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 Archives Signature Series Retired Player Edition. ***Updated for the 2024 Topps Series 2 pre-sale.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2024 Topps Archives Signature Series Retired Player Edition
The Retired player edition of the one-hitter buyback product from Topps, 2024 Sig Series Retired Player Edition is scheduled to release on Friday, May 17th.
There is only one configuration - a regular Hobby box. It comes with a single, encased buyback autographed card in a one touch magnetic cased sealed with a Topps sticker. Last year Topps sold these for $69.99 with a customer limit of 4 boxes. Back in March, Topps sold the Active Player edition for $69.99 per box with a customer limit of 6 and cases (20 boxes per case) for $1,339.99 with a customer limit of 2. Retired Edition pricing and limits typically would mimic Active Edition, so I expect to see exactly that when the release on the Topps website goes live. ***The product went live as expected and Topps is selling Hobby boxes for $74.99 and Cases of Hobby boxes for $1,499.99.
The design is completely based on the cards that Topps “buys back” and then has the retired players sign - so essentially Topps and Bowman cards of years past. There can be some oddball cards as well that were associated with Topps - for example food-based releases such as 1989 Cap’n Crunch that was affiliated with Topps. Each of these buy back cards are signed on card and then stamped with an Archives Sig Series Retired Edition gold foil logo on the front of the card and numbered. In general, you’ll never see these numbered in the triple digits (out of 99 or less) and there are a fair amount of 1/1’s that come out of this. That doesn’t mean that next year, you wont see the exact same card as a 1/1 again, as Topps does not have the gates in place to make sure this doesn’t happen, or they just don’t care.
The checklist is not yet released as of writing - all we know is that there will be a 1993 Derek Jeter 1/1 rookie and a 1958 Topps All Star 1/1 of Mickey Mantle. Just like last year when Topps included a dual auto of Willie Mays and Stan Musial with Musial already having passed away, Topps purchased this Mickey Mantle off the secondary market already slabbed and authenticated. They are then cracking the slab, stamping the card with the Sig Series stamp and the 1/1 stamp, and placing it in this product. In this case, Topps purchased this card back in November as a PSA 3 for $2,350. ***Update - with the checklist going live, a few interesting notes. In 2023, we saw the addition of dual and triple autos in Retired Edition - those did not return for 2024. New this year is a segment of the checklist Topps is calling “Legendary Autos”. Last year is the first time I can recall that Topps included an on card autograph of a player that was deceased - in that case it was Stan Musial and Topps had done this through purchasing the card on the secondary market in a slab that they then cracked. We see this again with the Mickey Mantle they have teased, but now it’s not just a single, chase card strategy like we saw in 2023. Now we have 18 total deceased former MLB players that are in the checklist that we have to assume Topps has purchased in authentic slabs on the secondary market, cracked them, stamped them, and placed them in the product. The list of those “Legendary” signers are Sparky Anderson, Jim Bunning, Gary Carter, Monte Irvin, George Kell, Harmon Killebrew, Ralph Kiner, Don Larsen, Bob Lemon, Mickey Mantle, Eddie Mathews, Willie McCovey, Phil Niekro, Brooks Robinson, Red Schoendienst, Bruce Sutter, Don Sutton, and Dick Williams.
I love this product. I wish it was still around $40-$45 per box like it was when I got back into the hobby. Now at $70, it ends up with too many losing boxes to rip one or two personals and only really makes sense to rip on a case level. Even then, it may be tough to make your money back because the hobby has a very “what have you done for me lately” mindset. As usual with products that I feel are overpriced, I’ll more than likely just pick up cheap singles when I see players/cards/deals I like. Even breaks are tough at this price point, and since we don’t have a checklist, and even when we do, it’s hard to know what team each player will show up on unless they were only on a single team, like Jeter and Mantle, breaks are a higher gamble than they should be for a sub-$100 product. Just know that the Yankees spot will be EXPENSIVE, and it likely won’t be justified.
2024 Topps Series 2 Pre-Sale
Announced Monday afternoon, 2024 Topps Series 2 went on pre-sale on the Topps’ website on Tuesday, May 14th. There are hobby formats being pre-sold for Series 2 - regular Hobby boxes and Jumbo Hobby (a.k.a. HTA Jumbo) boxes. Regular Hobby boxes come with one auto OR relic per box and are being pre-sold for $84.99. Cases of regular Hobby boxes (12 boxes per case) are being pre-sold for 1,019.99. Jumbo Hobby boxes come with one auto and two relics per box and are being pre-sold for $179.99. Cases of Jumbo boxes (6 boxes per case) are being pre-sold for $1,079.99. There are no limits posted on the website that we would normally see (although I assume there are limits if you attempt to purchase multiple boxes/cases). There were no retail formats as part of the pre-sale. Unfortunately Topps is not providing a checklist or odds for this product yet, which occasionally happens with pre-sales. Hopefully that is remedied shortly.