The Hobby Wire

The Lowdown

2026 Topps Update Series Value Box

Release Dates:
All Formats — 10.14.26

Update started as Topps’ fix for the mid-season roster shuffle. “Traded” subsets showed up in 1974 and 1976, and the 132-card Topps Traded boxed set followed in 1981. It became Traded & Rookies in the early 2000s, then went pack-based in 2005 as Updates & Highlights. Today it’s the third leg of Flagship.

That lineage has produced some of the most iconic cards in the hobby. The 1982 Traded Cal Ripken Jr. The 1986 Traded Barry Bonds. The 1989 Traded Ken Griffey Jr. The 2011 Update Mike Trout.

Update is one of Topps’ most accessible products. From the internet to your local Walmart. Cases upon cases of this stuff get produced every year.

This year, the base set clocks in at 350 cards: 195 veterans, 85 rookies, 40 Rookie Debut cards, 16 Veteran Combos and 14 Season Highlights. That’s 125 rookie-tagged cards, headlined by the first Flagship RCs of players called up to the show mid-season.

There’s non-sport content in the mix, too. First Pitch features Manny Pacquiao, and the 75 Years of Topps Autographs checklist includes Billy Crystal, Jesse Eisenberg and Kat Dennings.

Chase Cards to Know

Carson Benge 1952 Rookie Variation

All 350 base cards have a Golden Mirror Variation. Flagship Real One Golden Mirror Autographs run 131 signers deep, from Griffin and McGonigle to Judge, Ohtani and Skenes.

Starting this year, Series 1, Series 2 and Update are the exclusive home of the 1952 Rookie Variations. Update’s version covers 25 of the top rookies in the class, including Griffin, McGonigle, Wetherholt and Bazzana. You can pull autographed versions, too.

All Kings. Fifteen “elite position players featured on playing card-inspired designs,” per Topps. Nine of them are rookies. Three current stars and three legends round it out. There’s also the even rarer All Aces insert. Same concept, but with the focus on pitchers.

Collectors should also keep an eye on Home Field Advantage, Heavy Lumber, Cover Athletes and Topps Black Gold, a longtime Update favorite.

Talent Watch

These rookies are driving nearly all of the hobby interest in this checklist.

Travis Bazzana, 2B — Cleveland Guardians

Kevin McGonigle, SS - Detroit Tigers
2026 Stats: 7.1 WAR, .278 AVG, 18 HR, 72 RBI, 126 OPS+
This kid sees the baseball like he’s been in the league ten years. He just doesn’t chase, and pitchers figured that out fast and stopped giving him anything to hit. He was an All-Star at 21. The approach is already there, and the power is the last piece to show up. When it does, you’re talking about a perennial MVP-type shortstop.

Konnor Griffin, SS - Pittsburgh Pirates
2026 Stats: 2.1 WAR, .272 AVG, 6 HR, 33 RBI, 23 SB, 98 OPS+ (80 games)
Everybody had him as the best prospect in the game coming into the year. He debuted as a teenager, doubled in his first at-bat, and the Pirates handed him a nine-figure deal about a week later. The bad news is his body didn’t cooperate. The bat is still catching up to the tools, but the tools are loud.

Travis Bazzana, 2B - Cleveland Guardians
2026 Stats: 2.7 WAR, .245 AVG, 15 HR, 57 RBI, 19 SB, 110 OPS+
He was the No. 1 overall pick in 2024, and he plays like it. He didn’t come up until late April and still got voted onto the All-Star team by the players. Good eye, some sneaky pop, and he can run. This is a professional hitter. He could be leading off in Cleveland for a long time.

JJ Wetherholt, 2B - St. Louis Cardinals
2026 Stats: 4.5 WAR, .242 AVG, 17 HR, 51 RBI, 14 SB, 102 OPS+
If you only read the box score, you’ll miss him. His game lives on defense. He was one of the best defenders in baseball at any position this year. The Cardinals saw enough to lock him up through 2034. The glove gives him a high floor. Whether he becomes a star depends on the consistency of his bat.

Honorable Mentions:
Roman Anthony (Red Sox), Jac Caglianone (Royals), Jacob Misiorowski (Brewers), Samuel Basallo (Orioles), Kyle Teel (White Sox), Cam Schlittler (Yankees), Jonah Tong (Mets), Colson Montgomery (White Sox), Bubba Chandler (Pirates), Chase Burns (Reds), Payton Tolle (Red Sox), Chase DeLauter (Guardians), Munetaka Murakami (White Sox), Trey Yesavage (Blue Jays), Bryce Eldridge (Giants), Tatsuya Imai (Astros), Sal Stewart (Reds), Justin Crawford (Phillies), Carson Benge (Mets)

💰 Box Breakdown

Not all boxes are created equal, especially at these price points. Here's the format breakdown, MSRP or pre-sale price for each, cards per box, and the resulting cost per card.

Hobby Box: $199.95 / 240 cards per box → $0.83 per card
- 1x Autograph or Relic, 1x Silver Pack
- Hobby exclusive colored Rainbow Foil parallels, Clear Variations and Mystical inserts
Jumbo Hobby Box: $374.95 / 400 cards per box → $0.94 per card
- 1x Autograph, 1x Relic (can be replaced by a second autograph), 2x Silver Packs
- Jumbo Exclusive Sandglitter HTA parallels, Hobby exclusive colored Rainbow Foil parallels
Japan Exclusive Box: $125.00* / 240 cards per box → $0.52 per card
- Exclusive Cherry Blossom Foil, Hobby exclusive colored Rainbow Foil parallels, and 1991 Topps Koi Fish parallels
Super Box: $39.99 / 146 cards per box → $0.27 per card
- 1x Oversized Base Card, plus a Silver Crackle Foilboard pack or Funko Bitty Pop
Club Super Box (Costco): $39.99* / 184 cards per box → $0.22 per card
- 1x Oversized 1991 Topps Baseball Card
Value Box: $24.99 / 72 cards per box → $0.35 per card
- Exclusive Holiday Base Card Variations
Fanatics Value Box: $29.99 / 96 cards per box → $0.31 per card
- Exclusive Topps Logo Foil Pattern parallels, Fanatics Authentic memorabilia redemptions
Hanger Box: $14.99 / 59 cards per box → $0.25 per card
- Exclusive Diamante Foil parallels
Fat Pack: $6.99 / 36 cards per pack → $0.19 per card

*We had to make a call on the Japan Exclusive and Club Super Boxes with no pricing confirmed yet. Both prices are estimates based on Series 2. Treat them as educated guesses until we see real listings.

Two things jump out right off the bat.

The good news is that no matter what format you want, each one falls under our $1.00 per paper card threshold.

The bad? True colored Rainbow Foil parallels are hobby exclusives. Once again, this is Topps making you pay a premium to have access to the cards everyone wants.

Jumbo Boxes have the most guaranteed, with an auto and a relic plus two Silver Packs. That’s one fewer relic than last year, and people are griping over the Fanatics and Topps decision to cut it. We don’t share that opinion. So far, they’ve only removed the manufactured relics.

Then there’s the Club Super Box. The Costco exclusive has been getting a lot of hype over the past few releases, with collectors pulling plenty of hits from it. We’ll have to see for ourselves when we break down the odds. But we’re starting to feel the FOMO.

📈 Wax Value Index

Now let's dig in. With the odds sheet in hand, we're looking to see which format delivers the most value.

(New to our Wax Value Index? Check out our guide on how to use it yourself. Prices for wax can swing overnight, and having the framework makes a real difference.)

What the Numbers Say

It looks like Topps tried to right the wrong of leaving certain formats as dry as can be for the better part of a year.

Looking at the bigger picture, we’re seeing more parallels and inserts per box across most formats, and an often overlooked format might be one of the most valuable this time around.

Base Card Parallels & Variations

There are a ton of format exclusives in Flagship. From Diamante in Hangers to Sandglitter in Jumbos. Almost every format has its own set of exclusives.

But of the parallels and variations shared across every format, Fat Packs have the lowest expected spend, though the Club Super Box isn’t too far behind. Where Fat Packs lead by a wider margin is on some of the bigger chase cards. Golden Mirror variations and 1952 Rookies included.

What’s even more surprising is that hobby formats look downright terrible for pulling these same chases. They rank among the worst in expected spend for Golden Mirrors, 1952 Rookies, True Photo Variations and Player Number Variations. To pull a Golden Mirror, you’d need to open about half as many Fat Packs as hobby packs, and spend well under half the money. That’s roughly $2,300 in Fat Packs against about $6,100 in Hobby.

Where hobby does win is the true colored Rainbow Foil. Of the three formats that carry them, Hobby Boxes and the Japan Exclusive Box are much easier on the wallet. Jumbos nearly double the expected spend every time.

The hit rates add another layer. Hobby Boxes average about one more parallel per box compared to what we saw out of Series 1 and 2, and they’re pulling 2.6 numbered cards per box. Value Boxes are also getting this treatment, with almost five parallels per box (about three of those are the Holiday variations). It’s as if Topps is trying to juice the products people have spent the past year saying aren’t very good.

But when parallel counts go up somewhere, they usually have to come down elsewhere. The format that takes the biggest hit is the Jumbo Hobby, dropping from over 13 parallels per box in Series 2 to just over 10 on average.

In retail, numbered cards come out at the best clip in the Super Boxes. Regular Super Boxes average one in about every 1.5 boxes, and Club Super Boxes do even better at one in every 1.3.

Looking at dollar per parallel, the Fanatics Box comes out on top, largely because of the exclusive Topps Logo Foil that shows up in every other pack. But when you look at dollar per numbered card, Hangers and Fat Packs actually run away with it.

Inserts

Retail dominates the insert value space.

Fat Packs are the cheapest in terms of expected spend, with Club Super Boxes a close second. Once again, retail outpaces hobby when it comes to the biggest chases. All Aces and All Kings come out of Fat Packs at a little over a third of the cost of pulling them from Japan Exclusive and Hobby Boxes.

If you’re as big a fan of the Black Gold insert as we are, you’ll be looking for Club Super Boxes and Fat Packs. Club Supers are the cheapest route to the base version. Fat Packs win every parallel.

