2023 has been quite the year in the baseball card collecting hobby. As I like to do, I am going to take a look back at the major stories, some secondary themes, and some of my personal favorites of 2023.
In my 2022 Hobby Year in Review article, Fanatics was one of the four main themes I dove into. At this point, it’s hard not to say that Fanatics is THE topic of not only the baseball card-collecting hobby but of the entire card-collecting hobby outside of Trading Card Games (TCG). I don’t think Fanatics has made much of an impact in that area, which has traditionally been dominated by Pokémon and Magic The Gathering while recently seeing a big new player in that space with Disney’s Lorcana product (via Ravensburger).
But back to Fanatics and Topps. Eventually, the three biggest professional leagues in the U.S. (NFL, NBA, and the MLB) will be exclusively licensed under the Topps brand, owned and run by Fanatics Collectibles. In addition, various other properties of varying degrees of popularity are currently or will be under the Topps/Fanatics portfolio - WWE, F1, Star Wars, various Soccer/Fútbal/Football leagues, Garbage Pail Kids, Zerocool (non-sports IP like VeeFriends and Jackass the movie), and College spots (mostly football and basketball through Bowman University). This is being brought up because trading card licensing at a league level has been exclusive for over a decade, but not on the Players Association side, at least for the MLB. With the calendar ticking over to 2023, the MLBPA also joined the MLB with exclusive licensing under the Topps brands, impacting their main competitor in the MLB trading card world - Panini, or more specifically, Panini America. Before diving too deep into the Panini side, let’s hit on some of the various major Fanatics/Topps topics as they relate to the baseball card hobby.
Fanatics
Fanatics vs. Panini
This one is a lengthy topic and could fill pages and pages with the details, but I’ll try and give the high level summary. Ultimately, search the unofficial hobby lawyer Paul Lesko’s twitter feed to get a deep dive on the details.
Back in April, Panini fired the first canon, suing Fanatics and various ex-Panini employees that Fanatics had hired away from Panini. A lot of NDA and competitive secrets and attempts to harm Panini type of language were part of that lawsuit.
The second salvo was fired by Panini in late July/early August when it sued Fanatics for Antitrust violations, mainly based on the premise that the Fanatics had acquired exclusive licenses for the MLB, NBA, and NFL properties without Panini having a chance to provide counteroffers. There’s a lot more to it, such as Fanatics taking a large financial interest in the main card printing facility in the U.S., GCP, but the “we didn’t get a chance to bid complaint” is really the core of their argument.
A few weeks later, in mid-August, Fanatics counter-sued and spilled some spicy beans. First, they basically said ‘LOL Panini’ in lawyer speak, poking a bunch of holes in their arguments from Panini’s existing lawsuits (exclusive licenses are an antitrust violation, yet that’s exactly what Panini has had for the past decade with the NBA and NFL among other properties!). Secondly, the spicy beans came out of the assumption most of the general hobby had come out of the 2022 National Sports Collectors Convention which was that Fanatics was on the verge of acquiring Panini. What was happening was that Fanatics was negotiating with Panini to end their licensing agreements early with the NBA and NFL (and perhaps others) so that Topps could begin selling those products ahead of schedule. It all fell apart, and then in 2023, both the WWE and the NFL attempted to end their current license deals with Panini early, which added to the intrigue of the Panini lawsuit. All of these cases have been consolidated, and they will surely be a hot topic in 2024 and perhaps beyond.
2023 Topps Industry Conference
Topps held an “Industry Conference'' in February 2023, but it was essentially just their own corporate event. There were two major announcements coming out of it, in my opinion, that also had Fanatics’ fingerprints all over them.
