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 release and one pre-sale scheduled - 2023 Bowman’s Best is the product scheduled for release and 2024 Topps Series 1 is the product scheduled for pre-sale. 2023 Leaf Metal Baseball is yet again on the calendar but I’ll leave that to the side until we actually see it release. 2023 Topps Dynasty pre-sale is also likely this week based on this tweet from Mario Alejandro.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
***Updated for 2023 Leaf Metal Baseball starting to make its way into people’s hands.
******Updated for the Topps 582 Montgomery Club Renewals
2023 Bowman’s Best
The prospect-heavy product is scheduled to be released on Wednesday, January 17th.
There is one format - a regular Hobby box. Each Hobby box, sometimes referred to as a master box, comes with two mini-boxes. Each mini-box guarantees 2 autos, leading to a total of 4 guaranteed autos per Hobby (Master) box. Topps pre-sold this product on December 18th, 2023. They sold Hobby boxes for $269.99 with a customer limit of 2 and cases of Hobby boxes (8 boxes per case) for $2,159.92. For the previous iteration, Topps sold 2022 Bowman’s Best for $280 on their website. There are no retail formats of this product. ***Update - as expected, Topps released the product on their site on Wednesday. Hobby boxes get a $30 jump to $299.99 with a customer limit of 4. Cases of Hobby boxes get a $240 jump to $2,399.92 with a customer limit of 2.
The design is typical Bowman’s Best with some cosmic twists. The base design again gets a large team logo sitting behind the cut-out player action shot. As always, we get a lot of geometric patterning going on, with this year having a honeycomb theme with team colors in the corners and what is likely the parallel color in the center. Various inserts are to be found, and often the inserts from Bowman’s Best are some of the best that Topps does. The cosmic twist I was referring to will be found in an Astral Projections insert as well as in the autographs. Family Tree dual and triple autographs are rare auto inserts to hit with the Acuña’s, Holliday’s, Jung’s, and Jones’ (Andruw/Druw). I’m most looking forward to the Randy Johnson 1992 Bowman insert using photography from the Hall of Famer and avid photographer. The one image we have from the marketing material is a great candid shot of Druw Jones. The cards are all chrome, and autos are all on card for the base auto set. Insert autos tend to be a mix of on card and stickers.
The checklist is primarily prospects and current MLB players - both 2023 rookies and veterans. Ex-MLB players really only find there way into the product through the Family Tree dual autos. While the rookies are a strong chase here with all of the best names (Carroll, Gunnar, Adley, Eury, Harris II, Casas, Yoshida, Senga, Álvarez, Volpe, Walker, Jung, etc.). The bigger prospect chases include, for just the second time at this point in a Topps product, the 2023 MLB draft picks. This list is highlighted by Junior Caminero, Jackson Holliday, Jackson Chourio, Paul Skenes, Wyatt Langford, Matt Shaw, Max Clark, and Ethan Salas among many, many others.
I usually don’t find much interest in the base design of Bowman’s Best, although the parallels can pop well. On the other hand, every year I find an insert set that I really like and contemplate doing a base set collecting run of. I don’t expect that to change this year. A strong checklist as usual for the prospect and rookie chasers, on card autos (for the most part) on chrome stock, and a price point that isn’t outlandish for 4 guaranteed autos in today’s environment (5 years ago this would have been outlandish) all equate to a good product in my opinion. Since these aren’t 1st Bowman autos and rookies and vets just hold less value in Bowman vs. Topps, the singles market does take a heavy beating once the hobby has moved onto newer products. A tough personal rip and box break as time goes on, but this is one of the products I do look to buy singles of months after the release date.
2024 Topps Series 1 Pre-Sale
In the previous week Topps finally dropped the 2024 Topps Flagship design and on Friday announced that the 2024 Topps Series 1 Pre-Sale would go live on Tuesday, January 16th. A few things we found out - the Golden Mirror Image Variations are back for 2024 after its inaugural year in 2023. The base checklist is 350 cards deep, when in the recent past it has been 330 cards. Beyond the regular parallels, which are the same for every card, they are introducing Team Color border parallels. So the assumption is that the Dodgers Team Color Border Parallels will be blue while the Rockies will be purple and so on and so forth. The Independence Day parallel teased looks great, definitely a return to how this was a great parallel prior to 2020. From their pre-sale page, Topps mentions the configurations of Hobby and Hobby Jumbo boxes (no changes from previous years), so it’s safe to assume that we will see both of those as part of the pre-sale activity. This section will be updated with the pre-sale details when it goes live.
***Update - the pre-sale went live as expected on Tuesday. As of three hours later, all box and case listings are sold out for the purposes of the pre-sale allocation. Hobby boxes were being sold for $89.99 with a customer limit of 2. Cases of Hobby boxes (12 boxes per case) were $1,047.38 with a customer limit of 2. Jumbo Hobby boxes were $159.99 with a customer limit of 2. Cases of Jumbo Hobby boxes (6 boxes per case) were $926.89 with a customer limit of 2.
