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 hobby products scheduled for release - 2022 Topps Sterling, 2022 Leaf Slabs & Stitches, and 2022 Topps Gypsy Queen. This post will be updated if more news and/or product drops occur throughout the week. Perhaps 2021 Bowman Heritage (shrug emoji)?
2022 Topps Sterling
2022 Topps Sterling Baseball is a high end product in its third year back after a ten year hiatus is scheduled to release on Wednesday, May 18th.
There is only one configuration - a regular Hobby box. The box contains two mini boxes of one card each for a total of two cards/hits per box. Boxes are running around $1K pre-sale right now. Last year Topps sold these direct from their website for $660 and I expect it to see a healthy jump in 2022 if Topps does in fact sell it direct. ***Update - Topps did sell it direct and it sold out almost immediately with the significant year over year price jump to $849.99.
The design isn’t really the headliner here - it’s mostly focused on appearing high end and should, if it follows the same setup as last year, have a foil finish. It’s really about the relics, on card autos, and cut autos. For relics you will find jumbo jersey letter one of one relics, bat knobs and bat knob + autos, bat nameplates and bat nameplates + autos, and legend relics.
The checklist is almost exclusively current vets and ex-MLB players. There appears to be two rookies in a small subset called Sterling Debuts Autograph Relics - Vidal Brujan and Wander Franco. You’ll find current stars like Bo Bichette, Fernando Tatis Jr., Juan Soto, Ronald Acuña Jr., Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Ex-MLB players include Cal Ripken Jr., Derek Jeter, Ichiro, Ken Griffey Jr., and Nolan Ryan. Cut autos will include baseball legends like Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Satchel Paige, and Honus Wagner as well as non-baseball historical figures like Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, Katherine Hepburn, Mae West, Nancy Reagan, Robin WIlliams, and many more.
I love the checklist of Sterling. I love the relics in Sterling. The design of Sterling is whatever. The price of Sterling is for high-rollers only. What I didn’t mention in the checklist is that even what you think would be really good names, hall of fame players, return 10% or less on the box price. Players like Rod Carew, Steve Carlton, Tom Glavine and the aforementioned Vidal Brujan rookie card are going to be significant dents to the pocketbook if you paid full price for sealed boxes. I don’t own a Topps Sterling card and I don’t see that changing unless I go bottom feeding just to say I do, which is something I’ve done before with other products. And honestly the cards I do want from this product aren’t going to be in my price range - the cut autos, the bat knobs, and the bat nameplates. It’s an easy, but unfortunate, pass for me.
2022 Leaf Stitches & Slabs
2022 Leaf Stitches & Slabs is a new repack type of product for Leaf scheduled to release on Tuesday, May 17th.
There is only one configuration - a “Hobby” box. I put that in quotes since I have no clue what Leaf will eventually call it or what it will even look like since it consists of an autographed jersey and a buyback card, most likely slabbed. They are going for around $350 a box at the moment. As it is a new product, I am uncertain whether Leaf will sell this direct and have not seen anything saying whether they will or wont.
There is nothing to discuss from an actual design perspective since the cards themselves are buybacks. The sell sheet is showing only slabbed buyback cards, and given the name of the product, it’s probably safe to assume all of the buybacks are slabbed. The buy backs are also not exclusively Leaf cards, but can be any cards from any manufacturer in the past as there is actually nothing that prevents Leaf from doing that. This includes iconic cards like the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. Rookie and a 1993 Upper Deck SP Derek Jeter, The main thing to know about the autographed jerseys is that they are custom jerseys and are not official, meaning they will not have any team or league licensing - likely lacking any logos.
The checklist is not released, but aside from the slabbed cards, the autographed jerseys on the sell sheet include Mariano Rivera, Fernando Tatis Jr., Ronald Acuña Jr., Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Vin Scully.
Given the price point, this is an easy pass. I am not a huge jersey collector anymore (where am I going to hang it?) and the fact that these will not have logos is a big negative for me personally. I’ve seen so many repack products over the years and every year the quality gets worse and worse. I would like to think that Leaf isn’t going to go down that path, but even if they don’t, this price point is not one where I would want to make that assumption without seeing a large volume of it opened first. I’ve been burned by repacks, but worse, I’ve seen so so many repack products in the past few years be really really rough. If you are interested in this, I would definitely recommend finding a bigger breaker that is opening a lot of it, taking notes on all the buy backs, comping them, and then deciding if it’s worth getting into.
2022 Topps Gypsy Queen
2022 Topps Gypsy Queen is a lower end product with a unique flavor scheduled to release on Friday, May 20th.
There is one hobby configuration - a regular Hobby box. You are guaranteed 2 autos plus 3 chrome cards per hobby box. They are running around $140 pre-sale. Topps sold Hobby boxes for $149.99 last year which seemed like a bump from previous years, so I don’t anticipate them changing much more than $10 up or down from last year’s price. I want to say a few years ago, you could get these for under $100, but don’t know for sure. There are going to be all the various retail formats including blasters, cellos, and loose retail packs. ***Update - Topps began selling Hobby boxes for $139.99 on Monday, May 23rd and Blaster boxes for $24.99.
The design is very distinctive and is reminiscent of the mechanical fortune tellers found in old-timey carnival settings. The base should be the traditional antiquey brown coloring with a full border. It looks like the Bazooka Back parallels are not in the 2022 product which is something I liked, but they tend to change up the non-colored parallels occasionally. This year they’ve gone down to just one of those with the Missing Nameplate parallel. Another thing I really like about GQ are the image variations. Returning for its regularly scheduled appearance are the Jackie Robinson Day image variation and new this year are the City Connect and Field of Dreams image variations. I think the both the new ones will be pretty popular additions. The inserts really lean into the fortune telling theme with a crystal ball insert, astrological signs themed insert, and various others. It’s all very fun. Booklets are another really nice possible hit, especially for a lower tier product. Add in typically all on card autos and there isn’t much to complain about unless you don’t like the overall theme in general for whatever reason.
The checklist is pretty standard fare with a mix of rookies, veterans, and ex-MLB players. For rookies, you will Wander Franco and Oneil Cruz in the base and various auto sets. You can also find Bobby Witt Jr. with autos in the product, but no base rookie card. The auto list is long, so there are going to be plenty of less than stellar hits, but you’ll still have shots at Juan Soto, Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. for current players and Derek Jeter, Ichiro, and Bo Jackson for retired players.
I really enjoy Gypsy Queen from a fun perspective as well as a change of pace. At its current price point, it really becomes a deterrent. Most of the cards tend to not hold a ton of long term value. Hobby boxes at or under $100 make this a much more attractive product. Going much above that and it is more of a singles, retail, and breaks product, which is probably where I’ll dabble in GQ like I have in year’s past.