Topps Product Sabbaticals
Topps baseball card products being pulled off the 2023 and 2024 release calendars was the first major news in my opinion. It would not be surprising if some to all of them don’t return even beyond that time frame. While Topps occasionally dropped products from its list in the past (RIP High Tek), I don’t recall a group this large happening all at once and believe Fanatics oversight played a strong factor in this occurring in this manner. While I don’t agree with all the choices, I do agree with the concept - there are simply too many products and paring that list down, if done correctly, is a positive approach. For the record, these were the products that were put in mothballs:
Bowman Chrome X
Bowman Heritage
Bowman Transcendent
Topps Archives Snapshots
Topps Clearly Authentic
Topps Fire
Topps Gallery
Topps Gold Label
Topps Gypsy Queen
Topps Opening Day
1st Edition (2023 Topps Series 1 got a 1st Edition, but that went live before the Industry Conference, and no other Topps or Bowman 1st Editions were released, so it’s likely both flavors are done)
Bowman Retrofractors and the Tom Brady “Draft Picks That Never Were”
Starting with 2023 Bowman Chrome, Topps announced they would give 1st Bowman cards to players who never had them. So far, we’ve seen this concept in hand with Babe Ruth, Roberto Clemente, and Johnny Bench all in 2023 Bowman Chrome and Carl Yastrzemski and Josh Gibson in the 2023 Bowman Draft. Since Bench and Yaz are both still alive, they also got autographed versions. Sadly, even Topps didn’t quite nail this one, even though they had fancy wording around these being their 1st Bowman cards (but not necessarily their First Bowman cards!). The wording is “Limited edition 1st Bowman card for a legendary player who has never been featured in the base set of a flagship Bowman product.” You see, the fly in the ointment was that Babe Ruth in fact did have Bowman cards, albeit lacking the “1st Bowman” logo, that were part of the Topps Wrapper Redemption promotion at the 2016 National Sports Collectors Convention. However, this does not meet the fine print wording of a card from a “base set of a flagship Bowman product”. Still, that slightly cheapens the impact of the retrofractor in my opinion.
Similar to the retrofractor concept, and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if this actually spawned the retrofractor idea, was the Draft Picks That Never Were card featuring Tom Brady in his Montréal Expos gear in 2023 Bowman Draft. Tom Brady was the 18th round selection of the Expos in the 1995 draft out of high school, but Brady chose to go the football route, enrolling at the University of Michigan. Fast forward to October 2020, when Fanatics and Brady enter into an exclusive, long-term agreement to distribute his autographs, collectibles, and memorabilia. Brady finally retired from the NFL for good in February 2023, which may have been a bit of a roadblock for this Bowman card to be made without any NFLPA conflicts. Or maybe not, and it was simply Fanatics finally coming up with the idea to use Brady in his Expos gear utilizing the Bowman design from his draft year (1995). Regardless of the backstory, this card, both in base and autograph form, has become a highly sought after card in 2023 Bowman Draft. With it being short printed, and with a few of the autographed versions containing inscriptions, these cards have easily been the best sellers from the product. The base refractors are going for a minimum of $400+ while most are above $500. Base autos are the gold refractors numbered out of 50 and the most recent sale of one of those cards came in at $18K.
Fanatics Live
In 2023, Fanatics launched their live-streaming platform for card breaks, similar to Loupe and Whatnot. One of my initial thoughts after Fanatics purchased Topps and began immediately talking about an enhanced direct to consumer model that they heavily utilize in their other business lines (primarily licensed sports apparel) was that they would look to acquire Loupe. While I was wrong, it was still partially correct in that they built their own version of Loupe.
At the moment, all Fanatics Live is offering are breaks through their partnered breakers, but at some point I wouldn’t be surprised to see more standard “live shopping” experiences that you find on places like What Not. With their inventory and access, it makes a lot of sense. With or without the live shopping component, I expect to see Fanatics Live continue to grow and become one of if not the main place people go to get into breaks in the future. The incentives, bonuses, free break spots, etc. that are already in use should only grow as they look to continue the growth. The real silver bullet, which they’ve already begun to use, is encouraging partnered breakers to break products the day before the official release date. We saw this on occasion throughout the year, but it came to the forefront at the end of 2023 with one of the more popular products in the hobby - 2023 Bowman Draft. This provides a significant advantage to those breakers, especially with desirable products, and will further stratify the haves from the have nots in this current Fanatics driven environment.