There are also fewer exclusive parallels within the insert lineup this time. The biggest change on the hobby side, though, is Mystical. It was a common insert in Update last year, and the year before that. Now it’s a hobby-exclusive SSP.

From the hit rates, most formats are pulling more inserts per box. The biggest change is the Super Box, going from an average of just under 17 per box in Series 2 to over 20 per box here.

The exception is the Hanger. Inserts per box dropped from 4.9 in Series 2 to 3.3 here, so you’re more likely to pull three out of a hanger instead of five.

The Club Super Box wins on dollar per insert at $1.73. If you’re an insert collector trying to build the set, you should probably turn to retail. In Hobby and Jumbo Boxes, you’re paying over $10 per insert.

Autos & Relics

Jumbo is by far the winner in the auto category. Unless Jumbo prices shoot way up on the secondary market, this is usually the case.

What’s unique about this release is that Hobby Boxes aren’t in their usual second-place spot. The basic Super Box is actually slightly cheaper for a lot of autos. Formats to stay away from for autos are the Fanatics Box, the Value Box and the Club Super Box.

Line by line, it’s pretty much the same story with relics. One twist. The incredibly rare Iconic Buyback redemption cards are best found in a Fanatics Box. The 75th Anniversary Gift redemptions follow the usual order: Jumbo, then Hobby Boxes.

One in about three Hobby Boxes has an auto. Jumbos are averaging 1.75 relics per box. Some of those are autographed relics, but it could still mean a surprise second relic about half the time.

Hobby and Jumbo have pretty much stayed the same in terms of auto rates. But Value Boxes got juiced big time here. In Series 2, we were looking at one auto in every 92 Value Boxes. For Update, it’s one in every 36. Same thing for relics, now landing in one of every 17 Value Boxes.

The trade-off? Autos and relics are tougher to pull out of Hanger Boxes. Might put a damper on the whole “Hangers are Bangers” mantra.

For collectors priced out of hobby this year, Fat Packs have the cheapest dollar per auto in retail. If relics are your thing, the basic Super Box is the play. Its dollar per relic is the lowest of any retail format.

Popular Chase Cards

Based on the current odds, here are the formats offering the lowest expected spend for these specific chase targets:

True Colored Rainbow Foil — Hobby Boxes
Golden Mirror Variations — Fat Packs
Golden Mirror Legend Variations — Fat Packs
1952 Rookie Variations — Fat Packs
Home Field Advantage — Fat Packs
All Aces/Kings — Fat Packs
Base Black Gold — Club Super Boxes
Black Gold Parallels — Fat Packs
Golden Mirror Autos — Jumbo Hobby Boxes
1952 Rookie Autos — Jumbo Hobby Boxes
Iconic Buybacks — Fanatics Boxes

These rankings will shift as sealed pricing adjusts.

The odds stay fixed. The market doesn’t.

🎯 Verdict: Rip, Flip, or Skip

At The Hobby Wire, we like to keep it simple.

Rip → The checklist, price, and excitement all line up. Bust down the door.
Flip → Solid class, but prices are too high to rip comfortably. Buy singles on the players you want. For wax, grab a box or two to sit on and sell in a year or two once the rookie class starts to prove itself.
Skip → Junk Wax. Hard pass. Overpriced, overproduced, or saddled with a weak class.

The way Flagship has gone across multiple sports this year, particularly with hobby boxes, has made us wary about how enjoyable it’s going to be to rip some Update. But the odds sheet gives us something to go on, and the numbers give us a reason to let our guard down a tad.

The bigger reason for optimism is the checklist. This is one of the best MLB rookie classes since 2018, and it raises the floor for Update. Adding Konnor Griffin and Travis Bazzana only strengthens an already stacked checklist.

Combine better hit rates with an A+ rookie crop and an affordable product, and you’ve got yourself a Rip.

Can Update fix what the first two couldn’t? It looks like Topps is certainly trying here. But we’ll get the full answer when we can crack a few boxes of our own.

So where should you be ripping?

Chasing autos? Go Jumbo. Parallels and bigger variations? Go Fat Packs or Club Super Boxes, and Hobby for the parallel purists. Inserts or set building? Load up on Club Super Boxes. Fun rip on a budget? Either of the Super Boxes. They don’t win outright, but we wouldn’t sleep on them either with this release.

On a personal note, we love the Diamante parallels that are exclusive to retail hangers. We’ll be looking to pick some of these up as well to help complete the set.

For Most Valuable Format, it comes down to two. Jumbo Hobby is the Auto and Relic King. Fat Packs have the SSP inserts and variations locked down. Not to mention most non-exclusive parallels.

Last year, in our 2025 Topps Update Wax Watch, we wrote, “Prices should dip heading into the 2026 season, especially with next year’s rookie crop looking stacked.”

This is that crop.

👉 Verdict: Rip
🏆 Most Valuable Format(s): Jumbo Hobby Boxes & Fat Packs
⛔️ Format to Avoid: Fanatics Box

Which 2026 Topps Update format are you grabbing first? Drop your thoughts in the comments.

Disclaimer: The content in The Hobby Wire is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Commentary, analysis, and opinions on sports cards, rookies, and the hobby are not financial, investment, or professional advice. Collectors should always do their own research before buying, selling, or trading cards. Market values are volatile and can change rapidly—past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Unless specified, all pricing references are based on the Prizm/Refractor parallels of an athlete's Chrome rookie card, with prices from market movers, alt.xyz & 130pt.com.

Any odds mentioned were derived from DraftKings Sportsbook.

Top Shelf: Baseball

The Hobby Wire — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 19:26:39 GMT

This hobby is expensive. There’s no way around it. Whether you’re spending hundreds of dollars on a single card or putting that money towards wax, it adds up real fast.

Budgeting is essential if you’re in this for the long haul. And with sports card collecting on the rise and prices climbing higher and higher, that really forces us to think about where we’re putting our money.

The ultra-modern cardscape is crazy. For a single season of baseball, Topps puts out upwards of 40 releases containing the same players. And that might be an underestimate. For years, Panini did the same thing with NFL and NBA. Now with Topps owning those licenses too, we imagine this is only going to continue.

Luckily for us, the hobby doesn’t look at every release equally. Some are way more valuable to collect than others.

Today, we’re going to try and rein this in. What products should we be putting more of our yearly spend into? Whether it’s wax or singles, and especially if you’re investing, that’s a question worth answering.

We’re going to look at the last five full seasons’ worth of product. We’ll pick one of the biggest rookies from each year, average their last five PSA 10 base card sales in every release, and see which release is getting the most hobby dollars. Then, we’ll do it again with raw prices for base autos.

We’re leaving ultra high-end releases out of this one. They’d clean house when it comes to most valuable, but more importantly, they aren’t something the average collector can afford to get their hands on. 2026 cards get left out too since we’re still in the middle of that release cycle.

This week, we’re covering baseball. We’ve got our hunches about which releases come out on top, and we’d bet you’ve got a few of your own. Hang onto them. We’ll find out together whose guesses hold up as we work through the comps.

Let’s rip in.

Wax Watch & Value Index: 2026 Topps Allen & Ginter Baseball

The Hobby Wire — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 12:16:40 GMT

It’s been a while since we’ve had an odds sheet to dive into before release day. But Topps blessed us with one for 2026 Topps Allen & Ginter Baseball.

Allen & Ginter gets a mixed reception each year. For some, it’s their favorite set on the calendar. Others can’t stand the amount of non-sport that’s jammed into this product.

We’re firmly in the latter camp. But can a rookie class as good as the one we have in 2026 be enough to sway our opinion on a release we’d otherwise skip?

Let’s rip in.

Update 8/7/26 — Before release of 2026 Allen & Ginter Baseball, there was discrepancy online about how many packs came in a hobby box. Topps reported 18, but every other site had them at 24. To our surprise, Topps was the party that was wrong here. We have since updated a few of our sections to reflect the 24 pack stats, though our overall verdict remains the same for this release.

The Lowdown

2026 Topps Allen & Ginter Hobby Box

Release Dates:
All Formats — 10.07.26

Allen & Ginter was a Richmond, Virginia tobacco company founded in 1865 by John F. Allen and Lewis Ginter.

Back in the day, cigarette packaging was softer, and tobacco companies would insert cards into the packs to stiffen them up. Lo and behold, this set off a collecting craze. A&G’s “World’s Champions” sets in the late 1880s had a mix of sports in the checklist, ranging from baseball to tennis to sharpshooting. While today’s A&G releases are heavier on baseball since Topps brought the brand back in 2006, that mix is still present in the product.

Topps always aims for Allen & Ginter to be one of the more accessible releases each year, geared towards set builders and pop culture fans.

This year’s 300-card base checklist features a mix of baseball veterans, rookies, and non-baseball subjects, including names like NHL prospect Gavin McKenna, actress Anne Hathaway, and sports analyst Rich Eisen.

Chase Cards to Know

Left to Right: JJ Wetherholt Purple Framed Mini Autograph, Vin Scully Cut Signature, Jesse Eisenberg Mini Non-Baseball Auto

As quirky a product as Allen & Ginter can be, its chases are every bit as quirky.

Cut Signatures and Relic Cut Signatures are by far the toughest pulls here. Each one is a 1/1, with the person’s signature cut from a document like a check or a letter, then embedded into the card. The checklist ranges from players like Babe Ruth to important figures like Alexander Graham Bell.

Then there are the Mini Autos. Sometimes framed to be the size of a regular card, sometimes left as its tiny self.

Daguerreotype Variations are inspired by one of the earliest photographic processes invented. These are 1/1s that are larger than your typical card, so there will be a redemption card for these.

But the most iconic chases from Allen & Ginter for the last few years have been the Rip Cards. If you pull one, you’ve got a choice. You can either keep the card intact or rip it apart for a surprise mini card hidden within.

There’s a pretty high ceiling with the mini cards inside. This choice can be all the harder when the full-size card is a numbered rookie. And there’s no guarantee the card inside is more valuable than what you already have in hand. But that’s certainly the fun of it, and they make for great content on social media.

Talent Watch

These rookies are driving nearly all of the hobby interest in this checklist.

