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 we have two online releases - 2023 Bowman Chrome Mega Box and 2023 Topps x Bob Ross. 2023 Panini Select Baseball First Off The Line Dutch Auction will also run prior to next week’s product release.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week. ***Update - Tacofractor details revealed
2023 Bowman Chrome Mega Box
The Mega Box configuration of the 2023 Bowman Chrome release went live on the Fanatics and Topps websites on Wednesday, October 4th.
The configuration is a 7 pack box where 5 packs are base cards from the full release and 2 packs are mega packs. The mega packs contain 5 cards each where each card is using the mojo parallel of the base card and color mojo parallels are available to be pulled from these packs. While autos are not guaranteed, they can be pulled from the mega packs. The autos are on card and they use a different image than the base card which leads to Topps not including the 1st Bowman logo on the card. This lack of 1st Bowman logo will lead to lower values than the 1st Bowman logo autographed cards. Each box costs $44.99 regardless of source. Topps is limiting it to 4 boxes per customer while Fanatics is limiting it to 8 boxes per customer.
The base mojo checklist is the same as the 100 chrome prospects section of the 2023 Bowman Chrome checklist, so nothing new there. The auto list is much shorter, and of the players who had 1st Bowman autos in 2023 Bowman Chrome, the big names carrying over are pretty much Ethan Salas and Felnin Celesten. The rest of the big names are mostly from previous Bowman products like Jackson Holliday, Spencer Jones, and Brooks Lee. There is one mojo insert auto - the Iconic insert and the only player this is available for is Mike Trout. We’ll see, but I would not be surprised to see this is a sticker auto.
Ever since Bowman Mega Boxes got above $30, I started to lose interest in them. Once they stopped giving anything but base cards in the non-mega packs, it essentially killed what interest I had left in buying and ripping these on my own. I don’t mind cheap shots at large breaks of this, but for the most part I’m buying singles in the after market as prices drop.
2023 Topps x Bob Ross: The Joy of Baseball
A new collaboration project with the Bob Ross estate, 2023 Topps x Bob Ross is scheduled to to drop on the Topps website on Thursday, October 5th at 12 PM EST.
Disclaimer - I have yet to watch the recent Bob Ross content about how his estate or licensing or whatever is being controlled by people just looking to make a quick buck - at least that is what I’ve been told. I’m sure I’ll get around to it at some point but I won’t be commenting further on that aspect of this product.
There are two configurations - Happy Little Boxes and then a Collector’s Edition. The details we have been told up to this point on these configurations - the Collector’s Edition comes with 2 autographs per box, a Topps pen in the shape of a paint brush, and 8 packs per box with 12 cards in each pack. The Happy Little Boxes are not guaranteed autos with the odds of hitting it are 1 in 4 boxes. At this point we don’t know how many packs are in each of these boxes, but I would guess one pack per box given the autograph odds. ***Update - Topps dropped the product and their website crashed with the demand. About half an hour after the drop, the website was up and the virtual waiting line page was in pace. Collector’s Editions and cases of Collector’s Editions were immediately sold out, and Happy Little Boxes sold out shortly thereafter. Collector’s Editions were being sold at $199.99 per box (limit 20), cases of Collector’s Editions (10 boxes per case) were being sold at $1,979.99, and Happy Little Boxes were being sold at $24.99. Happy Little Boxes were confirmed to be one pack per box.
The design is based on the Bob Ross landscape painting design, but it seems like the art may have been done by card artists rather than using actual images from Ross’s original art. It’s still not confirmed one way or another, but I hope it ends up being Ross’s original art images being used as the backgrounds as I, like many, was a fan of Bob Ross. Autos appear to be sticker autos which is disappointing.
The checklist has not yet been released. From the sell sheet images, we have Corbin Carroll, Adley Rutschman, Anthony Volpe, and Masataka Yoshida for rookies with Mark McGwire, Albert Pujols, and Bo Jackson as ex-MLB players. The box art also includes J-Rod, Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, and Gunnar Henderson. There will also be a Super Short Print of Bob Ross using the 2023 Flagship design. ***Update - No checklist was provided from Topps on the sell pages for this product.
This is a product that will be really price dependent on how much I am willing to get into it. I imagine that it will be beyond what I am willing to pay, but any price under $100 for the Collectors Edition is likely a hit. Regardless of my thoughts, I think this will be a quick sell out. ***Update - it did sell out quick, and the Collector’s Edition was easily double what I was will to pay.
