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 two scheduled releases - 2022 Topps Update Series and 2022 Panini Chronicles. 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? Heck, 2022 Topps Chrome Ben Baller Edition is also lurking out there as a potential online release as well. Leaf also teased 2022 Perfect Game Metal around 10 days ago, but gave zero info on a release date, so we should always be looking for that to show up as well.
2022 Topps Update Series
The final installment of the three Topps Flagship products every year, 2022 Topps Update Series is scheduled to release on Friday, October 28th.
There are two hobby formats - a regular Hobby box and a Jumbo Hobby box. The regular Hobby guarantees one auto OR relic plus one silver pack. These silver packs are not to be confused with the silver packs we are seeing with the Topps Chrome debacle. The Flagship silver packs are typically four cards in the throwback design, in this case 1987 Topps Baseball, given the mojo parallel treatment. There are chances at color parallels as well as bonus autos in these packs. The Jumbo Hobby box format comes with one guaranteed auto, two guaranteed relics, with one of those relics typically being a manufactured relic, and two silver packs. Box prices have been all over the place pre-sale, but at the moment regular Hobby boxes are around $115 and Jumbo Hobby boxes are around $230. Last year Topps sold regular Hobby boxes for $79.99 and retail blaster boxes for $20. As usual, they did not sell Jumbo Hobby boxes on their website. I expect the $79.99 price point again as that’s what we’ve seen for Series 1 and 2 this year, which should drive down prices to this level on release day. All of the various retail formats are likely in play as well. ***Update - Topps dropped regular Hobby boxes for the expected $79.99 on release day.
The design is what we’ve seen from Flagship all year long, so I wont belabor the topic here. The main differentiator with Update Series will be All-Star game themed cards and the manufactured relics look to be commemorating the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier.
The checklist was just released and it’s good, especially in comparison to what we’ve seen over the past few years. Essentially it is composed of rookie cards, rookie debut cards, vet cards, and ex-MLB players in insert sets and short prints. The base rookie cards will be headlined by Julio Rodriguez, Bobby Witt Jr., and Spencer Torkelson - the trio given the short print style treatment for the most part up until now. The rookie checklist actually should be relatively strong beneath these guys as well as getting rookie debut cards that have had their base rookie cards in Series 1 or 2. Other rookies will include Seiya Suzuki, CJ Abrams, Hunter Greene, MJ Melendez, and plenty of others. You can see my full breakdown of the players with their first base Flagship rookie cards in the product in my release day article.
My interest in Update Series is usually entirely driven by the checklist, and I think it’s a good checklist this year. So I am definitely interested in picking up some cards from it even if there are no Giants cards worth going out of my way for. That isn’t to say I would be buying a regular Hobby box, though, because I really would prefer a guaranteed auto given the price point. And the Jumbo Hobby price point, if I did want to guarantee the auto, is quite a bit more than I am willing to pay. It’s most likely retail (hangers are bangers) and perhaps some cheap breaks
2022 Panini Chronicles Baseball
The kitchen sink of baseball products, 2022 Panini Chronicles Baseball is scheduled to release on Friday, October 28th.
There are two hobby configurations - a regular Hobby box and a First Off The Line Hobby box. Each format has three autos and one relic on average with the FOTL Hobby box having one of those autos as an Obsidian Electric Etch Orange Parallel numbered to 75 or less. Regular Hobby boxes are around $130 pre-sale at the moment while the FOTL Hobby boxes went to Dutch Auction last week starting at $300 and went all the way to the floor of $130. The Regular Hobby boxes will go on sale on the Panini website on release day for $130.50. There will be all the various retail formats more than likely as well.
The design of the base chronicles card is always underwhelming, and while we haven’t seen it on the sell sheet, it’s likely similar to years past with a full white border, player action shot, the Chronicles branding and nothing else really interesting. Truly one of the least interesting things about this product every year. What is interesting, as I said above, is that this is the kitchen sink product. You get at least 30 to 40 different brands represented (depending on how you consider things like the various formulations of the Contenders type stuff). You can pretty much find something for everyone to enjoy. Well, at least something for everyone that doesn’t mind unlicensed cards that is. Some of the new brands include Vertex, Marquee, Essentials, and Deep Space. I’m most curious to see what the Deep Space brand looks like because I believe I’ve seen all the other new brands in other sports previously.
The checklist for Chronicles is hard to accurately describe - I always feel like I hit big name rookies and vets on a regular basis because each brand is typically no more than 50 names long. And the vets are almost always really strong ones like Shohei Ohtani, Ronald Acuña Jr., Fernando Tatis Jr., etc. The rookies list is a lot longer but we get the big names with Julio Rodriguez, Bobby Witt Jr., Spencer Torkelson, Wander Franco, and Oneil Cruz. Unfortunately, as we’ve started to see in Panini products lately, Julio Rodriguez does not appear to be part of the auto portion of the checklist. I think Prizm and Immaculate might be the main exceptions in 2022 so far.
Overall Chronicles is a fun product and I enjoy ripping it and getting into a break or two. Given the unlicensed nature and general lack of ROI, it’s not a product to go crazy over. But there are fun sets, rainbows, and players to PC in the product, usually at affordable prices.