Kevin McGonigle, SS — Detroit Tigers

Kevin McGonigle, SS - Detroit Tigers
2026 Stats: 7.1 WAR, .278 AVG, 18 HR, 72 RBI, 126 OPS+
This kid sees the baseball like he's been in the league ten years. He just doesn't chase, and pitchers figured that out fast and stopped giving him anything to hit. He was an All-Star at 21. The approach is already there, and the power is the last piece to show up. When it does, you're talking about a perennial MVP-type shortstop.

Sal Stewart, 1B - Cincinnati Reds
2026 Stats: 1.8 WAR, .263 AVG, 32 HR, 111 RBI, 117 OPS+
Pure run producer. Put men on base and he drives them in, all year long. There's some swing-and-miss, and the glove won't win him any awards, so the bat has to carry him. And it did. Every day for a full season. That's the kind of thing that wins Rookie of the Year votes.

Munetaka Murakami, 1B - Chicago White Sox
2026 Stats: 2.3 WAR, .207 AVG, 35 HR, 77 RBI, 130 OPS+
Don't look at the batting average. Look at what happens when he connects. It's light-tower power. The kind of thump people haven’t seen on the south side of Chicago since Frank Thomas. He'll walk a ton and strike out a ton, and in between he'll hit balls into the second deck. The average makes people nervous. The power makes people buy tickets.

Cam Schlittler, SP - New York Yankees
2026 Stats: 7.0 WAR, 1.95 ERA, 239 Ks, 215 ERA+
Last October he gave everybody a preview, and this year he made good on it. He's a big, smooth, easy delivery with a fastball that touches triple digits, and he takes the ball every fifth day. Ace in pinstripes, with all the pressure that comes with it, and so far he’s handled it. He's about to win a Cy Young.

Jacob Misiorowski, SP - Milwaukee Brewers
2026 Stats: 6.5 WAR, 1.80 ERA, 252 Ks, 232 ERA+
Honestly, the stuff isn't fair. Hitters went up there all year knowing what was coming and still couldn't touch it. If you made contact, you were doing well. You see guys like this once every ten years, if you're lucky. But this kind of arm typically comes attached to a closer. The Miz can go six plus innings with his. He's the best pitcher in baseball right now, and he's only 24.

Honorable Mentions: Roman Anthony (Red Sox), JJ Wetherholt (Cardinals), Konnor Griffin (Pirates), Kazuma Okamoto (Blue Jays), Parker Messick (Guardians), Nolan McLean (Mets), Payton Tolle (Red Sox), Chase DeLauter (Guardians), Jac Caglianone (Royals)

💰 Box Breakdown

Not all boxes are created equal, especially at these price points. Here's the format breakdown, MSRP or pre-sale price for each, cards per box, and the resulting cost per card.

Hobby Box: $249.95 / 192 cards per box → $1.30 per card.
- 2x hits per box (Auto, Relic, Printing Plate or Rip Card)
- Hobby-exclusive Rip Cards
Value Box: $24.99 / 48 cards per box → $0.52 per card
- Retail-exclusive Gold Border Mini parallels
Fat Pack: $6.99 / 14 cards per pack → $0.50 per card
- Retail-exclusive Gold Border Mini parallels

Hobby Box pricing has shot up drastically since pre-orders ended at $139.99. Currently, the secondary market is selling these for about $250. That pushes the dollar-per-card of a Hobby Box from $0.97 all the way up to $1.74. At those prices for a paper product, you’re really hoping your hits are worth it.

So much for accessible.

Release day will be your last chance to grab a Hobby Box anywhere near MSRP. Fanatics/Topps usually does one more drop. Price might be slightly higher than pre-order, but it should still be in the range at $159.99.

📈 Wax Value Index

Now let's dig in. With the odds sheet in hand, we're looking to see which format delivers the most value.

(New to our Wax Value Index? Check out our guide on how to use it yourself. Prices for wax can swing overnight, and having the framework makes a real difference.)

What the Numbers Say

It’s a real tale of two chases with this product.

Base Card Parallels

For the most part, retail is going to be the place to go if you’re into parallels. Fat Packs technically come out the victor here, but Value Boxes aren’t far behind. Both come in at a third or less of the expected spend of a Hobby Box at its $250 price tag.

The flip side is base chrome. Hobby Boxes win by a wide margin. At one in every thirteen packs, you’ll average at least one base chrome card per Hobby rip. But for Value Boxes and Fat Packs, those odds skyrocket to one in 320 and one in 324, respectively. That makes this fairly common hobby pull a case hit or rarer out of retail. Kind of wild.

Value Boxes come out on top for a few things. They’re the best place to pull Rookie Design Variations and the retail-exclusive Gold Border Minis. They also own the cheapest expected spend for the Daguerreotype Variation Redemptions, though Fat Packs aren’t far behind.

Inserts

If you’re buying a box of Allen & Ginter, know that there isn’t much in the insert department. There are eight total insert types you can pull out of here, and two of them don’t even showcase people.

The biggest inserts in this release are the Rip Cards. For those, your only choice is a Hobby Box. A Single Rip Card is coming out at a clip of one in every 3.5 boxes.

Of the inserts available in all formats, Value Boxes are the best buy.

Autos & Relics

Despite the insane secondary market prices, Hobby still takes the crown as the Auto & Relic King. Guarantees will do that, even if it isn’t necessarily a guarantee of one Auto per box.

We found a few specialty autos, such as the Dual Full Size Autos, come up at a better clip in Fat Packs. But the difference is negligible. Relic Cut Signatures though, come out of fat packs at an expected spend considerably lower than Hobby or Value.

If there’s a format to avoid here, it’s Value Boxes. Not a single auto or relic lands in their favor.

Popular Chase Cards

Based on the current odds, here are the formats offering the lowest expected spend for these specific chase targets:

Base Chrome Parallels — Hobby Box
Colored Chrome Parallels — Fat Pack
Stained Glass Minis — Fat Pack
Daguerreotype Variations — Value Box
Rookie Design Variations — Value Box
Rip Cards — Hobby Box
Framed Mini Relics — Fat Pack
Full Size Autos — Fat Pack
Autographed Relics — Hobby Box
Framed Mini Autographs — Hobby Box
Cut Signatures — Hobby Box

These rankings will shift as sealed pricing adjusts.

The odds stay fixed. The market doesn’t.

🎯 Verdict: Rip, Flip, or Skip

At The Hobby Wire, we like to keep it simple.

Rip → The checklist, price, and excitement all line up. Bust down the door.
Flip → Solid class, but prices are too high to rip comfortably. Buy singles on the players you want. For wax, grab a box or two to sit on and sell in a year or two once the rookie class starts to prove itself.
Skip → Junk Wax. Hard pass. Overpriced, overproduced, or saddled with a weak class.

It’s no secret that, on a personal level, Allen & Ginter isn’t really our cup of tea. When you’re hunting the hottest rookies and pulling inserts of musical instruments instead, it just makes the floor of the product seem that much lower.

More often than not, we’re skipping this release outright. But the rookies in this class are something special. You’ve got three who have racked up 30-homer seasons (Stewart, Murakami, & Okamoto) and the frontrunners for each league’s Cy Young Award (Schlittler & Misiorowski). If that’s not enough, this rookie class set a record with 16 different rookies hitting a home run in their Major League debuts. The previous record was 13 in 2022.

This type of rookie class comes around once in a blue moon, and it’s enough to make us think about flipping instead of skipping.

And that’s what we’re going to do with this year’s Allen & Ginter. Buy a few boxes to put on a shelf for a year or two and see what happens. We’ll buy singles of the players we want and guarantee we don’t pull any nonsensical cards.

If you can get a Hobby Box or two close to MSRP tomorrow during the last Topps drop, that’s what we’d target for a good long-term hold. Those have your best chance for autos and relics. The hobby knows this, so those prices should continue to go up over time.

Fat Packs are the other play, especially when you can only get Hobby Boxes on the secondary market. They hold the best value for parallels by a wide margin. Buy enough to fill a shoebox and wait. Even a middle-of-the-road class can see that $6.99 pack go to $10. We’d take that any day of the week.

👉 Verdict: Flip
🏆 Most Valuable Format(s): Hobby Boxes (At MSRP) & Fat Packs

How do you feel about Allen & Ginter as a product? Drop your thoughts in the comments.

The State of the Hobby - October 2026

The Hobby Wire — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 21:06:24 GMT

Welcome back to The Hobby Wire: the newsletter for collectors, investors, and everyone trying to make sense of this wild hobby.

At the start of each month, we take a step back and look at where the sports card world actually stands. What’s moving the market, what’s on deck, and what’s worth your attention over the next 30 days.

Someone paid $8.04 million for a Cooper Flagg card last month.

Let’s rip in.

The Next Insert Rotation Is Already Underway, and Most Collectors Haven’t Priced It In

Previously on The Hobby Wire…

Bowman bookended our September. We opened with 2026 Bowman Chrome Baseball, a decent Flip in our book thanks to a rookie class that's carrying the checklist, and closed with 2026 Bowman Football, where we landed on Rip Lightly. Both went through the Wax Value Index once the odds dropped. C.J. Stroud and Pete Crow-Armstrong got the Collector’s Case Study treatment. And we spent a lot of time thinking about slabs. Some napkin math for comping SGC and Beckett against PSA. Then, 100 comps putting the hobby’s favorite PSA rules to the test.

The New York Mets' nightmare of a season gave us an idea. Juan Soto kept putting up solid numbers. His cards fell anyway. We tracked 24 cards from six superstars stuck on bad teams across the three major sports to find out when this type of dip is actually a buy. Turns out it only works for one kind of player.

Around the Hobby

The three biggest chase cards out of 2025-26 Topps Chrome Update Basketball hit the auction block, and all three shattered the previous Rookie Debut Patch Autograph record set by Paul Skenes’ RDPA. Dylan Harper’s sold for $2.3 million. Kon Knueppel’s went for $2.8 million. And Cooper Flagg’s? A ridiculous $8.04 million.

With the three biggest hits out of the product, our first question was what that would do to wax prices. Our gut told us we’d see some falloff, since there’s no longer a shot at the million-dollar cards.