2023 Leaf Metal Baseball
The prospect focused product is finally showing up in the hands of breakers and collectors as of this week, although the Leaf website list the release date as January 8th on their website. Blowout and other retailers were pre-selling with a release date of January 17th
There are two formats - a regular Hobby box and a Jumbo Hobby box. The regular Hobby box comes with 5 autos, 1 pre-production proof auto, and new for this year, 2 base cards. The Jumbo Hobby box comes with 7 autos, 2 pre-production proof autos with one of those being in a slab (down from three last year - 2 top loaded/1slabbed), and 4 base cards - again completely new for this year. Leaf is not selling these boxes directly. Currently Blowout is out of stock as of writing (Wednesday), but Dave & Adam’s has them in stock - regular Hobby boxes are $129.95 and Jumbo Hobby boxes are $249.95, almost double the cost.
The design for the base and base auto is very geometric and reminds me of a human of a blocky human torso. Plenty of inserts to choose from, as usual, but none of them particularly interest me. The Greenlight insert is the one that stands out the most with the traffic theme, but it’s not one that I like even if it does stand out. The pre-production proofs are worth mentioning here - they are all 1 of 1’s, but they are not as highly desired as you might think being 1 of 1’s. These cards are made without card backs, so they are easy to tell from the normal 1 of 1’s. Secondly, there is one for every parallel, and that is one of the main problems - there is just a LOT of them. It’s very similar to how printing plates are treated, except even less valuable. Finally, this is the first time we are seeing base cards in Leaf Metal Baseball since I got back into the hobby, when this product was called Leaf Metal Draft Baseball. Base cards are likely a strategy that will continue to pop up in Leaf products that traditionally did not have them (Metal, Flash, Trinity, Ultimate). I wouldn’t be surprised to see more base cards and less autos in future iterations. I also wouldn’t be shocked to see more of a Topps approach where they go to products that are primarily base with one or two guaranteed hits and the like. As we see with almost all, if not all, Leaf products now, autos are probably all stickers.
The checklist is primarily prospects with a sprinkling of active and ex-MLB players. The approach Leaf has taken the past few years is to add more and more of the non-prospects to the checklist and it’s no different here. It is why they’ve dropped the “Draft” term from the product name. Included in the prospects are player from the 2023 MLB draft like Paul Skenes, Matt Shaw, Nolan Schanuel, and others. It also includes prospects that are still in the “amateur” ranks like potential 2024 first round picks Nick Kurtz, Tommy White, and Travis Bazzana. Some of the top prospects in general are here like Junior Caminero, Jackson Chourio, Evan Carter, and others. For current players, we get Mookie Betts (!!!), Michael Harris II, Oneil Cruz, and Seiya Suzuki on the auto side. On the base side, we get plenty of others including a lot of the big names like Bobby Witt Jr., Corbin Carroll, Elly De La Cruz (although since this is a 2023 product, he should be considered a prospect), Gunnar Henderson, Ronald Acuña Jr., Mookie Betts, and Shohei Ohtani. There is a really good group of ex-MLB players including Mike Schmidt, Nolan Ryan, Sammy Sosa, Frank Thomas, Stan Musial, and Sandy Koufax. ***Update - Tommy White (a.k.a. Tommy Tanks) autos may be partially or all using the incorrect sticker. It looks like Leaf used the sticker auto of Thomas White, a 2023 Miami Marlins draft pick at 35th overall out of the prep ranks. According to social media reports, Leaf will be replacing those cards, so if you end up with one, contact Leaf customer service.
I used to like Leaf Metal Baseball as my favorite yearly prospect product (excluding 2018 Ultimate and any of the Perfect Game products) from Leaf. Once they went to sticker autos and Hobby boxes got to $100 and up, I started to have very little interest in buying any Leaf baseball products. While not much of that is different here, the checklist is interesting enough that I wouldn’t mind a single bullet in a break here or picking up really cheap singles in the secondary market. I know Leaf will likely be pumping out Mookie Betts autos in a variety of products this year, but it’s been a long time since we’ve seen new Betts autos, so this is very tempting.
Topps 582 Montgomery Club 2024 Renewals
Topps sent out emails to existing Topps 582 Montgomery Club members that renewals for the 2024 memberships will be made available starting at 12 PM Eastern Time on Thursday, January 18th. The renewal window will close at 9 AM Eastern Time on Monday, January 22nd. The renewal price is the same as the 2023 membership - $149.99 with only one membership allowed per household. No mention of new membership prices yet, but it likely matches the 2023 version as well, which was $199. The membership comes with a Topps Complete set stamped with the 582 Montgomery Club logo plus early access to 8 products, up from the 6 promised with the 2023 membership. New additions to the early access list are Topps Cosmic Chrome baseball, Bowman Draft Sapphire, Topps Brooklyn Collection, Topps Chrome Formula One Sapphire, Topps Chrome UEFA Men’s Club Competitions, and Topps Museum Collection (LOL). Returning products to the list is just Topps Chrome Baseball Sapphire and Topps Chrome Star Wars Sapphire. Falling off the list are Bowman Chrome Sapphire, Topps Chrome Bundesliga Sapphire, Topps Finest Flashbacks Baseball, and Garbage Pail Kids Sapphire. Altogether the list is much improved. On the other hand, the value seems minimal at best given that these pre-sale opportunities are typically one to two boxes at most. This post will be updated with any new info, but more than likely, the new membership sales, if they do happen, will fall into next week, where it will be added to next week’s This Week in Baseball Cards.