Fanatics Events
Teased in the summer, the next planned step Fanatics has disclosed in its collectibles journey is Fanatics Events. There’s not much to go off of, but the first step looks to be running cards and collectibles shows. I’m not saying it will compete with the National, but I have to imagine that it’s on the roadmap. They also say they will be looking to bring athletes, entertainment, and influential brands together along with the trading card and collectibles experiences to expand and diversify the collector and fan bases of their products. This is a more forward-looking topic, but I felt it deserved a mention in the Fanatics Look Back portion of the article. It could be much ado about nothing, or it could be something we start asking our Hobby buddies about, similar to “are you going to the National?” will be “are you going to the Fanatics LA show?”. Given the athletes/entertainers Fanatics has access to, and similarly with their partner in this venture, IMG, there is plenty of potential here.
ToppS
Let’s jump into more Topps-focused story lines not specifically driven by Fanatics.
Quality issues
Where to start? Every year we see a variety of quality issues, and every year recency bias tends to drive the group think that this year has been the worst one we’ve seen rather than it being par for the course (remember the 2022 Topps Chrome extended rookie short print debacle, or perhaps the 2021 Topps Chrome Jarred Kelenic SSP that still has never had one example surface, or so many others). With that said, there have been some quality issues in 2023 that are worthy of mentioning.
Bowman Chrome Doublefractors
Almost all (95 out of 100) of the Chrome Prospect base (non-auto) 1/1 Superfractors, which should have only one card in existence, started showing up with not one but two examples being pulled in various places. Topps responded relatively quickly that they were looking into it, and shortly thereafter announced that they had identified a production error that had led to this issue. To make things right, they would buy back one of the two Superfractors from any collector for sizable sums ranging from $3K to $75K. The majority of cards were in the range of $3K to $10K, with a few of the biggest names in the five figures - no surprise that Ethan Salas was the big one by a large margin at $75K. Topps put a deadline of March 31st, 2024 for the buyback program.
I’m not really sure if Topps could have done a better job at making things right, although I would have liked to see them offer the deal for both Superfractors. The race to be the first one to submit the card kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And if they did get two Superfractors, then they could do fun stuff with returning one of the two into the marketplace. I also do not like putting a cut-off date on it, but it’s likely due to financial liability and accounting situations. It’s no shock that the cut-off date aligns with the end of a fiscal year (fiscal years typically run from April 1 to March 31 and differ from calendar years). I expect savvy collectors to rip a bunch of 2023 Bowman Chrome up until the March 31st cutoff date and then those sealed box prices will likely tank hard. They will be chasing the remaining unclaimed Superfractor buybacks, which at the time of writing, are 17 cards (with two pending claims for a total of 19 buybacks not yet completed).
Once we are past the deadline, there may still be potentially 17 superfractors in the general public’s hands, devaluing them to a certain extent. And who’s to say what happens to the Superfractors that Topps does buy back as they do not state that anywhere I have found. Will they end up in future products like the Topps MVP buy back program (not sure how I would feel about that), confirmed destroyed through direct video/auditable evidence (ideal), or thrown in a box in a warehouse like Ark of the Covenant (Indiana Jones fans IYKYK) to at one point in the future be back-doored like so many other cards have been past, present, and future.
2023 Bowman Draft Superfractors
Speaking of cards being back-doored, coming in at the last minute with the final major release of the year, 2023 Bowman Draft, a production facility backdoor issue was uncovered by the Hobby. I first saw it posted on twitter through Card Purchaser’s account, but I’m not really sure who the initial Sherlock Holmes was (it may have been Bowman1of1 on Instagram). Ultimately, Mario Alejandro on Twitter pushed the issue to the forefront and delivered the response from Topps and Fanatics on the issue.
The issue was that at one point, the eBay account “dfwcardshark” had at least 24 1/1 Superfractors from 2023 Bowman Draft listed for sale. First, it is extremely suspect to have more than one, let alone more than 20 Superfractors listed for sale from a single product shortly after release. Second, at least one collector identified on twitter that they also had one of those Superfractors that they had pulled from a box - in this case Dyan Jorge by Robert Rodrigue. The difference was that the Superfractor that was pack pulled had the 1/1 numbering on the front of the card, while the dfwcardshark Superfractors ALL had the 1/1 numbering on the back of the card.