That hasn’t happened yet.

Since the Cooper Flagg was pulled on August 10, wax prices have mostly gone up. Where they haven’t climbed, they’ve held relatively flat over the past two months.

It’s kind of baffling to us. Our best guess is that the hobby feels that there are still some top-tier cards to be pulled despite the biggest chases being off the board.

Whether the buyers overpaid or got a good deal is a fair debate. Either way, these sales are a signal. From where we’re sitting, this card market boom isn’t slowing down any time soon.

In grading news, PSA is finally making a dent in the backlog that forced it to suspend its lower-tier value services back in June. With the backlog down to under 10 million cards, PSA felt comfortable enough to add a new tier to its service lineup. Standard Service costs $59.99 per card, covers cards valued at $1,000 or less, and carries an estimated 100-business-day turnaround.

This comes at a time when most grading companies are overwhelmed, mostly thanks to the surge in Pokémon grading, and have been forced to either suspend submissions or sharply raise prices. Right now, the only major grading company with a service under $50 per card is CGC.

Baseball

The regular season is officially over. The Wild Card Series have come and gone. Now the real playoffs begin. By the time the next State of the Hobby comes out, we’ll have a new World Series champion.

The playoffs are a volatile time for the card market. Unless you’re buying right now for a quick flip if a player gets hot, we’d recommend waiting until the offseason to buy cards of anyone on a playoff team.

It was neck and neck until the final weeks of the season, but it’s now looking like Pete Crow-Armstrong is going to be our National League MVP. Time to get all our 2026 Topps Chrome cards in order for the MVP Buyback.

For the past few years, Topps has run a promotion where you can turn in Topps Chrome cards of the newly crowned MVP at your local card shop for a set amount of store credit.

If you weren't lucky enough to pull any PCA cards out of Chrome, no worries. You can often find his cards online for a fraction of what your LCS will give you in credit. Right now, you can buy a PCA Refractor for $30 and be given $40 in credit. It isn't your typical card purchase. But it makes for a great way to save on some future releases.

2026 Topps Chrome Pete Crow-Armstrong Refractor Prices.

World Series Odds

Dodgers — +200
Brewers — +500
Yankees — +500
Rays — +800

Basketball

NBA tip-off is around the corner. After months of hearing about who was going where, we finally get to see the results.

But, as always, the hobby is most excited to see what this new crop of rookies can do. AJ Dybantsa, Cameron Boozer, Darryn Peterson, and Caleb Wilson are all on the brain, especially with their first rookie cards dropping later this month in 2026-27 Topps Flagship Basketball. So who has the hobby’s attention right now?

Card sales from last spring’s Bowman Basketball release say the hobby is locked in on Caleb Wilson. He came into the draft widely considered the best of the rest behind the big three. Then he put together a strong Summer League, and that’s vaulted his cards to new levels before tip-off. His Blue Chrome Prospect Auto is up 261% raw.

We’ll be keeping an eye on him. He could easily become the face of a young Chicago Bulls team.

2026/27 NBA Championship Odds

San Antonio Spurs — +270
OKC Thunder — +270
76ers — +900
Knicks— +900

MVP Odds

Victor Wembanyama — +210
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — +350
Nikola Jokić — +500
Luka Dončić — +550

Rookie of the Year Odds

Cameron Boozer — +300
Darryn Peterson — +330
Caleb Wilson — +350
AJ Dybansta — +425

Football

Week 4 of the NFL season is here, and it already feels like we’re living in the Upside Down. The Raiders are undefeated, and the Browns might actually be a playoff team. The Chargers, on the other hand? Not so much.

The Bolts are 0-3, and the rest of their schedule is diabolical. It’s not out of the question that they stay winless through October too, with the Seahawks, Broncos, and Chiefs to cap off the month. The hobby has noticed and is starting to jump ship. Justin Herbert’s Silver Prizm Rookie PSA 10 is already down 39% in the last 30 days.

We'd hold off on buying the dip here. The Chargers have been too rocky as of late for us to feel confident these prices are going up.

Justin Herbert 2020 Silver Prizm PSA 10 1 Month Price History

The Giants looked amazing in Week 1 against the Cowboys, but a scary knee injury will keep Jaxson Dart out for the rest of the season.

Since the injury, Dart’s cards have been dropping fast, with his Silver Prizm down 32%. Even the high end is taking a hit.

Longtime readers already know what to do here. 👀

2026 MVP Odds

Josh Allen — +260
Brock Purdy — +425
Lamar Jackson — +600
Patrick Mahomes — +800

Now that Bowman Football is out with Bowman Red Rookie Variations, the hobby has to start caring about who's going to win Offensive and Defensive Rookie of the Year, since the winners' cards can be redeemed for FanCash.

Offensive Rookie of the Year

Jeremiyah Love — +140
Denzel Boston — +450
KC Concepcion — +1200

Defensive Rookie of the Year

Jacob Rodrigues — +400
David Bailey — +450
Sonny Styles — +700

Upcoming Wax Releases

October’s going to keep us pretty busy writing Wax Watches and making Value Indexes:

2026 Topps Museum Collection Baseball — 10.07.26
2026 Topps Allen & Ginter Baseball — 10.07.26
2026 Topps Update Series Baseball — 10.14.26
2026 Topps Heritage Football — 10.21.26
2026 Topps Holiday Baseball — 10.21.26
2026-27 Topps Flagship Basketball — 10.22.26
2026 Topps Holiday Football — 10.23.26

Release dates sourced from Steel City Collectibles and are subject to change.

Collector’s Corner
(Recommended Reads)

A few articles from around the hobby caught our eye this month.

Fantasy Football Fever has Card Collectors Chasing Their Own Players

— Greg Bates, Sports Collectors Digest

Sports Card Prospectus

A 2003 Topps Chrome Gold Refractor LeBron James rookie, graded PSA 10, sold for $1.63 million a couple of weeks ago, an all-time record for the card. That sale came fifteen months after a different PSA 10 copy of the same card sold for $1.11 million back in January, itself the first seven-figure card sale of 2026. This isn’t hobby nostalgia. It’s this m…

a month ago · 5 likes · 1 comment

Business of Card Grading Newsletter

PSA Opens Standard Service, Backlog Under 10 Million

Yesterday around 10am PST, we got a new announcement from PSA that they will be opening a Standard service tier. The new service tier will cost $59.99 and have a 90-100 business day turnaround time…

a month ago · 4 likes · 2 comments · BCG Cards

Something for Subscribers 🎁

One more thing before we go.

The Hobby Wire hit one full year last month, and we couldn’t have gotten here without you. Every open, every comment, every share. It all counts.

So we want to say thanks the best way we know how: with some wax.

On October 20, the same night the NBA tips off its new season, we’re launching a subscriber giveaway. The prize is a sealed 2025-26 Topps Basketball Black Friday blaster, the Target exclusive with the Blackout parallels.

Every subscriber gets an entry automatically, free or paid. No forms, no extra steps. Once we launch, you can also earn up to 10 bonus entries by referring fellow collectors.

Full details and official rules drop on tip-off night.

Thanks for Reading!

That’s a wrap on this month’s State of the Hobby. Jump into the comments and tell us what you’re watching, how you’re reading the market, and what you want us to dig into next.

Your feedback shapes how we cover this thing. See you next month.

— The Hobby Wire Team

If you enjoyed this edition, subscribe to The Hobby Wire. Along with the monthly State of the Hobby, we cover player spotlights, product reviews, collector insights, and market trends. Everything you need to stay plugged in.

And if you want more, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Paid members get an additional article every week: more deep dives, more player spotlights, and analysis we can’t always fit into the free edition. If that sounds like your kind of thing, we’d love to have you.

Disclaimer: The content in The Hobby Wire is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Commentary, analysis, and opinions on sports cards, rookies, and the hobby are not financial, investment, or professional advice. Collectors should always do their own research before buying, selling, or trading cards. Market values are volatile and can change rapidly—past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Unless specified, all pricing references are based on the Prizm/Refractor parallels of an athlete’s Chrome rookie card, with prices from market movers, alt.xyz & 130pt.com.

Any odds mentioned were derived from DraftKings Sportsbook, unless otherwise specified.

Wax Value Index: 2026 Bowman Football

The Hobby Wire — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 22:43:33 GMT

Yesterday we said our gut feeling about 2026 Bowman Football was that it would be a release to rip lightly.

We were also hoping this release would mirror the more-than-fantastic ’26 Bowman Baseball, which came out earlier this year, by putting the more sought-after case hits in retail too. Not just locking them behind hobby formats. If that’s the case, despite our views on the rookie class, we might look at this product even more favorably.

Well, the odds are out.

Let’s rip in.

New to the Index? It uses published pack odds and box configurations to calculate the long-term average spend required to pull a specific card in each format. Update the box prices. The math recalculates. The rankings adjust. Long-term probability, not a guarantee. Variance is always in play. Download it for yourself, and learn exactly how to use it by clicking here.

What the Numbers Say

It looks like there's a frontrunner for Most Valuable Format in this release. A few formats punch above their price tag. And a couple of the priciest boxes on the shelf have some explaining to do.

Base Card Parallels

The odds sheet breaks base cards into three categories: NFL (Veterans), Rookies, and Prospects (NCAA). No matter which category you’re chasing, the result is the same. Retail, specifically the Value Box, runs laps around Hobby formats when it comes to non-exclusive color.

Mega Boxes still kind of live in their own world with their Mojo Parallels, but they do share the retail-exclusive FireFractors with Value Boxes. In fact, Mega Boxes are the better choice for these, with an expected spend of almost half as much as the Value Box.

Red RC Variations can also be pulled from any format. But you get more bang for your buck hunting for them out of retail. The spend between the Mega Box and Value Box is nearly identical for these.

If parallels are your jam, we gotta give it to the Value Boxes, though. Rookies, Veterans, Prospects, paper, chrome, doesn’t matter here. Even Superfractors are cheaper pulls coming out of Value Boxes.

Formats parallel chasers should avoid? Breaker’s Delight and First Day Issue (FDI) Hobby Boxes.

