won’t stop using this terminology) from the MLB Store in New York City today advertised that 2023 Topps Chrome Logofractor Edition is now being sold in person at the store. It did not list a price, but the rumors are that the cost is $64.99 and that the configuration remains similar to last year’s debut edition with 10 logofractors per box. Last year Topps sold these boxes for $49.99 and they went live on the same day as they went on sale at the MLB Store. However, at this moment, the boxes have not yet gone live on the Topps website. I anticipate this likely happening this week at some point. Given how popular this product was last year, it’s no surprise that the MLB Store reportedly sold out its initial stock within an hour.
At this point, given the surprise nature of the appearance of this product, no checklist is out and details are still not 100% confirmed. This post will be updated with the details as they become available.