2023 Panini Select Baseball First Off The Line
2023 Panini Select Baseball First Off The Line will be going through a Dutch Auction sale on Thursday, October 5th at 12 PM EST. The starting price is $350 and the floor is $135. Each box comes with 3 autos with FOTL exclusive parallels, but is essentially the same configuration as the regular Hobby box. The regular product will be released next week and will be fully covered in next week’s This Week in Baseball Cards. ***Update - it looks like this hit the floor of $135, but as usual with Panini’s Dutch Auctions, unless you are constantly refreshing, you can never be sure of exactly when a FOTL product sells out. And I am not about to be out here clicking refresh on the Panini website every minute.
TacoFractor Promotion
On Thursday, October 5th, Topps revealed the details of their TacoFractor promotion.
What are TacoFractors?: An insert card found in 2023 Topps Chrome and 2023 Topps Cosmic Chrome, there was a total of 299 players that ended up with TacoFractor cards across the two products, with the addition of the Wild Card version for what turned out to be a catch-all for every player that was not part of that group of 299 players. Each TacoFractor card has a print run of 5 cards.
Promotion Details: The first player to steal a base in this year’s World Series will designate the winning cards for the TacoFractor promotion. For example, if Jose Altuve is the first player to steal a base in the 2023 World Series, the five Jose Altuve TacoFractor cards in existence are eligible for redemption of the prize, and all other TacoFractor cards likely go back to just being low-numbered quirky inserts. If a player that does not have a TacoFractor card, like Phillies rookie Johan Rojas, is the first player to steal a base in the 2023 World Series, then the five Wild Card TacoFractor cards are the winners and eligible for redemption of the prize. All winning claims must be submitted by December 31st, 2023, so winners basically have a two month window to get their claims in, and hopefully all five cards have been pulled and their owners are aware of the promotion. Winners have to be 18 years or older and a legal resident of one of the 50 states or the District of Columbia to claim the prize. This is all part of a larger Taco Bell promotion with their app and a Steal a Base, Steal a Taco promotion, but I won’t belabor those details.
The Prize: Tacos For Life! Well, not actually. It’s being billed as Tacos For Life, but in reality the winner(s) will receive a Taco Bell digital gift card worth $15,000 and an additional check worth $5,250 that is designed to help “defray the tax liability”. They specifically call out that it’s 35% of the gift card value because that is the general rule of thumb percentage of taxes you have to pay on prize winnings. However, it’s a slippery slope as that cash payout is representing 35% of the gift card, but not 35% of the actual total payout of $20,250 (15K gift card + $5,250 cash = $20,250; 35% of $20,250 is $7,087.50). It’s nice to get that extra cash, but you’re still not fully reimbursed for your tax liability, and really can’t be as the more cash you get, the higher dollars get for that reimbursement. Topps simply should have left the 35% number out of it, but it’s a small quibble.
Thoughts: Gimmicks and promotions can be fun, and I believe Topps/Fanatics definitely had that intention here. I feel like they mostly missed the mark with this one from a collector’s standpoint even if it does end up being a win from a corporate standpoint.
From a collector’s standpoint, I wish the cards were better looking, but that is a subjective thing. It would have been nice if they were aesthetically pleasing for the simple sake of the 299 out of the 300 subjects that aren’t winners and won’t be redeemed. None of the details are on these cards about the potential promotion other than a link to the website, which up until this announcement, was basically telling people to hold onto these cards for a future announcement. That has led to a three plus months with Chrome and less with Cosmic Chrome where no one had a true idea of the potential value of these cards. Now it’s a gold rush gamble for the Wild Card and players still on the playoffs, while the rest of the players are afterthoughts because the nebulous, speculative value is now concrete. I really wish the the mystery around these cards would have been cut out of this promotion as it leaves somewhat of a bad taste in my mouth (unlike Taco Bell, yum 😉).
From a corporate standpoint, I’m sure the idea was to push a ton of new users, especially from the hobby, towards the Taco Bell app. As you can win free tacos and free chrome and cosmic chrome packs in the Taco Bell app as part of this overall promotion, it’s probably going to be a success for Taco Bell. For Topps, it probably leads to a small bump in buying and ripping 2023 Topps Chrome and 2023 Topps Cosmic Chrome as people take the gamble on trying to win this promotion as well as increased awareness of their brand and products through this promotion. So I get why this was done from this angle.
At least we now know what the mystery is with TacoFractor cards and I’m hoping we’ll start seeing more well done versions of this in the future along the lines of FerrariFractors, HouseFractors, RolexFractors, CashFractors, etc. in upcoming releases.
For all of the details, visit the topps website TacoFractor page.