What’s interesting about the FDI Box is that its pack odds are much more favorable than the standard Hobby Box’s. But at nearly triple the price, the cost is what’s tanking the value there.

Inserts

The first thing we noticed was that Bowman Football took a page from the Baseball playbook but kicked it up a notch.

Not only are the SSP inserts, the case hits we were hoping to see in retail, available out of both Hobby and Value Boxes, but there’s also a chance to pull them from Mega Boxes. With the exception of All American Stars, which Mega Boxes can’t pull, they’re available in every format. And Mega Boxes might even be the best option here. Anime, Spotlights, Etched In Glass, and Garbage Pail Kids all have the lowest expected spend coming out of Megas. Coming in at a close second are Value Boxes. Don’t get us wrong, these pulls are going to be tough no matter what format you choose. But if you can theoretically spend less to get the same thing, why wouldn’t you?

For standard inserts like Gen Next, Bowman Verified, and Talent Tracker, Value Boxes are where it’s at for both the base versions and their parallels. You won’t be able to pull these from Megas or Breaker’s Delight boxes at all.

If you’re strictly hunting inserts, you’ll want to steer clear of FDI Hobby Boxes, which don’t have a shred of green on the Index.

Autos

The auto spread is pretty predictable. Hobby and Jumbo Boxes run away with it because of their guaranteed autos. Breaker’s Delight and FDI Hobby Boxes are middle of the road. It’s possible to pull chrome autos from Value Boxes, but the odds are astronomical. The expected spend to pull even a base chrome rookie auto from a Value Box would be $23,545, compared to $920 from a Jumbo Hobby Box. You’re significantly more likely to pull the paper autos, which are exclusive to Value Boxes, but even then, we wouldn’t go in expecting one.

Mega Boxes are completely isolated in the auto department, with a lineup made up mostly of their exclusive Mojo Autos. If you’re trying for a FireFractor Auto, your only option is Mega as well, despite sharing the non-autographed version with Value Boxes.

Dual Autos are exclusive to Hobby formats. The only major chase that’s locked behind the hobby door. Of all the Hobby formats, Jumbo wins on expected spend.

Popular Chase Cards

At current pricing, here’s where the lowest average spend lands for the most popular chases:

Paper Base Parallels — Value Box
Chrome Base Parallels — Value Box
FireFractors — Mega Box
Red RC Variations — Mega & Value Box
SSP Inserts — Mega Box
Chrome Autos — Hobby & Jumbo Box
Paper Autos — Value Box
Dual Autos — Jumbo Box

These rankings will shift as sealed pricing adjusts.

The odds stay fixed. The market doesn’t.

Most Valuable Format?

Just like Bowman Baseball in the spring, retail packs a punch. Even more so with Football, since the SSP inserts are in play in the Mega Boxes.

It’s a nice move on Topps’ part. We thought that if we saw solid odds in retail with an opportunity to pull the biggest hits, it might be enough to upgrade our verdict from Rip Lightly to just plain Rip. But when push came to shove, that wasn’t enough to sway us. We’re still not impressed with the rookies, and we’re still skeptical that college-branded cards will hold long-term value outside of a niche market. Those concerns were too big.

The rookies who aren’t riding the bench aren’t doing anything on the gridiron to impress. Fernando Mendoza might be a sleeping giant. But we’re viewing him as more of a singles play the longer he sits on the bench.

That said, our opinions are our own. And you might be more optimistic about the 2026 draft class, or you might be an avid college collector.

For you, across Base Parallels and Inserts, Value Boxes either come in first or a very close second in expected spend, and they’re the only place to pull paper autos. We can’t say they’re universally the best. They trail the leader by a wide margin when it comes to non-exclusive autos. But just like Baseball, they’re your MVF here.

We’re going to be a little more conservative with this release than we were with Flagship Football a couple months back. This isn’t like Bowman Baseball, where we’re trying to buy everything in sight. We’ve got a couple Value Boxes on the way, and maybe we’ll pick up one or two more in the wild.

We’ll let you know how it goes.

👉 Verdict: Rip Lightly
🏆 Most Valuable Format: Value Box

After seeing the odds, what are you doing with Bowman Football? Let us know in the comments.

Disclaimer: The content in The Hobby Wire is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Commentary, analysis, and opinions on sports cards, rookies, and the hobby are not financial, investment, or professional advice. Collectors should always do their own research before buying, selling, or trading cards. Market values are volatile and can change rapidly—past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Unless specified, all pricing references are based on the Prizm/Refractor parallels of an athlete’s Chrome rookie card, with prices from market movers, alt.xyz & 130pt.com.

Any odds mentioned were derived from DraftKings Sportsbook.

Grading on a Curve

The Hobby Wire — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 14:32:33 GMT

A little over a year ago, we did something we’d never done before and sprung for a 2025 Bowman Hobby Box. We’d loosely been following Charlie Condon’s college career and thought we’d go in big on the product where his cards were the biggest chase.

Turns out, we made the right choice.

This Charlie Condon Orange Reptilian Auto barely saw the light of day before we put it in a semi-rigid and shipped it off to PSA.

Condon can absolutely mash a baseball. He did it in college, when he set the single-season Division I home run record for the BBCOR era, and he’s still doing it in AAA. The fact that he’ll be playing in Coors when he gets the call-up gives us a lot of optimism that he’ll live up to the hype.

We’re most likely going to look to flip it when we start hearing word of a call-up. But, with this being the only PSA 10 in existence, how are we supposed to comp it?

We’ve been down this road before. In our first installment of Under the Hammer, we had to comp our PSA 10 Black 2025 Topps Chrome Mickey Mouse SSP.

With that card, there was no sales history at all to go off of. So we used a rule we’d heard echo through the hobby ever since we got back into collecting in 2020.

“PSA 10s typically go for 2-3x the price of a raw copy”

Hammer price for that Mickey ended up at $1,647, right in line with the $700 raw comp we found for the Black Goofy, the closest stand-in we had. That’s 2.35x, sitting right inside the range.

It worked that time, but if that’s the general rule of comping, we’re going to need some proof to back it up.

Let’s rip in.

The Rumors

There are two rumors we’ve heard time and time again in this hobby. It doesn’t matter where we are, either. Be it at a card show or on the stream of a box break we bought into, lots of collectors are saying the same thing.

Myth #1: A PSA 10 is worth 2-3x the price of the raw card.

Myth #2: A PSA 9 is worth the same as the raw card.

A lot of people fall back on these when there’s no easy comp for the card they want to sell.

The Stress Test

We pulled comps for 100 cards, ranging from superstars to average Joes. Iconic sets to overprinted base. We comped each card using a 30-day average pulled from a combination of Market Movers and 130point.

Our samples spread across multiple eras of collecting. From the Golden Era, spanning the late ‘40s to the mid-’80s, all the way to the Ultra-Modern era of 2011 to today (or whatever you want to call it).

We intentionally left out Pre-War, as that’s a whole different animal when it comes to comping.

Myth #1: PSA 10 = 2-3x Raw

Saying a PSA 10 is worth 2-3x the price of a raw card just doesn’t hold up when you look across all cards.

If anything, the 2-3x rule is selling you short. The median multiple of our 100 sample cards came in at 9.1x. In fact, 84% of our cards cleared even the top of that range.

Breaking it down by era shows us that the older your card is, the more valuable a Gem Mint grade makes it. Good luck finding a raw Golden Era card that’ll grade a 10 these days, though. It’s that scarcity that does the real work in driving up prices.

But there is an area where we can see how this rumor may have started. Look specifically at Ultra-Modern cards (2011 to today), and the 2-3x rule is dead on for raw cards in both our $100 to $500 and $500+ tiers, as well as inserts and super short prints. We saw it play out firsthand with our Chrome Mickey. A $700 raw comp times 2.6 lands right in the ballpark of what we actually got for the card.

Seeing as how the hobby has become a culture of ripping a pack and immediately sending it away for grading, it’s no surprise that something specific to Ultra-Modern cards would stick as an unofficial hobby rule.

Verdict: Busted as an overall rule. Plausible for Ultra-Modern inserts, SSPs, and raw cards $100 and up.

Myth #2: PSA 9 = Raw

Once again, breaking it down by era makes it more complicated.

If you’ve got a Golden Era card that looks more than decent, send it in and you’ll likely make a profit. But for Junk Wax and Modern stuff, grading will only be worth it if you get a 9 or above. For Ultra-Modern, unless it comes back a 10, you’re more than likely losing money. An Ultra-Modern PSA 8 is actually what comes in closest to the raw value. 9s come in a little higher at 1.5x, which might be sellers baking the cost of grading into the sale.

Again, the rule proves true for specific corners of the Ultra-Modern market. Raw cards worth over $500 came in at 1.2x and autos at 1.1x, right on top of their raw counterparts.

There’s actually a bigger risk here than the chart shows. Of the cards we sampled, 47% were selling for less than the raw price plus the grading fee if they came back a 9. Nearly a coin flip on whether a 9 even makes your money back.

Verdict: Busted overall. Plausible for Ultra-Modern autos and cards worth over $500.

Other Findings & Cheat Sheets

The further we broke down our 100 sample comps, the more useful nuggets we found. If you're ever looking to comp something with limited data, these cheat sheets are where we'd start.

What Have We Learned?

Both rumors were busted as overall rules, but there’s still something to take away here. Between the two of them, the rules hold up on the types of Ultra-Modern cards most people are grading these days. Autos. SSPs. Cards worth over $500.

It makes a lot of sense why these “rules” are spreading around like gospel. They feel right. They’re easy to repeat. And the people repeating them are usually grading the one type of card where they actually hold up. Our SSP Mickey insert was a great example of this.

But, while we couldn’t find a universal rule book here, this wasn’t a total loss. Breaking our 100 sample cards down by era gave us a pretty good set of guidelines.

Remember, we’re following these guidelines as a way to set our expectations. The real price your cards sell for is truly out of your hands. Value is measured by what someone is willing to pay for it now. Not what someone paid for it three months ago. We aren’t looking to be precise here. We just want a way to catch ourselves when our gut feeling about a card’s value ends up way off base.

