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 - 2024 Topps Stadium Club.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week. ***Updated for 2024 Bowman Draft Pre-Order, 2024 Panini Impeccable Baseball 1st Off The Line (FOTL) Dutch Auction, and 2024 Press Pass Premium Baseball
2024 Topps Stadium Club
The photographic-focused released is scheduled for release on Wednesday, November 6th.
There are two Hobby formats - a regular Hobby box and a Compact Hobby box. The regular Hobby box guarantees two autos per box while the Compact Hobby box guarantees one. The Compact Hobby box was introduced last year and it essentially functions as if it’s half of the regular Hobby box. Topps ran a pre-order on Tuesday, October 8th. Regular Hobby boxes were $139.99. Cases of Hobby boxes (16 boxes per case) were $2,239.99. Compact Hobby boxes were $74.99. Cases of Compact Hobby boxes (16 boxes per case) were $1,199.99. They also sold a bundle of one Compact Hobby box plus one Value/Blaster box for $99.99. There will be retail formats, at the very least Value/Blaster boxes and fat packs according to the Topps odds sheet. ***Update - Topps announced on social media on Monday, November 4th that Hobby boxes will be sold for $149.99 on release day.
The design is classic Stadium Club with full-bleed (no border) design focused on the photograph on the card rather than any design elements. The base card has a see through nameplate at the bottom of the card and that’s about it. Cards are on foil stock, but there are Chrome versions of base cards and autographs. With Stadium Club Chrome not being released in 2023, and Topps being radio silent about it, they’ve now confirmed to their direct customers that it is indeed dead for 2024. It appears that this will lead to Chrome cards being more plentiful in Hobby packs, perhaps one per pack or one in every two packs depending on the SKU. Chrome autos, as usual for the regular Stadium Club release, will be of the sticker variety (unlike the now-dead Stadium Club Chrome product, which had them on card). Paper autos should still be on card.
The checklist is composed of rookies, vets, and ex-MLB players along with one Negro League player (Josh Gibson). As this is a late release, it has all the rookie chases included - Paul Skenes, the Jackson 3, Wyatt Langford, Elly De La Cruz, Jasson Dominguez, Junior Caminero, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Shota Imanaga.
I love Stadium Club. I hate how a Hobby box price is now approaching $150. The autograph checklist is so long that it’s REALLY hard to get your money box on a Hobby box costing over $100, let alone close to $150. It shouldn’t be about an ROI when you are collecting this product, but it’s not like you can simply disregard the price point either. The introduction of the Compact Hobby box now feels like it was Topps way of increasing the regular Hobby box price-point while trying to “provide an option for the lower-end buyers”. But we don’t care so much about the auto, we more care about the volume of cards when it comes to Stadium Club, and the Compact Hobby box doesn’t give us that. It’s a shame that traditional Stadium Club buyers are being priced out of their normal regular Hobby box purchasing activities. It’s been a few years since I’ve done it myself, and have fully shifted towards buying blasters of this product.
2024 Bowman Draft Pre-Order
On Monday, November 4th, Topps announced on their social media that 2024 Bowman Draft will go live for pre-orders on Thursday, November 7th at 12 PM EST. They have not announced the pre-order price, which is something that they typically do in their week to come social media posts. That implies a likely price increase over an already super high price point that this product has gotten to in recent years. For reference, the 2023 Bowman Draft prices were as follows: Hobby boxes were $480 pre-order and $525 on go-live day while Jumbo Hobby boxes were $650 pre-order and $750 on go-live day. The marketing image teases we’ve gotten have been Travis Bazzana (1st overall pick) and Jac Caglianone (6th overall pick) as the players on the box and Chase Burns (2nd overall pick) and Theo Gillen (18th overall pick) in a second marketing image.
2024 Panini Impeccable Baseball 1st Off The Line
2024 Panini Impeccable Baseball is a new, high-end product from Panini that has a long history in the basketball and football markets. The 1st Off The Line (FOTL) format will be going through a Dutch Auction on Tuesday, November 5th, starting at $800 per box with a floor of $500 per box. The Dutch Auction format will drop the price every 5 minutes until it sells out or hits the floor (I’d be shocked if this sells out prior to hitting the floor). As is now the situation with Panini baseball products, it is completely unlicensed and will only use baseball players they have individual deals with (or deals with the estates of players who’ve passed). This is largely made up of prospects and ex-players, with a sprinkling of current MLB players that debuted prior to 2024 like Bobby Witt Jr., Evan Carter, and Elly De La Cruz. Players that have yet to debut or debuted in 2024 that are in the marketing material include Paul Skenes, Dylan Crews, and Ethan Salas. Ex-MLB players include Willie Mays, George Brett, and Ken Griffey Jr. Each FOTL box comes with 5 autographs and a bonus FOTL exclusive auto numbered to 4. More than anything, though, the draw for Impeccable is the silver bar card with actual silver metal insert into the card. Without that, I can’t imagine this product has ANY interest as an unlicensed product. The full product release is scheduled for next week at the moment.
2024 Press Pass Premium Baseball
Press Pass is now a brand owned by Leaf, and is making its foray into the baseball card market as part of the standard approach that Leaf takes with their sports cards. Each box is expected to have 11 cards with 6 base/parallel cards and 5 autos. So far they’ve teased Charlie Condon, Travis Bazzana, Nick Kurtz, and Chase Burns as signers in the product. The release date is expected to be Friday, November 8th. Currently Blowout is selling boxes for $150.