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 expected with 2024 Topps Series 1.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2024 Topps Series 1
The first 2024 product to hit the streets, 2024 Topps Series 1 officially releases on Wednesday, February 14th.
There are two Hobby formats - a regular Hobby box and a Jumbo Hobby box. The regular Hobby box comes with one guaranteed hit which can be an auto OR a relic. The odds are heavily weighted towards the relic. Topps is selling regular Hobby boxes for $89.99 with a customer limit of 6 boxes. Jumbo Hobby boxes guarantee three hits - one auto and two relics. Topps is selling Jumbo Hobby boxes for $179.99 with a customer limit of 4 boxes. They are also selling cases (6 boxes per case) of Jumbo Hobby boxes for $1,049.99 with a customer limit of 2. The retail formats are plentiful with Mega boxes, Value/Blaster boxes, Hanger boxes, retail packs, etc. Topps is selling Mega boxes with exclusive 1989 Topps 35th anniversary design foilboards for $50 with a customer limit of 10. Topps is selling Value/Blaster boxes for $25 with a customer limit of 10. Fanatics is selling on their website a Fanatics exclusive version of Value/Blaster boxes with one aqua parallel per box for $29.99. It also includes the potential to hit exclusive redemptions of either an autographed baseball or an autographed jersey. We probably again see the Super Boxes in retail as well.
The design of the base is a full border black fade to white from top to bottom with an interior thin neon border to give some level of interest. My very first impression was that it was taking the 1986 Topps design and then giving it the retro 1980’s neon feel to it. Not sure how well it will age, but I do like it. It’s also quite a stark difference from the previous year’s flagship design (I’m looking at you 2013/2014 Topps). The 35th anniversary throwback this year are using the 1989 Topps design - a very simplistic design that brings back a ton of nostalgia for this junk wax era kid. Home Field Advantage cards are back again for the third year. There are inserts galore - the Blueprint insert being my favorite of the easily pulled ones. The keep adding parallels, and we get a Team Border parallel with team logos occupying the bottom two thirds of the border (not all players in the checklist get this parallel. Like 2023 Topps Update Series, we are getting seasonal parallels in retail “holiday” blasters that are focused on Spring and Easter themes. The Golden Mirror Image Variations are back this year, giving every card a short print image variation. The final parallel worth a mention are the True Photo variations that remove everything but the Topps logo from the front of the card, giving you a very Stadium Club-esque feel.
The checklist is our first introduction to the 2024 Baseball Card Rookie class. I went in depth with the rookies that have base rookie cards in my product preview. The three Tier 1 rookies for me are Elly De La Cruz, Jasson Dominguez, and Evan Carter. I did not include the rookies that don’t have base cards, but do have inserts and/or autos. A few big names in that group are Junior Caminero, Jordan Lawlar, and Pete Crow-Armstrong. The only other thing to mention is that there will be likely very hard to hit Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani short prints with their new teams - Yankees and Dodgers respectively. I expect those cards to go for astronomical prices in the short term.
I used to regularly buy Hobby boxes of flagship, but as the print runs got more and more ridiculous, making it harder and harder to have any sort of volume of parallels in Hobby boxes, I stopped doing that. I’ll still buy some retail when I come across it and pick up some singles for my PC, but that will be after prices come down in the secondary market. Overall, it’s just great to get to the new year and start collecting the new rookie class.