Using these cheat sheets, we have a pretty good idea of what our Condon Auto will sell for if we send it to auction today. When we get closer to his call-up, whenever that may be, we can run it again and realign our expectations.

What are some cards you’re looking to grade but are having trouble comping? Let us know in the comments.

Disclaimer: The content in The Hobby Wire is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Commentary, analysis, and opinions on sports cards, rookies, and the hobby are not financial, investment, or professional advice. Collectors should always do their own research before buying, selling, or trading cards. Market values are volatile and can change rapidly—past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Unless specified, all pricing references are based on the Prizm/Refractor parallels of an athlete’s Chrome rookie card, with prices from market movers, alt.xyz & 130pt.com.

Any odds mentioned were derived from DraftKings Sportsbook.

Wax Watch: 2026 Bowman Football

The Hobby Wire — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 16:12:43 GMT

Welcome to Wax Watch — The Hobby Wire’s quick-hit preview of upcoming releases before they hit shelves. We break down what it is, who you’re chasing, and whether it’s worth ripping, stashing, scooping singles, or skipping altogether.

Bowman hasn’t put an NFL player on a card since 2016. That’s changing this Wednesday.

2026 Bowman Football marks the brand’s return to the league, and it isn’t coming back alone. For the first time, active NFL players and college prospects share the same box.

What else does Bowman Football have to offer?

Let’s rip in.

The Lowdown

Release Date(s):
All Formats — 09.30.26

Bowman first made football cards from 1948 to 1955. Topps revived the brand as an annual NFL release in 1994 and kept it running through 2016, a stretch that gave us iconic cards like Tom Brady’s 2000 Bowman rookie card. After that, Bowman football went college-only, first as Bowman University and then as Bowman University Chrome.

But now, the pros are back.

The NFL side of this release carries a 200-card base set split between 100 veterans and 100 rookies, in both paper and Chrome. The college side runs a 201-card Prospects set, also in paper and Chrome. And that one extra card in the checklist might be the most sought after in the whole product. More on this later.

Topps is pitching this release to just about everybody: prospectors hunting 1st Bowmans, college fans following their programs, NFL collectors, and anyone who remembers the original run.

Chase Cards to Know

CJ Carr Chrome Prospect Autograph Superfractor

The Chrome Prospect Autographs are the anchor of this product. Always have been. Always will be. But not all autos are going to be the same. Oftentimes, prospects will sneak in an inscription here or there, making some autos more special than others in the same set. Some cards might be signed with “My 1st Bowman Auto” written on the side, marking the player’s very first Bowman autograph.

The CJ Carr Superfractor is a 1/1 inscribed “Go Irish.”

2026 Bowman Football Patrick Mahomes II Anime Insert Black Parallel

Bowman Anime and Bowman GPK both run separate NFL and NCAA checklists this year, and it’s GPK’s first appearance in an NFL release. Anime cards in particular have been wildly successful and consistently in demand.

Bowman Spotlights, Crystallized, and Etched in Glass are in the mix, too. Pretty standard for a Bowman release these days.

The Red Rookie Redemption cards also make their football debut, with FanCash tied to career milestones starting with Rookie of the Year. We imagine the payout will be closer to baseball, since football also hands out two Rookie of the Year awards (Offensive and Defensive).

Talent Watch

These prospects are driving nearly all of the hobby interest in this checklist.

We're three weeks into the NFL season and this draft class still hasn't done anything to change our minds. We're definitely more excited about the prospects in this one.

Arch Manning, QB — Texas Longhorns

Arch Manning, QB - Texas
2025: 3,163 Pass YDS • 26 TD • 7 INT • 399 Rush YDS • 10 Rush TD • Citrus Bowl MVP

Arch Manning is the headliner here. Make no mistake. We’ve been hearing about him for the last three years, and being a Manning doesn’t hurt. We have no idea if he’ll pan out, but when it comes to prospecting, that almost doesn’t matter.

The ink just dried on an exclusivity deal with Fanatics/Topps, so he was a late addition to this year’s release. As a result, the biggest name on the checklist has the smallest footprint: five types of cards and a single autograph. That scarcity should actually be good for his card prices.

CJ Carr, QB - Notre Dame
2025: 2,741 Pass YDS • 24 TD • 6 INT (first season as starter)

Lloyd Carr’s grandson accounted for four touchdowns, three through the air and one on the ground, in No. 3 Notre Dame’s 49-10 rout of Purdue over the weekend. Marcus Freeman kept it simple: “He’s a heck of a quarterback.”

If Manning is the scarcest chase in this product, Carr is the deepest. He’s got 18 checklist entries, including every major chase insert and a Dual NCAA Auto with Joe Montana.

Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, QB - Cal
2025: 200+ Pass YDS in all 13 games (best streak in the Power 4)

Last season, Sagapolutele became Cal's first true freshman to start a season opener at quarterback since Jared Goff in 2013. On September 19 against Wagner, he went 27 of 33 for a career-high 413 yards and three touchdowns, with 358 of those yards coming in the first half. The kid's got a hell of an arm. On the checklist, he's right behind Carr with 17 entries, including every major chase insert.

Cam Coleman, WR - Texas
Two seasons at Auburn: 93 REC • 1,306 YDS • 13 TD

The former five-star and No. 1 receiver in the transfer portal left Auburn for Texas, with CBS reporting his NIL deal at "at least $3 million." This freak of an athlete is paired up with Arch Manning. We're starting to get serious Joe Burrow/Ja'Marr Chase vibes.

Bear Bachmeier, QB - BYU
2025: 3,033 Pass YDS • 15 TD • 11 Rush TD (BYU record)

Bachmeier was the first true freshman to start a season opener in BYU history. He can make every throw on the field and extend plays with his legs. The Dual NCAA Auto with Steve Young is the standout among his 15 checklist entries.

💰 Box Breakdown

Not all boxes are created equal, especially at these prices. Here we lay out the formats, the price for each, how many cards come in a box, and the resulting $/card.

Hobby Box: $469.95 / 160 cards per box → $2.94 per card
- 2x Autographs per box on average
Hobby Box (First Day Issue): $1,175.00 / 160 cards per box → $7.34 per card
- 1x FDI-Exclusive Chrome Rookie or Chrome Prospect Auto /14, 1x Additional Autograph, 1x FDI-Exclusive Chrome Parallel /8, 2x Additional Parallels on average
Jumbo Hobby Box: $849.95 / 288 cards per box → $2.95 per card
- 4x Autographs per box on average, Exclusive Gridiron Refractors and Purple, Black, and Red X-Fractors
Breaker’s Delight: $1,499.95 / 10 cards per box → $150.00 per card
- 3x Autographs per box on average (1x Delight-Exclusive), Exclusive Geometric Parallels
Blaster Box: $29.99 / 60 cards per box → $0.50 per card
- Exclusive Paper Auto Parallels
Mega Box: $64.99 / 42 cards per box → $1.55 per card
- Exclusive Mojo Parallels (Yellow through Rose Gold), Exclusive Mega Rookies and Mega Prospects Inserts

For wide releases, we try not to pay more than $2.00/card for chrome cards or $1.00/card for paper. The idea being that we don’t want to buy a card at a price point so high that we won’t at the very least break even. When a product like Bowman has a mix of the two, we split the difference and call it $1.50.

Blaster Boxes have by far the best dollar-per-card of this year’s release. Blaster/Value Boxes in 2026 Bowman Baseball ended up being our Most Valuable Format. At $0.50 per card, we have very high hopes this time around.

First Day Issue Hobby Boxes look absolutely loaded with exclusive parallels. But at two and a half times the cost of a standard Hobby Box, they’re a little too rich for our blood. Maybe we’d get in on a break.

🎯 Verdict: Rip, Flip, or Skip

At The Hobby Wire, we like to keep it simple.

Rip → The checklist, price, and excitement all line up. Bust down the door.
Flip → Solid class, but prices are too high to rip comfortably. Buy singles on the players you want. For wax, grab a box or two to sit on and sell in a year or two once the rookie class starts to prove itself.
Skip → Junk Wax. Hard pass. Overpriced, overproduced, or saddled with a weak class.

2026 Bowman Baseball was a blast to open and is arguably one of the best releases of the year. If Bowman Football follows suit, we could be in for another good time.

But we’d be lying if we didn’t have some concerns.

First is the checklist.

We haven’t been shy to tell our readers that the 2026 NFL rookie crop doesn’t impress us all that much. The saving grace here is that these rookies are also paired with an above-average group of prospects. Some are going as far as saying the 2027 NFL Draft could be one of the greatest classes since 2017.

The other worry is the long-term value of college cards.

Traditionally, college football cards have their moment, but their ceiling drops as soon as the players’ NFL rookie cards come out. There’s a real niche market here, but prospecting football players might not yield the same results as baseball.

Overall, our concerns are big enough that we aren’t looking to go all-in on this release. We’ll dabble in retail to keep the dollar-per-card low. But springing for a Hobby Box just isn’t part of the game plan right now.

So what format are we liking? Going back to Bowman Baseball, every chasable insert could be pulled in both hobby and retail. We won’t know if that’s true here until Topps publishes the odds. And even if it is, it may only slightly change our opinion on this release.

If Blaster Boxes are as good as they were for baseball, they’ll be hard to top. Without odds, if we’re looking to cop a few boxes, our gut says Blasters.

Once Topps drops the odds sheet, we’ll run it through the Wax Value Index and see if the math agrees.

👉 Verdict: Rip Lightly
🏆 Most Valuable Format(s): Blaster Boxes

Are you excited for Bowman Football? Tell us where you land in the comments, and we'll revisit the second Topps drops the odds.

Disclaimer: The content in The Hobby Wire is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Commentary, analysis, and opinions on sports cards, rookies, and the hobby are not financial, investment, or professional advice. Collectors should always do their own research before buying, selling, or trading cards. Market values are volatile and can change rapidly—past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Unless specified, all pricing references are based on the Prizm/Refractor parallels of an athlete’s Chrome rookie card, with prices from market movers, alt.xyz & 130pt.com.

Any odds mentioned were derived from DraftKings Sportsbook.

