Each year, many collectors look forward to the mid-season release of Topps Chrome.
By late June or early July, we have a better feel for which rookies are showing promise and which may have been overhyped. Topps Chrome provides an opportunity to chase a rainbow of shiny colors for these rookies along with other veteran superstars.
The Breakdown
The 220 card set was released across 3 hobby formats. A new online only “Lite” version did not guarantee any autographs, but had some exclusive parallels and a reduced price. Standard hobby boxes had two autographs and jumbo boxes had five. A variety of retail blasters and fat packs were also available.
In addition to the regular base cards, 20 players had short printed image variations, and there are an additional six super short prints to track down for the super ambitious completists out there.
Parallels are one of the big draws to this set, and if that’s your thing Topps Chrome doesn’t disappoint. 22 different parallels span print runs of 1 of 1 superfractors and printing plates to unnumbered refractors.
Here are the five autos I received in my Jumbo box.
Four different insert sets are also randomly inserted into packs. The 1986 Topps Baseball insert set uses the….wait for it…. 1986 Topps baseball design. The Beisbol set celebrates players who come from Spanish speaking countries. Prismic Power highlights some of today’s superstars on a card with a diamond background, and the classic Future Stars set returns to feature a new crop of young talent.
On card rookie autographs are the hits most collectors are chasing, and this is where things get crazy. A whopping 133 different rookies signed for this set. Unfortunately, not all of them are big names and from what we’ve seen so far, this can lead to less than ideal “value” in a box break. However, there are some superstar autos found in the insert checklist, so if you’re lucky, some big names can still be pulled.
Box Break
I won a jumbo box in a 2021 Industry Summit giveaway, so I took advantage of the opportunity to open a $350 box of cards! Check out the video to see how it went down.
As you can see, it was pretty meh. I can’t complain since I got it for free, but if I would have paid the $350 market price for the box, I would have been pretty disapointed.
Wrapping it Up
Overall, I like this set quite a bit. However, I’d recommend going after singles on the secondary market instead of buying sealed wax. The expansive auto checklist is just too watered down to risk your hard earned dollars on sealed wax. You can pick up stars, rookies, complete sets, and even many of the autos for a fraction of the price you’d pay for a box. But who knows, if you are reading this in 2030, maybe some of those 133 rookies will have become surprise superstars and you’re happy to have pulled them!
Checklist
You can find the full checklist on Beckett.com via this link.
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