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 we have three scheduled release - 2022 Bowman Sterling, 2022 Panini Three and Two, and 2022 Topps Luminaries. This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week. Yet again I say perhaps we see 2022 Topps Archives Snapshots online exclusive drop. Maybe we get 2022 Topps Chrome Sonic Edition, whatever that is. Or even 2022 Topps Chrome Sapphire Edition?
2022 Bowman Sterling
A mid-tier prospect-focused release that is back for its fourth year as a revived standalone product, 2022 Bowman Sterling is scheduled to go live on Wednesday, October 19th.
There is only one format - a regular Hobby box. Each Hobby box contains five mini-boxes with a single pack. Each mini-box guarantees one auto for a total of five autos per hobby box along with various base and parallel cards. No relics/memorabilia cards are present in the product. Boxes are currently around $320 pre-sale. Last year Topps sold boxes direct from their website for $400 (oof). I believe Fanatics also sold Hobby boxes that when you bought them with discounted Fanatics gift cards, you could easily get under that price point. Hopefully Topps comes to their senses and sells it around what pre-sales are going for, although I have heard that this year was expensive even at allocation prices. ***Update - Topps posted both single Hobby boxes as well as cases (12 boxes) for sale on their website. Single Hobby boxes are $349.99 and a case is $3,799.89.
The design with Bowman Sterling is one that never really seems to take any queues from previous years’ versions and that holds true this year. And every year I say I don’t like the design and then over time it grows on me, especially when I have it in hand. This year is no different. A very basic design with fading angular lines framing and crossing behind the player and player name-plate. The best I can say at the moment is that there really isn’t any other products that look the same which does make it stand out.
The checklist for the base is evenly split between 50 rookies and 50 prospects. However, when it comes to the autographs, it is heavily weighted towards the prospects. And you will also find some desirable vets sprinkled into some of the insert auto checklists like Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Mike Trout, Ronald Acuña Jr., Bryce Harper, etc. For the rookies, we have the names we want to see - Wander Franco, Oneil Cruz, Spencer Torkelson, Bobby Witt Jr., and Julio Rodriguez. For the prospects, we also get a good helping of desirable players - Blaze Jordan, Benny Montgomery, Colton Cowser, Colson Montgomery, Cristian Hernandez, Curtis Mead, Elly De La Cruz, Ezequiel Tovar, George Valera, Henry Davis, Jordan Lawlar, and Marcelo Mayer. In general Bowman Sterling does tend to put together strong checklists and this year is no different.
I like Bowman Sterling, but not enough to pay the going rate for wax prices or even most break prices. I do tend to like buying singles in the aftermarket because they often go for really cheap prices, even for some of the better names. But that is also a buyer beware situation - if you are ripping or breaking, your ROI is tenuous, and if you are buying in the singles aftermarket for future gain, it is likely not a great approach.
2022 Panini Three and Two
A new product from Panini this year which is basically an expansion of the Panini One brand into baseball, 2022 Panini Three and Two debuts on Friday, October 21st.
There are two formats - a regular Hobby box and a First Off The Line (FOTL) Hobby box. Each configuration comes with five cards composed of a base card, rookie or prospect card, insert card, encased relic card, and an encased autographed card. For FOTL boxes, the Auto, Relic, and base card are all FOTL parallels, but the rookie or prospect card can in theory be replaced by a base card. At least that’s how it reads - we shall see when the product starts being opened. Regular Hobby boxes are going for around $225 pre-sale at the moment and will be sold direct from Panini’s website on Friday (will update pricing once it’s released). FOTL boxes were sold via Dutch Auction on Panini’s website this past Thursday, October 13th. They started at $600 and reportedly sold out almost at the floor ($200) for just over $216. ***Update - Panini is selling regular Hobby boxes from their website for $200.
The design is very meh for me. My first impression when the product was announced was along the lines of “why” and “it feels like this isn’t anything new or exciting” for the base and auto cards. The only exception for me was the Swag insert, which are characterized as ultra-rare. The sell sheet example we have is a team color background with the word Swag writ large but not obtrusively behind an image of the player that looks somewhat drawn but somewhat real. Not sure what the word is for that, but I like the look of it - we’ll see how the rest of these cards look.