Pete Crow-Armstrong: A Collector's Case Study

The Hobby Wire — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 15:34:49 GMT

40 home runs in a season is impressive. Pairing it with 40 steals puts you in elite company.

On Thursday, Pete Crow-Armstrong swiped his 40th bag of the season and joined the 40-40 club. Canseco. Bonds. A-Rod. Soriano. Acuña. Ohtani. And now PCA, the first Cub to ever do it. Only Ohtani and Soriano have also paired 45 homers with 40 steals in the same season.

PCA has put up one of the most dominant seasons in recent memory. We haven’t seen this much excitement from a Cub stepping up to the plate since Sammy Sosa.

For the hobby, that can either be a good thing or a bad thing. More often than not, the hobby tends to emotionally jump the gun.

We want to know how it’s pricing PCA right now. Is the MVP already baked in? He’s already the face of the Cubs franchise, but has the hobby already penciled him in as one of the faces of the sport? Have we missed the buying window as prices explode leading up to the MVP vote? Or is this our last chance before things get even crazier?

Let’s rip in.

M.V.Pete.

CF / Chicago Cubs / Draft Info: Round 1, Pick 19 (2020, New York Mets)

2024 Topps #HFA-15 Pete Crow-Armstrong Home Field Advantage Insert

PCA’s road to Wrigley was anything but smooth. The Mets took the Harvard-Westlake star 19th overall in 2020, but being drafted in 2020 meant there was no minor league baseball for him to jump into until the following season. When he finally got on the field, right shoulder surgery ended his 2021 after just 24 at-bats. Two months later, the Mets traded him for Javier Báez, sending him to the team he and his dad grew up rooting for.

At first, it was the glove that caught our attention. Statcast rated him the second-best defensive outfielder in baseball in 2024.

In 2025, he started the All-Star Game, joined Sammy Sosa as the only Cubs with a 30-30 season, and won his first Gold Glove. But the bat faded hard down the stretch. After July, he hit just four homers over his final 51 games, and his walk rate was fifth-worst among qualified hitters. This year, he found an answer to all of it. His walk rate more than doubled, his chase rate on sliders fell, and his bat speed jumped.

He’s hitting .282 with 45 homers (tied for the MLB lead) and 107 RBI, and he leads MLB in defensive outs above average. He also took every first-place vote in MLB.com’s final NL MVP poll.

Bottom line: PCA is a 24-year-old center fielder, signed through 2032, with the Cubs’ first MVP since Kris Bryant well within reach. The tools were always there. Now the bat has caught up.

Do The Cubs Help or Hurt?

Good Player / Bad Team

The Hobby Wire — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 20:19:17 GMT

We are eight games away from this nightmare of a New York Mets season finally being over. At 70-84, they’ve already been eliminated from playing in the postseason. Now they just play for pride.

It was shocking, to say the least. The Mets spent big the past two seasons, picked up stud bats like Bo Bichette and Marcus Semien. Not to even mention giving Juan Soto the largest contract in the history of the sport. But none of these guys seemed to click.

It was a real failure-to-launch situation. And by the time we got out of April, everyone was already writing this team off.

Being the collectors/investors that we are, we couldn’t help but wonder what this was doing to the Juan Soto market. Despite the Mets’ failures, Soto actually gave them a typical Juan Soto season. .274 average, 26 homers, and an OPS+ in the 150s.

Juan Soto cards on the decline since Opening Day 2026

Since the start of the season, some of the most liquid Juan Soto cards have fallen off. His 1983 Silver Pack Rookie from Topps Update? Dropped 17%. His Rainbow Foil? Down 22%. His Chrome Update Base card? 31%.

Soto had a calf strain that kept him out for all of August. But even when he came back in the beginning of September, prices still dropped.

When a team puts up an absolute stinker of a season, the hobby starts looking elsewhere. This season, all eyes are on Ohtani, PCA, and Junior Caminero. All of these guys have punched their ticket to October. It doesn’t matter how good Juan Soto was. He’s already making vacation plans. This gets us thinking about whether there’s a window here.

So let’s put this to the test. We’re going to look at generational talents across the three major sports who have had to ride the wave of a disappointing season at no fault of their own. Is there a point where we can buy their cards during the bad year to flip for profit at some point in the future?

Let’s rip in.

Re-Ripped: 2026 Topps Flagship Football

The Hobby Wire — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 18:19:53 GMT

Our two Hobby Boxes of 2026 Topps Flagship Football left a bad taste in our mouths. It wasn’t just the rookie class we’re iffy on. Heartbreaking QC issues and several packs filled with nothing but base cards really took the fun out of our rip.

So we’re giving this release one more shot. The two Fanatics Value Boxes we bought just landed on our doorstep. Our Wax Value Index showed us that while Hobby Boxes had the better expected spend for pulling rookie autos and relics, the Fanatics Box had the most value for pulling everything else flagship has to offer.

If these come back as thin as the Hobby Boxes, we’ll have to reconsider our original verdict.

So let’s rip in…again.

We’re not talking base or inserts here. Our thoughts didn’t change after this second rip. The base QC was still excellent, and we pulled the same crop of inserts as we did in our Hobby Boxes, just at a higher clip.

Base Cards: A — Excellent photography paired with some of the best QC of the year.
Inserts: B — Not much new here. And not much that’s football specific.

Parallels

The exclusive Topps Foils came out great. They even feel like they’re printed on a slightly thicker card stock than everything else in the pack.

The QC in this rip was a little better for base Rainbow Foils and Holo Foils, but we’re still seeing the same problems plaguing the colored parallels.

Edge peeling on the left side of a Tyler Shough pink holo foil

The Tyler Shough Pink Holo Foil we pulled showed the same edge issues we found on our Green Ed Oliver out of the Hobby Boxes. Seeing it pop up again in a completely different format is even more discouraging.

This is a real problem. A lot of the most valuable parallels on the market are numbered and colored. Last time, we experienced first-hand what it’s like to pull a card that’s actually worth something, only for it to have been knocked down a few grades before it ever saw the light of day.

Because the QC on the exclusive Topps Foils was on point, we’re bumping the grade up slightly from a D to a D+.

Verdict: D+ Color still can’t be trusted.

Hit Consistency

Product odds tell one story. Actual pack distribution tells another.
🔥= Better than expected hits

Our Rip: 2x Fanatics Boxes

Fanatics Box #1
9x Topps Foil • 10x Inserts • 1x Rainbow Foil • 1x Holo Foil

Fanatics Box #2 🔥
9x Topps Foil • 9x Inserts • 1x Insert Prallel • 1x Rainbow Foil • 1x Holo Foil • 1x Colored Holo Foil

All 18 packs held a Topps Foil. All 18 held an insert. Not one base only pack across two boxes.

Go back to our Hobby rip, and 11 of our 40 packs held nothing but base. More than a quarter of the rip.

Every pack having something in it, exclusive or otherwise, makes for a much more engaging rip. The Fanatics Boxes didn’t feel like a chore to open.

But here’s the catch.

The collation here is scripted, and it’s scripted tightly. Rainbow Foil in Pack 3 in both boxes. Holo Foil in Pack 5 in both boxes. Double insert in Pack 7 in both boxes.

Box #2 is where we found our color. The Pink Holo Foil turned up in Pack 6, and it was an add-on. It didn’t replace any cards, and it didn’t cost the box the Rainbow Foil or the Holo Foil, which still landed in their usual seats.

The insert parallel from Pack 9, on the other hand, did replace the base insert we expected to get in that pack.

Then there’s the volume. We pulled 10 inserts out of 9 packs in each Fanatics Box. Each Hobby Box gave us 9 inserts out of 20 packs. The $29.99 box out-inserted a $250 box on raw count.

Price it by the pack that actually held something, and it gets worse for Hobby. $3.33 per pack out of the Fanatics Box. Roughly $17.24 out of the Hobby Box once you rule out all the base-only packs.

Final Thoughts

After ripping a couple of Fanatics Boxes, our thoughts on 2026 Flagship Football haven’t changed. We’re still iffy about this rookie class, and nothing from Week 1 changed our minds. And the parallel QC, although slightly better in this rip, is still very disappointing.

But the Fanatics Boxes were significantly more enjoyable to open. And they answered a question that’s worth more than anything we pulled from a pack.

Topps knows how to make a box that doesn’t feel like a slog to open. They’re already running the same playbook we laid out after our first rip.

“The fix isn’t much. A couple more inserts per box, a few more unnumbered parallels, and none of it cuts into anything scarce.”

The Fanatics Box is exactly that. An unnumbered Topps Foil in every pack, and a format stuffed with inserts.

Why Topps isn’t doing this for the Hobby Box is beyond us. It’s not great paying a premium price for a format that feels like it’s giving you less.

If you’re still looking to rip some flagship, skip Hobby outright. If you’re after autographs, go with Jumbo Hobby Boxes. But for the best overall experience, we think the Fanatics Box is the format to get. Especially since you can still grab them at the $29.99 price tag on the Fanatics website.

We’ve ripped enough of this. On to the next one.

Final Verdict: Tentative Rip
🏆 Most Valuable Format: Fanatics Value Box

Hit Me!

Check out some of what we pulled below! If you ripped any yourself, drop your best hits in the comments.

Drake London Pink Big Ticket Players Insert

Cade Klubnik Topps Foil

Tyler Shough Pink Holo Foil

Matthew Stafford Topps Foil

What do you think of 2026 Flagship Football? Have you pulled anything good? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.

Disclaimer: The content in The Hobby Wire is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Commentary, analysis, and opinions on sports cards, rookies, and the hobby are not financial, investment, or professional advice. Collectors should always do their own research before buying, selling, or trading cards. Market values are volatile and can change rapidly—past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Unless specified, all pricing references are based on the Prizm/Refractor parallels of an athlete’s Chrome rookie card, with prices from market movers, alt.xyz & 130pt.com.

Any odds mentioned were derived from DraftKings Sportsbook.

The PSA Premium

The Hobby Wire — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 22:49:38 GMT

Comping cards is one of the most important things in this hobby. In the digital age, it’s fairly simple. You can checkout eBay sales history, go to 130pt, or if you want a one stop shop you can pay for a variety of price tracking services out there.