Topps/Fanatics came out with a statement a couple of days after this blew up on the hobby social media channels stating that these Superfractors had quality control issues (front of card delamination) and that in attempt to fix it, the printer had tried putting the 1/1 numbering on the back. Topps decided that these cards weren’t up to snuff and told the printer to destroy them, and ultimately the Superfractor print run was redone to proper standards. However, these Superfractors that were to be destroyed were not and instead ended up in the hands of dfwcardshark for sale on eBay. Fanatics said they alerted all grading companies of this issue, that anyone who purchased one of these cards would be made whole and to contact Topps customer service, and that they were adding in stringent controls to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
To add to the story, dfwcardshark had a ton of other rare cards in their inventory at the time of exposure, and a ton of rare cards in their sold history, and not just from Topps, but also from Panini and Upper Deck as well. At the moment, there are no cards listed for sale on their eBay store, and I would be surprised if we see any in the future (not to say they couldn’t start this hustle back up again using a different account).
There were many stories and obvious situations of cards/products being back-doored out of the supply chain in 2023 (and in years previous), but this one stands out as the most blatant this year, and it’s one that we actually had the manufacturer respond to.
2023 Topps Cosmic Chrome Planetary Pursuit Insert
In its second year of existence, after a very strong 2022 debut, 2023 Topps Cosmic Chrome came back with strong demand and a new insert called Planetary Pursuit that promised to be a fun rainbow-like chase. The set comprises the Sun plus the nine planets (or eight plus whatever Pluto is) of our solar system. The Sun card is the shortest odds (easiest to pull) while each planet moving away from the Sun gets progressively longer odds to pull, with Pluto being the toughest pull of all.
However, after more and more boxes were being opened, a strange trend was noticed. Uranus, supposedly the third least likely card to be pulled in the insert set, was being pulled a lot more frequently than expected. And Venus, the third most likely card to be pulled in the insert set, was not being pulled at all. Not at all as in not one has been seen to this day - none have ever been listed on eBay and I’ve never seen one posted to social media. There are a couple of different theories, but the most obvious one is the likeliest one - that the Uranus card images were used in place of the Venus card images. What could have been a fun but really tough “rainbow” to chase in a very popular product was unfortunately bungled, and to my knowledge, Topps has sadly never addressed the mistake.
2023 Topps Stadium Club
Back on September 21, Topps went through what is now their somewhat regular pre-sale process for 2023 Topps Stadium Club on their website with a scheduled release date of October 18th, 2023. Then, with just a bit more than a week left until that original release date, on October 10th, Topps sent out emails to pre-order purchasers that they were being issued refunds for their orders and providing them with a $35 Topps website credit. The reason for the order cancellations was due to quality control issues and that the product would be delayed until January 2024 (currently scheduled for January 24th as of writing). I appreciate Topps doing the right thing if they have quality control issues. I would have preferred that pre-sale buyers were given the option of keeping their orders. One thing is for sure: when this product finally does get into the hands of collectors, the microscope will be laser-focused on the quality. Hopefully Topps and their production facility are as well.
The Market
There’s no real way to sugarcoat it, but the baseball card market, along with the majority of the trading card segments and even the economy at large, have seen a significant downward trend over the last 12 months. According to Card Ladder’s Baseball Card Index, the market is down over 16% in that time frame. There aren’t many safe havens in the modern/ultra-modern area outside of Shohei Ohtani cards, especially his rookie and pre-rookie cards. Vintage is where the main safety is, and even then, it’s still not what it was from the rocket ship ride up from 2020 to 2022.
Taking a bit more zoomed out perspective, we are still way way way above where we were prior to 2021 - if you just go back to the beginning of 2020, the Card Ladder Baseball Index is up almost 150% through the end of 2023, which I think is still a solid foundation. It also implies that there could be, and likely will be, more downward pressure until we hit a bottom with some actual resistance. This is really all so context-sensitive from so many different angles (the general economy and major societal events, baseball’s rising and waning popularity, new stars emerging, Fanatics/Topps management of the products, etc.) that I won’t speculate too far into the future on where I think it will go. If I was a betting man, I would bet on repeating the same message above of the Baseball Card Index being down again year over year when it comes time to write this article at the end of 2024.
