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 - 2023 Topps Tier One Baseball. Maybe we see another surprise online drop or two like we did last week - perhaps Bowman Chrome Sapphire or something like that. ***Update for the new 2023 Topps Flagship Collection (currently found at Costco), 2023 Topps 206 High Series, 2023 Topps Holiday going on sale on the Topps website, and the 2023 Museum Collection Pre-sale.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2023 Topps Tier One
The mid-tier product that originally was scheduled for a pre-sale in August and eventually went through the pre-sale in September is now set to release on Wednesday, October 25th.
There is only one configuration - a regular Hobby box. Hobby boxes come with a single pack that typically contains three cards - one relic and two autos. On occasion you will encounter packs/boxes with four cards with them - sometimes two relics and two autos and sometimes one relic and three autos. There are no base cards in the product. The pre-sale prices were $199.99 for the hobby boxes with a customer limit of 2 boxes and cases were $2,399.99 with a customer limit of 2 cases. ***Update - Topps is selling boxes and cases as scheduled on Wednesday, October 25th. Hobby boxes are selling for $249.99, a $50 premium over the pre-sale price, with a customer limit of 4 boxes. Cases of Hobby boxes are selling for $2,909.88, a $500+ premium over the pre-sale price, with a customer limit of 2 cases.
The design is standard Tier One - golds and whites and blacks and light brown/sand colors on thicker card stock. Sticker autos should only be encountered in multi-player autos and some relic auto combo cards while the rest are on card or rare cut autos. Relics are typically small cutouts of plain jerseys or bats, but you did get button relics and jumbo patch relics that are really nice. Usually the nicer relics will show up one per case. Relics are almost always game-used rather than player-worn, but every year that could easily change. Lower-numbered autos will also use gold ink or silver ink in some of the autograph sets - depending on the design, these can look really good or really bad (hard to read).
The checklist is still not yet released as of Monday, but we can pretty much assume that it will follow the standard format of rookies, vets, and ex-MLB players. I would expect most all of the rookie chases to be in the product. This section will be updated if anything interesting pops up when the checklist does go live.
This is one of many mid-tier products from Topps that is hot for a week or two during the release window and then fades away pretty fast. There is no real gimmick here either that helps drive long lasting interest. The ROI on it is typically bad from a box standpoint, and from a case standpoint, there are usually only one or two boxes out of the 12 in a case that make their money back/help pay for the case. I like grabbing PC cards from this in the aftermarket once the release window is far back in the rear-view mirror, but otherwise this is a product that should have been discontinued in the Topps product house-cleaning that was announced at the beginning of the year.
2023 Topps Flagship Collection
Out of left field, on Tuesday, October 24th a new Flagship configuration called 2023 Topps Flagship Collection started making the rounds on social media.
This is currently being sold at Costco for $33.99 - it is not known if this is exclusive to Costco or if will show up in other retail locations. It contains two packs of 2023 Topps Series 1, two packs of 2023 Topps Series 2, six packs of 2023 Topps Update Series, and three Flagship Collection packs containing five cards each. These Flagship Collection cards are a different design than the base 2023 Topps Flagship design that looks like a more basic, full-bordered design. It’s honestly boring, and seems like a missed opportunity. A new insert called “Carrying the Flag” will also come in these packs and are supposed to be “ultra rare”. One in five boxes will also come with “short printed” oversized cards, because that’s exactly what the hobby has been asking for (eye roll).
I vividly recall during the junk wax era seeing trading cards at Costco, and my buddy’s dad buying boxes of 1990 Impel Marvel Series 1 for his son and I to rip. This feels eerily along those lines - a card manufacturer printing cards endlessly and looking to repackage mostly junk to unsuspecting buyers that no collector is interested in. Sure, the parallels still might hold some value as it seems like it’s implied that the Flagship exclusive cards will have parallels, but overall no one was asking for this. It’s just another check mark on the checklist of the new junk wax era or whatever you want to call this current trading card time and place we are now in.
2023 Topps 206 High Series
The second installment of the Topps 206 product for 2023, Topps announced High Series will be going for sale on the Topps website on Thursday, October 26th at 11 AM ET.
It’s probably safe to assume the configuration will be the same as Low Series, sold and released around the beginning of July - $54.99 per box with a customer limit of 10 boxes. Each box contained four packs of 10 cards each, with autographs falling 1 in 3 boxes. Low Series sold out relatively fast, but I don’t expect that to happen again with High Series simply due to poor market timing. It looks like Topps has only provided the auto checklist at this point, which includes the following rookies: Corbin Carroll, Shea Langeliers, Triston Casas, Vinnie Pasquantino, Riley Greene, Adley Rutschman, and Michael Harris II. We also get a base of Anthony Volpe shown on the sell page.
This will be updated once it goes live on the Topps website. ***Update - Topps is selling the product as announced on their website on Thursday, October 26th. They are selling boxes for $54.99 with a customer limit of 50. They are also selling 5 box bundles for $249.99, essentially a $25 discount off the single box price, with a customer limit of 10.
2023 Topps Holiday
On Wednesday, October 11th, Topps Holiday initially went on sale on the Walmart website. Two weeks later, Topps began selling the same Mega Boxes on their website for the same price of $29.99 and a customer limit of 10 boxes. Shipping of the product is stated as 3-5 days, implying that it is live. It sold out in roughly an hour or less after going live.
The design is based off of the Flagship design but given the Christmas/Holiday/Winter treatment. One of my favorite products if they can do it right, and it looks like they’ve done a relatively good job with it this year. The main photo has a falling snow overlay, but it’s not obscuring like these designs have done in the past. Short Prints are one of the better parts, if you’re looking at it from a fun perspective. The sell sheet information is showing a popular one with a bat being replaced by a candy cane.
The checklist was posted as well with all of the usual Topps Holiday goodies (faux relics) and the base set is a mixture across all of the Flagship checklists (Series 1, Series 2, and Update Series). That means essentially all of this year’s rookie chases are there - Corbin Carroll, Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Masataka Yoshida, Nolan Gorman, Bryce Miller, Eury Pérez, Riley Greene, Gabriel Moreno, Vinnie Pasquantino, Michael Harris II, Francisco Álvarez, Josh Jung, Anthony Volpe, Zach Neto, Grayson Rodriguez, Brett Baty, Triston Casas, Mason Miller, Matt McLain, Kodai Senga, and others.
If you don’t like fun, then this isn’t the product for you. If you do like cards and having fun with the hobby, it’s worth giving it a shot.
2023 Topps Museum Collection Pre-Sale
Topps dropped the 2023 Topps Museum Collection pre-sale unannounced (although I speculated it would come in the Prospects Live Discord) on Thursday, October 26th. They are selling boxes for $374.99 with a customer limit of 2. Last year Topps sold boxes of Museum Collection for $399.99. Each box comes with two autos and two relics. The design looks pretty standard for Museum Collection. The checklist is comprised of rookies, vets, and ex-MLB players. The rookies have all of the major chases with Corbin Carroll, Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, Jordan Walker, Anthony Volpe, Francisco Álvarez, Brett Baty, Eury Pérez, Bobby Miller, Triston Casas, Nolan Gorman, Josh Jung, Masataka Yoshida, Kodai Senga, and others. The release date listed, subject to change, is November 22nd.