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 no scheduled releases, but we are getting at least one, perhaps two, online exclusive releases - 2022 Topps x Derek Jeter - Call of the Captain. We may also see 2022 Topps Finest Flashbacks. This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2022 Topps x Derek Jeter
2022 Topps x Derek Jeter - Call of the Captain was dropped on the Topps website on Wednesday, August 10th and will expire on September 9th if it has not sold out by then. They will ship 35 to 40 days (allegedly) after September 9th.
There is one format which I guess you could classify as a Hobby box. It costs $49.99 and comes with a single pack of 15 cards and guarantees one hit, either an auto or relic. All of the autos are from Derek Jeter and are numbered either to 5 or to 1 and that leads to a total of 132 autos in the entire product run. Of the 14 remaining cards, nine will be base, three will be foilboards (non-numbered more than likely), and two numbered parallels. A hobby buddy (justins_cards on twitter) did some quick math on a discord server - based on the parallels and 50 card checklist, that’s roughly 17,875 boxes which leads to a 0.07% chance you will hit an auto in a box. Not great, Bob.
The design is a full border in dark grey with a photo of the player in action and a black nameplate at the bottom. The Jeter autos will be throwbacks to Topps designs from Jeter’s playing days from 1993 to 2015 (technically 1993 was a draft picks card and 2015 was post-retirement but sure, close enough).
The checklist is, as mentioned, a 50 base card set with some rookies but mostly vets and retired players. For the rookies, we’ve got three of the big four with Wander Franco, Julio Rodriguez, and Bobby Witt Jr. We’re just missing Oneil Cruz. The only other rookie in the checklist is Hunter Greene. For the vets and retired players, there really isn’t a bad name in the list.
If you are a Yankees or a Derek Jeter fan, I wouldn’t mind spending $50 on a box. If you’re not either of those, I think it’s an easy pass. If you want someone on the checklist, probably easiest to just buy their card on the singles market. And that’s essentially what I would have been doing if there was even one Giants player on the checklist.