Quick Hits
1914 Baltimore News Babe Ruth rookie card “sells” for $7.2M
The December Robert Edward Auctions (REA) had what is considered to be the Babe Ruth rookie card as the headliner - a 1914 Baltimore News red version graded SGC 3. These are rarely seen, and this one achieved the highest card sale price of 2023 at $7.2M. The highest selling baseball card of the year is almost always worthy of a mention, and it immediately generated news stories within and outside of the normal Hobby news channels. If you do a quick google search on the card, you will see that over half of the results are from websites that aren’t primarily focused on trading cards, or even sports for that matter. However, on Card Ladder, this sale is still yet to be verified. It’s not a sign that the deal didn’t happen as there are various other sales from that December 3 auction that haven’t been verified either, but there are also plenty that have. Hat tip to M&T Trading on twitter for pointing this out - he’s a really good follow for anyone in the hobby interested in the money side of cards. This will be something I definitely check back up on occasionally to see if the sale does finally get verified.
Tacofractor
An insert found in 2023 Topps Chrome and 2023 Topps Cosmic Chrome, the Tacofractor started with an intentional air of mystery. Topps told any collectors that pulled/bought one to hold onto them and eventually revealed what that meant on October 5th, the day after the MLB Playoffs Wild Card round completed. The holders of one of the five Tacofractors of the specific player (each Tacofractor was numbered to 5) that stole the first base of the World Series would be eligible for “Tacos for Life'' from Taco Bell. In reality, they would be given a “gift card” - essentially you had to create or have a digital Taco Bell app account which would get loaded with $15K. To help defray the taxes associated with this prize, winners would also receive a check from Topps worth $5,250. The announcement led to a spike in Tacofractor card prices, but just for the players remaining in the playoffs, and the Wild Card Tacofractor, which accounted for any player that didn’t have a specific Tacofractor card (there were 299 players total with Tacofractor cards).
Ketel Marte was the first player to steal a base in the World Series. A video briefly made the rounds of Hitman Rips, a collector/breaker, celebrating the moment that Marte stole the base since he owned a Marte Tacofractor. Other than that, I haven’t seen anything regarding the prize being claimed by Hitman Rips or anyone else. Seeing as the contest ended on December 31st, 2023, I somewhat expected that we would have seen more about the winners, but I guess the interest died as soon as the base was stolen.
It’s probably not worth mentioning, but the design for this card was widely panned and I agree with those thoughts. These cards are ugly.
Bounties
Putting out a bounty for a specific card is nothing new in the hobby, but this year we saw a couple of high profile bounties that made plenty of news.
Starting with 2023 Bowman Baseball in the Spring, Buffalo-based card shop and major online retailer Dave and Adam’s put out a $250K bounty on the Druw Jones 1st Bowman Auto 1/1 Superfractor with an option to enter an agreement to hold onto the card and not take the $250K, but bet on Jones making the Hall of Fame, and if he did, Dave and Adam’s would pay $1M for the card at that time. That card ended up being pulled by a collector family in Ohio, who chose the upfront $250K bounty (good decision).
Next up came 2023 Bowman Chrome and the Babe Ruth Retrofractor hype. Dave and Adam’s again put out a bounty, this time on the 1/1 base Superfractor because obviously Babe Ruth isn’t signing autos any more, and this time for just a bit less at $200K. In early October, the card was pulled by Bulldog breaks and went to the Red Sox spot and a collector named Ryan, apparently on attempt number 10 with the Red Sox spot in Bowman Chrome breaks, was the lucky recipient of the card and eventually the $200K bounty.
The final bounty of note in 2023 still hasn’t been claimed as far as I know. This is for the 2023 Bowman Draft Tom Brady Gold Autograph numbered 12 out of 50. Why not the Superfractor 1/1 auto, you might ask. Because of the inscription on the card, as teased in the Topps marketing material. It reads “If Baseball doesn’t work out, there’s always Football”. The bounty was publicized on the controversial Collectibles Guru, a.k.a Eric Whiteback (not his real name) twitter account and may have been marketed elsewhere. The bounty setter/buyer has not been publicized to my knowledge, but the important part is that the bounty is $500K. More than likely, it’s probably some high-roller collector like Shyne150, but as long as the deal is on the up and up whenever it happens, that’s the most important thing.
