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 are two scheduled releases - 2024 Topps Tier One and 2024 Panini Stars & Stripes USA Baseball.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2024 Topps Tier One
The mid-tier product that has gone back to its roots to include a base set of cards rather than just hits is scheduled to release on Wednesday, July 3rd.
There is one configuration - a regular Hobby Box. The new, or rebooted, configuration contains four cards - two autos, one relic, and one base card. There are parallels of the base cards and according to Topps social media, it will either be a base card OR a parallel of the base card (not both). In years past, the configuration was two autos and one relic card, although occasionally you could hit a four card pack - typically two autos and two relics. We’ll see if there are similar circumstances with bonus cards this year. Topps pre-sold boxes on June 6th for $239.99 and cases (12 boxes per case) for $2,879.99. Last year Topps pre-sold boxes for $199.99 and go live prices for $249.99 and pre-sold cases for $2,399.99 and go live prices for $2,908.88. According to Topps social media, the go live Hobby box price this year will be $249.99, but no mention of case prices. There are no retail formats of this product. ***Update - the product dropped as expected with Hobby boxes selling for $249.99 and cases of Hobby boxes for $2,999.99.
The design is typical Tier One - golds and grays and blacks giving a somewhat high end feel. Usually the cards are thick stock and autos are mostly on-card, although auto relic cards have been a mix of on-card and stickers. Most relics, outside of a few of the high-end ones, are typically given the lawyer speak of not being specific to anything - not game worn, not player worn, not anything. Bat barrels and bat knobs are some of the high end, super hard to hit relics in the set, which adds a little bit of spice to the chase and a whole lot to the marketing opportunities. You can also add in cut autos to that group of high end, near impossible to pull hits.
The checklist is a mix of rookies, current vets, and ex-MLB players. Interestingly, they’ve broken the base set down into a Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 grouping with harder to hit odds as you move down the number scale, as well as a “Base” auto set which have a lot longer odds to hit than one would assume by it being called “Base Autographs”. If your chasing specific players, I would recommend really taking a deep dive on the odds for the product, especially if you are jumping into breaks. The rookie chases include some of the biggest names that have debuted this year and last, including Jordan Lawlar, Jackson Holliday, Shota Imanaga, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Elly De La Cruz, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Jackson Chourio, Jasson Dominguez, Jackson Merrill, Jung Hoo Lee, Masyn Winn, Junior Caminero, and Wyatt Langford. Be aware that Shohei Ohtani has no autographs in the product outside of a dual auto relic book with Mike Trout that will be shown as the Angels for both players, and that all of his relic cards are Angels cards. The other big name to change teams in the off-season, Juan Soto, does have autos for his new team, the Yankees, as well as his old team, the Padres.
Tier One has always been a product that has been tough to hit really well consistently. It regularly would be full of pulls for ex-MLB players of little value and/or rookies in the same vein. There were usually about one to two winning boxes in a case, which isn’t too far outside of the norm for low and mid-tier products, and even some high end products. It just hurts more when there are fewer cards to spread around, which is the case with Tier One. The added base card doesn’t feel like it will provide much added value, but I guess we shall see. If you are getting into Tier One, like most products, you should be selling immediately if you hit outside of your PC - values rarely hold long term from this product.
2024 Panini Stars & Stripes USA Baseball
The amateur focused product for players from Team USA Baseball past and present is scheduled to release on Friday, July 5th. For all the info, see This Week in Baseball Cards from the end of May when this product was originally scheduled to release. ***Update - as expected, the Hobby version went on sale on Friday at $100 per box. The H2 version is currently scheduled for Wednesday, July 17th.