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 one scheduled release - 2023 Panini Stars & Stripes USA Baseball. 2022 Leaf Vivid Baseball is also potentially coming out this week, but until I see it actually posted by Leaf or in the hands of the public, I am going to hold off on including it given how Leaf release dates are unreliable. ***Update - Leaf dropped 2022 Leaf Vivid Baseball for sale on their website the evening of Monday, May 1st. See below for more info.
I also anticipate seeing 2023 Bowman Baseball Sapphire Edition at some point this month, but no official date is known.
On Wednesday morning, Topps posted a 2023 Topps Series 2 pre-sale page with a pre-sale start date of Friday, May 5th. However, the images on the page were all of 2023 Bowman, and the page had been taken down shortly after posting. More info to come.
This post will be updated if more news, product information and/or product drops occur throughout the week.
2023 Panini Stars & Stripes USA Baseball
A product focused on players who have played for Team USA, 2023 Panini Stars & Stripes USA Baseball is scheduled to release on Wednesday, May 3rd.
There is one hobby configuration - a regular Hobby box. They are now coming with 7 hits per box on average. Hits can be autos or relics. Interestingly, in the past few years, these boxes had 5 hits on average, falling one per pack. It will still be 5 packs, but Panini is showing on their website that it will be 7 hits on average. I’m guessing they’ve upped the number of relics inserted, but we shall see. Currently these boxes are selling for $75 pre-sale on various websites and will be sold through the Panini website on Wednesday (price not yet announced). Last year Panini sold hobby boxes for $75 and I am going to guess they stick with that price point. There are typically blaster boxes for the retail format and I’ve already seen them on eBay using the same format in the past of 2 hits (auto or relics) on average per box. ***Update - Panini is selling boxes on their website for $75 with a limit of 20 per purchase (20 boxes per case) *****Update for the new retail Mega Box format for Stars & Stripes - currently found on the Target website for $44.99 a box and comes with 4 autos or relics on average with three exclusive stars and stripes parallels
The design is heavily USA/Stars & Stripes focused, as usual. Blue and white are the main pallet with some red sprinkled in. They’ve also again gone with green accents that they started doing last year - it still isn’t my favorite choice. Not included in the sell sheet images are the various Under-18 baseball world cup teams that have autos and relics in the set. I am hoping that we get properly themed colors and iconography for those countries, but we will see. Those countries include Australia, Brazil, Chinese Taipei, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, and South Africa. Finally, last year Panini added the Whammy insert into this product, which was fun but didn’t really move the needle. This year, however, they’ve added one of their most desirable inserts - Kabooms. I expect some short term buzz once people start seeing this given the popularity of the insert and the players who they’ve included that will have them.
The checklist is full of current and future prospects. It’s really hard to name all of them, and some of them are completely under the radar. However, in future years, they can easily jump onto the radar - one of the funnest things with this product is going back through older releases and finding current big-name prospects you had no idea you even owned cards of. Current big name prospects will be the LSU duo of Dylan Crews and Paul Skenes. Other big names include Brock Wilken, Max Clark, Wyatt Langford, Rhett Lowder, Yohandy Morales, Hurston Waldrep, Wyatt Langford, and Ethan Holliday (15U National Team and younger brother of Jackson). As mentioned above, the Kaboom checklist is 10 cards with Dylan Crews, Wyatt Langford, Paul Skenes, Walker Jenkins, Robert Hassell, Jackson Holliday, Kyle Harrison, Jordan Lawlar, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and Jason Giambi composing the full list (eyes emoji).
I love this product and make sure to get at least a little to sometimes a lot of it every year. It’s a great checklist every year, and this year is no different. The downside is that most autos are stickers, and most collectors prefer team logos and names rather than national team logos. However, there is a niche of collecting that enjoys the national team icons, as I do. Add in the Kaboom factor this year and I wouldn’t be surprised if this release has some added juice, especially with the month of May looking pretty slow on baseball releases.
2022 Leaf Vivid Baseball
New for this product year (2022), Leaf Vivid Baseball is set for a Wednesday, May 3rd release.
There is one known configuration - a regular Hobby box. Each Hobby box comes with 6 autographed cards “on average” - likely the “on average” means two things - Brian Gray is legally protecting himself from any mistakes that put less autos in the box, and on occasion they put a stack of bad autos in a box and they will add a seventh auto as an apology. These boxes are being sold by Leaf for $144.99.
The design is in your face “vivid” neon colors. Essentially let’s take 80’s color schemes and bad 90’s graphic design and use that for a baseball card theme. The Imagination insert with the word font gives you more of a 70’s hippy vibe. The Street Signs insert is more of a graffiti vibe, which I like. In general, I think this is a love it or hate it product/design.
The checklist is standard Leaf of previous years where the focus is heavily on prospects with a sprinkling of current and ex-players. One interesting yet strange addition to the checklist is Charlie Sheen. The main baseball tie-in with Sheen is obviously Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn from the Major League movies. If Leaf is using that imagery, then it gets more interesting and less strange. If not, then it feels more like Leaf had a surplus of Sheen sticker autos. Prospects include Anthony Volpe, Brady House, Druw Jones, Elly De La Cruz, Elijah Green, Harry Ford, Jackson Chourio, Jackson Holliday, Justin Crawford, Jordan Walker, Marcelo Mayer, Spencer Jones, Termarr Johnson, Zach Neto, and more. Current MLB players include Bobby Witt Jr., Corbin Carroll (more of a prospect from a 2022 perspective), Ronald Acuña Jr., Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Seiya Suzuki. Ex-MLB players include Sammy Sosa, Greg Maddux, and Dwight Gooden. Unlike other 2022 Leaf prospect products, the checklist hasn’t exponentially grown in size, which is nice to see.
I’m not sure where the demand lands with this product. If this was priced like similar Leaf products in pre-pandemic days at sub-$100, then it would be a decent value. Given that it’s close to $150 per box, it feels like a bridge to far for me personally. The design doesn’t give me that “gotta have it” vibe. The checklist is pretty good - but it’s sticker autos and it’s unlicensed. I can see it getting a moment in the sun, especially given the lack of current releases. For me, it’s an easy pass.