The checklist is comprised of prospects, rookies, vets, and ex-MLB players. The vets/ex-MLB’ers comprise 100 cards of base, the rookies the next 50 base, and then the prospects another 50 cards, but listed as a subset (so Beckett doesn’t get its panties in a wad about them being rookie cards and not prospect cards). While we again get the majority of rookies we are chasing along the lines of Wander, Oneil Cruz, Tork, Witt, and J-Rod, only four of the five have autos in the product with J-Rod being the one without. For the prospects, we get some good names along with an interesting one I don’t think I’ve seen before. Elly De La Cruz, Jordan Walker, and Adley Rutschman highlight the prospect autos. We also get 2022 draftee Kumar Rocker, but he’s listed under the Vanderbilt (college) team indicating this product went to production prior to the July MLB draft. Jeremy Peña is another interesting one in that he falls under the prospect autos as well as in multiple portions of the rookie checklist. Finally, the one prospect name I don’t think I’ve seen before (perhaps he’s been in some other unlicensed products that I’ve missed) is the Cardinals Won-Bin Cho.
I feel like this will be a hot product for about two weeks or so as breakers try to work through their allocations and then it will fade away into the morass of over-priced unlicensed products. Essentially one auto plus a relic and then some non-hits for $200+ is not going to be sought after the hobby given it’s unlicensed status. However, it is a new product, and the hobby tends to like those until the next squirrel pops up its head a week or two later. One final note is that the Three and Two name is an obvious alignment with the Panini One (football) and Panini One and One (basketball) brands. If you haven’t heard it already, the “why isn’t it called Full Count” or some version of that will be the widespread commentary on the product. Heck, I made the joke to some hobby friends when the product was first announced. But I am already tired of hearing it and am ashamed, ashamed I tell you, for making such a gimme joke (on the other hand, it probably qualifies me to get another shot at writing for the Daily Sheet in the future - winky face). There are Full Count parallels numbered out of 32, so obviously Panini is quite aware of the allusion. Anyways, I think it’s probably a product to avoid for ripping and breaking, but in a few months, after prices in the singles market inevitably drop, could be some good values found.
2022 Topps Luminaries
The higher end single hitter product 2022 Topps Luminaries is scheduled to release on Friday, October 21st.
There is only one configuration - a regular Hobby box. It comes with a single encased autographed card - there are no base cards in the product. The only exception to the card being encased is when it is a booklet. Currently you can find boxes around $450 pre-sale. Last year Topps sold boxes direct from their website for $350. ***Update - Topps has Hobby boxes for sale for the same price as last year at $349.99.
The design is typical Topps high-end - whites and greys with a touch of gold outlines for the most part. Luminaries does tend to focus on highlighting the statistical numbers that make the players in the checklist baseball “luminaries” and will boldly display those statistics, often in the form of cut-out relics. Only in rare circumstances do those numbers actually add to the card as opposed to detract from it for me personally, but I totally understand if people are into them, especially for the ex-MLB players where those numbers are static.
The checklist is typical Luminaries with rookies, vets, and ex-MLB players with the focus on those vets and ex-MLB players. Fortunately we do have shots at Wander, Oneil Cruz, Tork, Witt, and J-Rod. For the vets, it’s all the usual suspects plus some other good to great ones, although a few are going to be real downers. Same story with the ex-MLB players. And given the price point, those Nelson Cruz and Alex Bregman and Dave Parker and Tim Raines are going to be painful from an ROI perspective. A final note is that there are some very, very good 1 of 1 non-sport cut autos to be found in the product along the lines of Barack Obama, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Teddy Roosevelt, and JFK. Not to mention the baseball related cuts which are also really great like Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Satchel Paige, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Roberto Clemente, etc.
I often see Luminaries boxes and breaks go quickly, so it does seem like a popular product for ripping and breaking. It sure is a big gamble given the single card and high price point, so if you’re looking for that, it’s a good product to go for. I’m not into that, so it’s a product I avoid and only own one card from. I picked up a Rod Carew auto from it a few years back just to own a card from the product - I paid under $50 for the card. And that’s why the gamble is real when it comes to a product like Luminaries.