2023 Flagship Golden Mirror Image Variations
In a change of approach for the Topps Flagship (Series 1, Series 2, and Update Series) products use of short print image variations, Topps went from a limited set of short prints to giving the full base checklist a short print image variation. These were now given their own name - Golden Mirror Image Variations and were denoted by having the back of the card in gold color and getting an “SSP” designation on the back. Conceptually, this is pretty cool because oftentimes your PC player would NOT get a short print in a flagship set, or potentially any product, depending on their popularity. While some of the image variations chosen were really good, like the Julio Rodriguez home run helmet, plenty of others were very ho-hum photos. One of the best part about short print image variations is that the photo tends to be a lot better than the standard base photo. Whether it’s a fun shot, a candid shot, a player doing something they often don’t get on cards for (pitchers hitting), or legends of the game replacing the player that has the base card, you want to see something “different” with an image variation card. And by different, I don’t just mean a different photo, but something that you wouldn’t typically see on a base card, which tend to be bland action shots, at least for the Flagship line. This is returning for 2024 and I am hoping they have the time needed to improve this aspect significantly.
I didn’t mention this in the above section on bounties because it fit much better here - Blowout Cards, one of the major secondary market players in the Hobby, put out a few different Golden Mirror Image Variation bounties. The first person(s) to submit a complete set of the Series 1 Golden Mirror Image Variations, 330 cards in total, would claim a $250K bounty. Real Breaks, in conjunction with the launch of their breaking app called Uncommon, took up the challenge on release day, starting with 300 personal cases of Series 1. They also were breaking Series 1 through standard breaks and offering to buy any Golden Mirrors that they had not already pulled from their break participants. They did not get all 330 at the end of the endeavor, but eventually did acquire the missing pieces and claimed the bounty.
Blowout made a similar offer for the Series 2 complete set of Golden Mirrors, but this time it was paying out using the “two” theme - $222,222.22. Again, Real Breaks came through and claimed the bounty, although I didn’t find the exact details on how that happened. I assume it was using a similar method as they did with Series 2.
I could not find any info on an Update Series bounty from Blowout, but given the lackluster checklist, I’m assuming Blowout wasn’t interested in throwing out a number for it. Or if they did, it got buried somewhere.
Blowout did make a full 990 card bounty offer as well, but this one will likely not happen and was more publicity than anything else. They would pay $1M for a 990 card (Series 1, Series 2, and Update Series combined) complete set of PSA 10 graded Golden Mirrors. I have not seen anything about this being claimed and the bounty expiration is February 15th, 2024, so I doubt it happens.
MVP Buybacks
The MVP Buyback program was back for year two, but it was restricted to just 2023 Topps Chrome and 2023 Topps Chrome Logofractor Edition cards. By the time the first of the two products hit the shelves, 2023 Topps Chrome, in late June, Shohei Ohtani and Ronald Acuña Jr. were the heavy favorites to win the AL and NL MVP’s respectively. This lead to a pretty straight forward and zero surprise approach to the product in breaks, with the Angels and Braves being bumped up for the added Buyback value, and people selling Ohtani and Acuña singles in anticipation of the bounty value. Base cards are available to be exchanged for $20 credit at participating hobby shops and online retailers with parallels have an increasing amount of credit available depending on the parallel, all the way up to $200 per card potentially. The 2022 MVP Buyback cards - Aaron Judge and Paul Goldschmidt - were re-inserted as short prints into 2023 Topps Chrome with a stamp denoting the MVP buyback. There were also autos of these buybacks to pull, numbered to 22, but they were both redemptions. Fortunately it looks like those redemptions are being fulfilled.
2023 Topps Baseball Products in 2024
We rarely see baseball card products from Topps not make it into the calendar year that the product is from. Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary, which has only existed for two years, is the main exception. The end of the year products are always at risk of bleeding into the following year like Bowman Draft, Bowman’s Best, and Bowman Heritage (before it went on Sabbatical).
