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 is one scheduled release - 2023 Topps Museum Collection Baseball. We also got two online releases with 2023 Bowman Chrome Sapphire Edition and 2023 Topps Rip.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2023 Topps Museum Collection
The mid tier release from Topps went on pre-sale on Thursday, October 26th and went live on Wednesday, November 22nd.
There is only a single configuration - a regular Hobby box. Topps sold boxes for pre-sale at $374.99 with a customer limit of 2 boxes. Topps is now selling boxes for $399.99 with a customer limit of 4 boxes. They are also selling cases of Hobby boxes (12 boxes per case) for $4,655.88 with a customer limit of 2. As of Thursday, both options were still available on the Topps website. Last year, Topps sold Hobby boxes for $399.99. Each box comes with 4 packs with one hit in each pack - 2 autographs and 2 relic cards. There are no retail versions of the product.
The design is typical Museum Collection - full bordered greys and whites and some browns trying to give that higher end, “museum feel”. You’ll also get one sketch card reproduction per box called Canvas Collection Reprints to further that “art” and “museum” idea. Actual sketch cards are in the product as one of ones, but for whatever reason these are typically NOT the same image being reproduced for the Canvas Collection. Metal framed autographs are case hits, and the 1/1 version of the framed autograph is actually wood and not metal. Autos will be a mixture of on card and sticker, with sticker autos typically found on relic auto combo cards and multi-player cards. Relics can be really nice, with some game used material and some of those relics including MLB authentication stickers. I love the bat nameplates from this product and one day I hope to own one.
The checklist is comprised of rookies, vets, and ex-MLB players. The rookies have all of the major chases with Corbin Carroll, Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, Jordan Walker, Anthony Volpe, Francisco Álvarez, Brett Baty, Eury Pérez, Bobby Miller, Triston Casas, Nolan Gorman, Josh Jung, Masataka Yoshida, Kodai Senga, and others.
When I first got back into the hobby, Museum Collection was probably my favorite mid-tier product along with Triple Threads. As the years have gone by, both of those products have fallen down my list as the prices continue to escalate on them. For me, this has unfortunately become just an aftermarket singles product.
2023 Bowman Chrome Sapphire Edition
I’ve been expecting this product over the last month and finally on Monday, November 20th, for Montgomery Club members and on Tuesday, November 21st for the general public.
There is only one configuration - a regular Hobby box. Like years past, it’s 8 packs of 4 cards each for a total of 32 cards with 2 color parallels on average. I will see boxes with 3 color parallels on occasion. This year, however, Topps has added a short printed insert called Sapphire Selections. It comes one in ten boxes. Also new this year, there is also a much rarer autographed version of this insert, falling one in almost 60 boxes. Topps sold boxes to Montgomery Club members for $199.99 with a limit of one box. Topps then sold boxes for $219.99 and cases of boxes (10 per case) for $2,133.99.
The design is the same as the Bowman flagship stuff we’ve seen plenty of, just given the Sapphire treatment. The Sapphire Selections insert gives you a kind of gem feel with the same Sapphire treatment and they look pretty good in photos, but it’s not like they went out on a limb with them. No word yet on whether the autos are on card or stickers (I really hope they are on card).
The checklist for the base is identical to 2023 Bowman Chrome, so I won’t go too into depth there. Ethan Salas is the main prospect chase while the rookies of the year are both here for chasing with Corbin Carroll and Gunnar Henderson. All three of those players have Image Variation chase cards, along with a majority of the chase rookies and prospects.
I like these cards a lot, but I also am not interested in the big gamble of breaks or ripping personal boxes at the price point and long odds. If anything, I’ll likely just grab some PC cards in the singles market after the hype dies down.
2023 Topps Rip
Back for it’s fourth year, 2023 Topps Rip went live for Montgomery Club members on Tuesday, November 21st and to the general public on Wednesday, November 22nd.
There is only a single configuration - a regular Hobby box. It comes with 4 cards, each a rip card with a mini card waiting to be pulled inside it. All cards are numbered to 99 or less, but there are no guarantees on parallels or autos. Auto odds are one in four packs, which with one pack per box, puts the auto odds at one in four boxes. Topps is selling boxes for $99.99 with a customer limit of 4 boxes and this has essentially been the price point since the product debuted in 2020.
The design is mostly an afterthought with the base cards not really registering as anything interesting. The only design feature here worth a mention is the novelty of the rip card itself. Traditionally only found in Allen & Ginter, collectors chased them and Topps decided to give them their own product. It’s a Sophie’s choice situation when you do have a nice rip card. If you rip it, you kill a fair amount of the potential value - both from it no longer being in mint condition and from it no longer containing the mini card within. However, the mini card within could have even more value, perhaps a Shohei Ohtani autographed mini card or something along those lines. The mini cards are ugly three quarter border cards for the base and a Tear Card Terrors insert auto has been added this year. The Terrors insert looks good, giving off a horror type of vibe. But I don’t see any connection to the product, so while I like them, they aren’t anything I would go out of my way for.
The checklist is pretty standard for what we are seeing right now - rookies and vets in the base portion, spread across the flagship sets with some of the Update Series guys in there on their current teams like Gabriel Moreno on the Diamondbacks. Rookies include the big chase names - Corbin Carroll, Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, Jordan Walker, Anthony Volpe, and others. The auto and mini sets will also include ex-MLB players like Derek Jeter, Albert Pujols, Reggie Jackson, and others.
Four, but in reality eight, cards for the price of $100 with no guaranteed auto seems like an awfully bad deal if you ignore the Rip novelty. This does engage the gambling nature that is a big part of the Hobby, but I’d rather gamble elsewhere. I’ve never gotten into this product in any form since it’s introduction and don’t see that changing this year.