2023 Topps Big League Baseball Forum

I have been reading the sell sheets and thinking about this upcoming release.  A few thoughts I have:

First, glad to see they are skipping 2022 Big League and just getting back on track with 2023 Big League.  Topps still has 2022 releases (2022 Stadium Club Chrome comes out the same day as this, and another 2022 set comes out in April), but I like the decision to skip 2022 and move forward.

Now the bad.  For those who liked this as a low cost set to build and bring in kids to the hobby, you may be disappointed.  The “base” set is 310 cards (ok, not bad so far).  Cards 1-200 are normally distributed in packs.  Cards 201-250 are falling 1 every pack, still not terrible.  Cards 251-275 are 1 per box (or every 10 packs).  That means 25 boxes (at $25-$30 / box) to get 25 of these cards.  Cards 276-300 are 1:90 packs and then the last ten cards 301-310 are 1:360 packs!  Attempting to complete a “base” set of 310 cards would require a budget of several thousand dollars!  Doesn’t sound kid friendly to me.

The inserts are made to be fun and different.  They haven’t released many samples images, but I wouldn’t complain with this in mind.  And the Mascots are still there, at 1:9 packs.  Interested to see the checklist of those.

There are also some attempts at new marketing, like Social media follower cards and Become a big leaguer cards to get your photo on a trading card.  In this type of product I have no issues with this promos, though I suspect they are really rare and more of a “ploy” to boost sales vs the actual odds to obtain these rewards.

So what are your thoughts?  I know a lot of us on here are older, more old school collectors, but is Topps/Fanatics missing the mark by trying to “upscale” this set too much?

*If* I were going to collect this set, I’d probably think of the true base set as 1-200. I would either be happy to complete that or shoot for the next 50 as a stretch goal. Anything rarer than one per pack is too much of a hassle for me to chase a bunch down. That said, it would be cool to get one of the rare hits as a bonus (and on the other hand, it would be a bummer/headache if a PC player is one of the rare cards and is therefore expensive to acquire).

But also, as a kid, I was never trying to complete sets. I was happy to just rip a few packs now and then. It’s only now that I tend to try and collect with somewhat of a purpose in mind.

Yeah, so much for kid-friendly. Heck, adult friendly too. Now I have no intention of going after this set. When it first came out it was a great idea and was kid0friendlt. Now it sounds like they made it investor friendly...

That is a disappointment. I enjoyed Big League as a low end easy to complete set.

As an Oriole collector I am dreading when this checklist comes out to see how many of my players are in those upper levels.  At least from the graphic perhaps the hardest “Legendary” level are retired hall of famers who I already have dozens of cards of anyways.

I don't consider sp or ssp cards as part of the base set personally

Just looked at the sell sheet. So weird. The design for the base cards and inserts seem to be still geared towards kids, but there is the "get at your local Hobby shop" line on top of the tiered aspect of it. How many times do the manufactures need to be reminded that there are A LOT of kids that don't live near hobby shops, never mind adults. "We want to gear people to support the shops" turns into "why bother collecting." This was once a simple set found at the bog boxes that kids could get into. Another things ruined by adults and the pandemic investor BS.   

I tweeted this a while back when I heard the set details https://twitter.com/baseballcardst1/status/1633680530901270528

Great, once again no set can be built because of sp's bravo Topps/Fanatics you went right back to that sad formula.

They skipped it on the flagship but brought it right back in this release, i told them stop putting numbers of sp's within the sets.

Just make inserts! Of course deaf ears weren't listening

“”The design for the base cards and inserts seem to be still geared towards kids, but there is the "get at your local Hobby shop" line on top of the tiered aspect of it. How many times do the manufactures need to be reminded that there are A LOT of kids that don't live near hobby shops, never mind adults. "We want to gear people to support the shops" turns into "why bother collecting."””

Spot on.  We live 4 hours from the closest hobby store and unfortunately for my kids that is just not something feasible to do since they only really care about the mascots anyway.

While the boxes are cheap and lower end, I still haven't seen any in retail stores like Walmart or Target.  So, these kinda products need to be more accessible. I bought a 'hobby' box at a card shop 15 minutes from me to distribute the packs to kids on my son's youth baseball team anyway and most of them are 5-6 years old. But again, haven't seen them in retail. The set format is confusing, like the uncommon foils. Are they the same as the rainbow foil in the parallels section or are they different? I did pull an autograph card out of the hobby box i bought, which was a little surprise. No one notable, but still cool. The inserts are different but still very much geared towards kids. The autos should be a little easier to find, for their sake.