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 Pro Debut.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
***Update - 2024 Bowman Chrome Mega pre-order is scheduled to go live on Thursday, September 5th - details below
2024 Topps Pro Debut
The minor league, Topps branded product is scheduled to release on Wednesday, September 4th. ***Update - Topps has slightly delayed the release out to Friday, September 6th.
There are two configurations - a regular Hobby box and a Jumbo Hobby box. Last year they changed up the format with a strange choice, and they’ve apparently continued with that format this year (Topps has yet to release the official chrome card count from what I could find). Hobby boxes are guaranteed four autos and 12 chrome cards. Jumbo Hobby boxes are guaranteed three autos and 36 chrome cards (if we assume the same chrome card count as last year, which I would assume is safe to do). As Ryan and I talked about on the last Local Card Pod, we’d much rather have the shot at the extra auto over the extra 24 chrome cards. I can see the argument the other way if you’re flipping singles, but as someone that is mainly a collector rather than a seller, give me the extra auto. Topps did not put this product on pre-order, so it’s tough to know what price point to expect on go live. Last year Topps sold Hobby boxes for $64.99. Topps did not sell Jumbo Hobby boxes direct. Currently Blowout is selling Hobby boxes for $89.95 and Jumbo Hobby boxes for $119.95. ***Update - Topps is selling regular Hobby boxes for $79.99 and Cases of Hobby boxes (12 per case) for $959.99. Jumbo Hobby boxes are $89.99 with Cases of Jumbo Hobby boxes (8 per case) for $719.99.
The design is based off of the 2024 Topps Flagship design, so there’s no real need to dive too deep into it. Another thing Ryan and I commented on in our last podcast was that the 2024 design had really grown on us. None of the inserts that we’ve seen in the marketing material really jump out to me. The Future Cornerstones autograph showcase a cosmic moon type of theme, which I do like. This product is a true minor league product. Unlike what you find in Bowman products where the prospects are depicted/airbrushed into their MLB team uniforms, Pro Debut is purely showing players in the Minor League team gear. Positives and negatives to that - it’s really cool to see players in uniforms you don’t often get to see, but the Hobby tends to not want to spend as much money on these cards. Beyond that, the only other thing to comment on is that this is purely a sticker auto product (as opposed to Heritage Minor League, the other Topps-branded minor league product which got axed in 2023, likely because of the on-card autographs in that product).
The checklist is full of top prospects - Walker Jenkins, Dylan Crews, Roman Anthony, Jackson Holiday, Sebastian Walcott, Wyatt Langford, Jackson Chourio, Josue De Paula, Paul Skenes (including autographs!), Colt Emerson, Ethan Salas, Aidan Miller, Jacob Wilson, and others. If a player was on any team from the Complex all the way up to Triple-A last year and did not debut in 2023, they were in consideration for the base prospect checklist. I think the main missing prospect is Jackson Merrill.
I like this product, but don’t love it. The sticker autos tends to be the primary reason why I don’t dive deep into it. However, with Topps Heritage Minor League seemingly a thing of the past, I may have to reassess that opinion moving forward. If Topps does sell Hobby boxes for $65 again, I think that ends up being a really nice deal to take advantage of, but if it starts going over $80, then I start to no longer be interested. We’ll see what they choose to do and go from there.
2024 Bowman Chrome Mega Box Pre-Order
The retail format with mojo parallels went up for pre-order on the Topps website on Thursday, September 5th. The release date is rumored to be Wednesday, October 2nd, although Topps does not specify it on their pre-order page. Single boxes are being sold for $44.99 while cases are being sold for $899.99 (20 boxes per case). As usual, there will be 5 base chrome packs and 2 mojo packs - each pack contains 5 cards, so you will get 10 total mojo cards. The mojo autographs, as usual, are shown as different photos from the full Bowman Chrome release autographs and are not going to have the 1st Bowman logo, significantly impacting the value of those cards. You can check out the 2024 Bowman Chrome Preview for all the details on the 1st Bowman (and more) prospects in the set.