2023 Topps baseball products not making it into the 2023 calendar year looks to potentially be the most I’ve seen since coming back to the hobby, and perhaps ever. As of writing, 2023 Bowman’s Best, 2023 Stadium Club, 2023 Diamond Icons, and 2023 Luminaries are all on the release calendar with 2024 dates. 2023 Topps Dynasty has been teased by Topps with an Aaron Judge signing session of the product, but it is not currently on the release calendar. Other potential 2023 Topps products that we had 2022 versions of, weren’t on the Sabbatical list, and we have no info about at the time of writing are:
Bowman Inception
Topps 3D (online exclusive)
Topps Allen & Ginter Chrome (online exclusive)
Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary
Topps Five Star
Topps Heritage Minor Leagues
Topps Triple Threads
Topps Stadium Club Chrome
Topps Transcendent
I would not be surprised if at least a couple of these products get the ax. Hopefully Chrome Platinum Anniversary is one of those as it was a good idea that has been extremely poorly executed. For me personally, I would absolutely hate to see Topps Heritage Minor Leagues get cut, and a close second to that would be Stadium Club Chrome. I’ll be tracking this in 2024 up until we get full closure on this list from Topps.
Panini Baseball Products
There were legitimate questions coming into the year if Panini was going to continue making baseball cards with the loss of the MLBPA license and it was radio silence the first few months of the year. Then Panini dropped the details on Donruss baseball and we got to see the blueprint for their approach to baseball products in 2023 (and likely moving forward). It is taking the unlicensed approach that we’ve primarily seen from Leaf and Onyx - a prospect and ex-MLB player focused approach with a token MLB player here and there. In this case, the token active MLB player with experience prior to the 2023 season that we got in all the 2023 Panini Baseball releases is Bobby Witt Jr. There will be plenty of other players that ended up debuting in 2023, including some of the Japanese imports like Yoshida and Senga, but no active players that debuted prior to 2023 besides Witt Jr. I don’t mind this approach if it’s done right, which we see with Onyx and Leaf. That approach is prospect heavy, with the active player(s) and ex-MLB players not really showing up much. With Panini, hitting all of these base parallels of old timey players is a big let down. I don’t mind the autos of ex-MLB players, but when it’s base cards, and you’re pulling a lot of them, it’s a pretty big turn off. Give me all of the Jackson Holliday cards, and none of the Heinie Groh cards.
The other point of interest, at least for me, is that it seems like Panini has stopped caring about following the “rules” when it comes to using the rookie card logo. It’s a touchy subject, and I’m not really going into the true definition of a rookie card in the Hobby, but rather the guidelines that are part of the deal the manufacturers have with the MLB and MLBPA. A baseball rookie card logo is used when a player still has rookie eligibility as defined by the MLB and has debuted before the date that the MLBPA determines as the “rookie card cutoff date”. This is a different date every year, but it typically falls around the beginning of June and in 2023, it looks to have been June 1st. Any player that debuted after June 1st should not have a Rookie Card logo in 2023 products and be grouped into the prospects section of a checklist. In the case of single-on-demand cards like Topps Now, Topps has been using a “Call Up” logo. Starting the year with Donruss, Prizm, and Immaculate, Panini stuck with the rules they’ve been following before this year, even though they no longer have a deal with either the MLBPA or the MLB. However, starting with Select in October and for every subsequent release (Chronicles, National Treasures, and Flawless coming in January), Panini has decided that it could care less about those rules. Not only are players who debuted after the cut-off, like Elly De La Cruz and Noelvi Marte, getting Rookie Card logs, but prospects who have yet to debut, like Marcelo Mayer, are also getting the Rookie Card logo on some of their cards in these products. At first, I assumed it could have been a mistake, but at this point, with the repeated examples, it seems to either be a situation of malicious intent at worst or lack of care at best.
582 Montgomery Club
Topps significantly reduced the price as well as the pre-sale exclusive access for 582 Montgomery Club memberships when they sold them in November 2022. So why am I bringing this up? Because Topps sent an email to Monty Club members that they were getting their memberships extended through the end of December 2023 rather than selling renewals and new memberships in November as they would normally do. And as we start to enter into January 2024, there has been radio silence on this topic from Topps. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is discontinued. Or if it is continued, it is something completely different from how it worked in the past.
2024 Topps Flagship design
Usually we get previews of the upcoming Topps Flagship design before the year ends, but strangely we have yet to see that for the 2024 edition at the time of writing. You can speculate in any number of ways as to why this is, but I’ll forgo that here. Suffice it to say that it's just strange as the first product using it is likely to be hitting shelves in the next 6 to 8 weeks.
There were some other topics and ground we could cover in the baseball card Hobby in 2023. But, I feel like I’ve already made you read too much. So let's wrap it up, as always, with my Favorite Card and my Favorite Product of 2023.
Favorite Card of 2023
There were three obvious contenders for me when thinking about this, and surprisingly they all came from Topps Now. Two of the three come from the 2023 World Baseball Classic (WBC) held in March of 2023. Those are the Harry Ford youngest player to hit a home run in the WBC with him in full royal crown and cape gear and the Shohei Ohtani striking out former Angels teammate Mike Trout for the last out of the WBC, giving Team Japan the WBC victory.
However, a late contender showed up from Topps Now when Shohei Ohtani appeared on the MLB Network to give an interview during the AL MVP award announcement. Ohtani gave the interview with his adorable dog Dekopin a.k.a Decoy sitting calmly by his side and when the announcement was made that Shohei was the winner, he gave Decoy a high five. I’m a sucker for any animals on cards especially when it’s players with their pets. I also enjoy when we get to see personality on cards, whether it’s in uniform or outside of it. I honestly couldn’t name a more wholesome card from 2023. It also doesn’t hurt that I have a small Ohtani PC (Personal Collection). There’s so much that I personally enjoy with this card that it was an easy choice for my Favorite Card of 2023 the minute Topps posted it for sale back in November.
Favorite Product of 2023
There were plenty of products that the baseball card Hobby generally seemed to love in 2023 such as 2023 Topps Chrome Logofractor Edition, 2023 Topps Chrome Update Sapphire Edition, 2023 Topps Gilded Collection, 2023 Topps Cosmic Chrome, and 2023 Topps X Bob Ross The Joy of Baseball Cards. My Favorite Product of 2023 doesn’t fall into that list, but if the Bob Ross product did not have the problematic back-story to it (check out the Netflix documentary or various articles online in general about the Bob Ross estate), it would have been on my short list.
Typically Topps Stadium Club would be an automatic contender in this list, but as mentioned above, we did not have a Stadium Club release in the 2023 calendar year. Topps Holiday, since 2019 when they introduced the image variations, is almost always an automatic contender and that was definitely a strong consideration this year. 2023 Topps Inception with the introduction of the First Milestones set (autographed cards with a relic of the base from a rookie's first MLB hit) was also a product I thought a lot about.
Ultimately, for my Favorite Product of 2023, I went with a product that is almost like a Stadium Club Lite - 2023 Topps Black & White. I was skeptical of this product when it had its inaugural edition in 2022, but was quickly won over when I had it in hand. 2023 was an improved version, specifically with the introduction of the short print and super short print image variations. The full bleed photography is almost always a great choice, and just like Stadium Club, they use it to full effect in their photo selections. There were just so many great looking cards to choose from, even with the base cards. I will be collecting the singles of cards from this product for months and perhaps years to come, and that’s a sign of a great product in my opinion.
There are a few negatives that shouldn’t be ignored, but weren’t enough to drag the product down for me. There are no guaranteed autos in the product, but at $50 a box direct from Topps and autos falling one in every three boxes, I don’t mind it. The autos are all stickers, which in this current time of collecting, is more the norm than the exception, so it is what it is at this point. And finally, the negative parallels just look bad in my opinion - I get that there is a strong photography theme here and the photo negative is part and parcel of that, but there’s no need to make cards that don’t look great in a set full of them. Please get rid of that for 2024, Topps.
All the negatives to the side, if you haven’t already, search eBay or your platform of choice for 2023 Topps Black & White and tell me that there aren’t ANY great looking cards for you to choose from. I would wager that would be near impossible for any collector. 2023 Topps Black & White - my personal Favorite Product of 2023.
Final Thoughts
That wraps up another year of collecting baseball cards, one with plenty of change, controversy, and cards to choose from. Whatever your reason(s) for collecting baseball cards, there’s something for everyone, from kids to adults, from rich to poor, from nostalgic to modern. While we can always focus on the negatives, and I do discuss plenty of those here as we shouldn’t ignore them, we should do our best to make the hobby a better place and focus on the positives. I mean, show me one person who doesn’t like a Shohei Ohtani and Decoy card. You can’t, because they don’t exist. And with that, on to 2024 and seeing what are the next crop of fun prospects, rookies, and cards we can enjoy.