But picture this.

You’re at a card show and out of the corner of your eye you spot the exact card you’ve been looking for over the past year and a half. The price looks steep, so you pull out your phone to check the comp.

Crap!

The card show is so full of people that the WiFi is moving at a snail’s pace.

It’s impossible to have every price of every card memorized. But it doesn’t hurt to know a few simple rules before trying your luck negotiating at the table.

Today, we’re going to see if we can craft one of these rules.

It’s not a secret that people are paying a premium for cards in a PSA slab these days. It doesn’t matter that Beckett is the tougher grade or if SGC slabs look better. People want their card encased with that little red label. We’re not here to answer why.

But how much more do you really have to pay to get the slab that everyone wants? Is it really worth it? Is there a way collectors can use it to their advantage?

By looking at several cards of various grades and eras, we’re hoping to get these answers to take with us to our next show.

Let’s rip in.

Wax Value Index: 2026 Bowman Chrome Baseball

The Hobby Wire — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 21:44:06 GMT

Bowman Chrome hasn’t even been out a full day and prices of wax are already skyrocketing. Yesterday, you could have purchased a Hobby Box for $330. Today? $525. Breaker’s Delight was $720 yesterday. Now it’s nearing $900.

New release hype is in full swing. In yesterday’s Wax Watch, we were pretty open about our thoughts on the release. The prospects don’t wow us, but the rookie class is too good to pass up.

We called this release a Flip. The type of product where you buy and hold the wax instead of rip it open. If you did that yesterday, congrats. You’re already up at least 25%.

We waited it out. We wanted to see if the odds changed our opinion. If Topps were to lift the embargo on true colored parallels entering the Mega Boxes, that would change the equation entirely.

Well, the odds are out.

Let’s rip in.

What the Numbers Say

We won't make you hang 'til the end here. There's not a ton of overlap between hobby and retail with this one.

Base Card Parallels

True color parallels stay locked to the hobby formats once again. If you’re chasing them in a Mega Box, your chances are zero. If Wave parallels are your thing, you’re going Hobby Box or nothing. Those can’t even be pulled from Breaker’s Delight.

In fact, Hobby edges out Breaker’s Delight in every parallel you’re able to pull from both boxes. Paying one tenth of the price per pack will do that.

Here’s what all three formats have in common:

Base Cards
Base Chrome Prospects
Red RC Variation Rookie Cards

That’s it.

There’s still one reason to think about Mega Boxes. Red RC Rookie Variations have an expected spend that’s less than a third of what it would cost to pull one from a Hobby Box.

But don’t go clicking that buy button just yet. Out of a Mega Box, you’d be spending an average of $100 per Red Rookie. That’s the same amount you’d be redeeming it for if your player won Rookie of the Year. That’s a losing play no matter how you look at it.

If it were us, we’d stick to buying singles if we think we’ve got the winners figured out.

Inserts

The insert split is a little backwards here. If you want the common stuff like Spring Breakout, Big Break, Stars of the Future, or Travel Tags, you have to shell out for the premium formats.

But, refreshingly, the case hits and SSP inserts can be found in any format. We’re talking Spotlights, GPK, Crystallized, Final Draft. All the inserts with real value can be found anywhere. And Mega Boxes aren’t the worst choice either. That crown goes to Breaker’s Delight again. Hobby Boxes come away with almost another clean sweep.

The outlier? Spotlights Superfractors just barely have a better expected spend in the Mega Boxes. That’s the effect of secondary market prices at work. Hobby had the better spend here when everything was at MSRP.

Just bear in mind that all of these are going to be tough pulls no matter which format you’re buying.

Autos & Relics

Autos and relics have absolutely no overlap between retail and hobby. But Breaker’s Delight makes a shocking jump from worst to first.

To pull a Rookie Auto from Breaker’s Delight means spending $5,000 less than if you tried to do it from a Hobby Box.

These boxes also edge out the competition for Insert Autos, Prospect Auto Parallels, and Relic Autos. The only thing they don’t win outright is Base Chrome Prospect Autos and their refractor parallels. Those come out of Hobby Boxes at a higher clip. That makes sense. All the good auto hits have apparently been stuffed into Breaker’s Delight. What else would be left?

Mega Boxes live on their own little planet in this category. The only autos in there carry the exclusive Mojo finish.

Popular Chase Cards

At current pricing, here’s where the lowest average spend lands for the most popular chases:

Refractors — Hobby Box
Superfractors — Hobby Box
International Refractors — Hobby Box
Image Variations — Hobby Box
WBC Variations — Hobby Box
Red RC Rookie Variations — Mega Box
SSP Inserts — Hobby Box
Base Prospect Autos — Hobby Box
Base Rookie Autos — Breaker’s Delight
Insert Autos and Base Auto Parallels — Breaker’s Delight

These rankings will shift as sealed pricing adjusts.

The odds stay fixed. The market doesn’t.

Most Valuable Format?

After breaking down the odds, the winner here wasn’t as clear as we thought. Mega Boxes fell out of contention real quick. The one time it came out best on a shared card, the expected spend was so high that it rendered the card valueless.

Breaker’s Delight is hands-down the best for Autos. And it’s really made us think about hopping in on a case break or two tonight. The problem is that they really aren’t that great when it comes to anything else.

The Hobby Box is taking the crown here. It reigns supreme in parallels and image variations, wins on every SSP insert, and holds its own on prospect autos. You’ve got the best shot at real value with one of these.

That said, we’re still not interested in ripping these.

For a release that’s geared towards prospects first and foremost, we just feel the ceiling on this crop is too low. We were uncomfortable dropping $330 on a box to rip. We’re definitely not touching anything over $500. We’d rather pick up singles for these guys.

But like we said yesterday, this release is saved by the A+ talent in the 2026 MLB rookie crop. That’s enough of a reason to pick up and sit on some of the wax.

The index can help here too. Knowing what format has the most juice can help you see what might jump higher in price. We’re already seeing it on day one. Hobby Boxes jumped 59% compared to Breaker’s Delight’s 25%.

If we could swing it, we’d sit on a couple hobby boxes and let this rookie class do the work.

👉 Verdict: Flip
🏆 Most Valuable Format: Hobby Box

After seeing the odds, what are you doing with Bowman Chrome? Tell us in the comments, and we'll pull the best takes into the next Index.

Disclaimer: The content in The Hobby Wire is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Commentary, analysis, and opinions on sports cards, rookies, and the hobby are not financial, investment, or professional advice. Collectors should always do their own research before buying, selling, or trading cards. Market values are volatile and can change rapidly—past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Unless specified, all pricing references are based on the Prizm/Refractor parallels of an athlete’s Chrome rookie card, with prices from market movers, alt.xyz & 130pt.com.

Any odds mentioned were derived from DraftKings Sportsbook.

Wax Watch: 2026 Bowman Chrome Baseball

The Hobby Wire — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 20:51:41 GMT

Topps is celebrating 30 years of Bowman Chrome. We’re celebrating one.

2025 Bowman Chrome was the first product we ever put through Wax Watch. A year later, we’re right back where we started with 2026 Bowman Chrome Baseball.

Let’s rip in.

The Lowdown

Release Date(s):
Hobby Box — 09.09.26
Breaker’s Delight — 09.09.26
Mega Box — 09.23.26

Bowman Chrome debuted in 1997 as a chromium cut-down of flagship Bowman. The base was 100 veterans and 200 rookies and prospects. The brand it came from is much older, tracing back through Gum, Inc. in Philadelphia in 1927, the first true Bowman set in 1948, and a long nap after Topps bought the name in 1956 and shelved it until 1989.

Topps lists this one as a premium product. Last year’s centering issues made it feel a lot less like one, and we haven’t forgotten that. But chrome is chrome. The stock, the finish, the refractor rainbow. That’s premium by definition. Where flagship Bowman mixes paper and chrome, Bowman Chrome is chrome only, and where Bowman Draft owns the domestic draft class, Bowman Chrome owns International Signing Day.

This year’s edition runs two separate 100-card sets for 200 cards total. Base Chrome covers established stars and this year’s rookie crop, with Munetaka Murakami and Konnor Griffin on the cover.

Like with all 2026 MLB cards, the rookie class is stacked. Two Cy Young front runners in Cam Schlittler and Jacob Misiorowski. Roman Anthony, Konnor Griffin, Travis Bazzana. Real face of the franchise types.

The prospect side is a different conversation. Bowman Chrome focuses on recent international signings. For the most part, we’re talking 18-year-olds (or younger) with not a whole lot of at bats under their belt. This is probably the most high-risk, high-reward of the three major Bowman releases. And recently, we’re not sure the reward has been there.

Price trajectories of 2023 Bowman Chrome Ethan Salas Auto, 2024 Leo De Vries Auto & 2025 Shotaro Morii Refractor Auto

Chase Cards to Know

(Left to Right) Wandy Asigen International Refractor Autograph, Chase DeLauter Big Break Autograph, Francisco Renteria Gold Ink Autograph

The chase that fits this product best is the International Refractor Variation Autograph. It swaps the standard background for a scene from the prospect’s home country, and the execution is better than we’d have thought. It’s a direct descendant of the international variations that ran from 1997 to 1999.

The Big Break Autograph Variation is new this year and one of the most heavily promoted cards in the release. A card bursting through torn foil, comic-style logo, bright yellow background. The debut checklist runs deep with Jac Caglianone, Sal Stewart, Jacob Misiorowski, Leo De Vries, and Kade Anderson. Topps put out a full article on Ripped about this one card, which tells you where they think the story is.

We’re not sold on these. There’s been a surge of cards across recent releases taking this meta approach, athletes ripping packs, athletes holding up their first Bowmans. It’s cute the first time. But it’s a gimmick, and gimmicks have a way of not standing the test of time when the long-term value conversation starts.

Then there’s the Gold Ink Autograph, hobby exclusive and the sharpest looking auto in the release. Black and gold, an on-card signature in gold ink, and enough negative space to let the whole thing breathe. These have been a mainstay for the past few Bowman releases and we hope it stays that way.

Bowman Red RC Rookie Redemptions make a comeback too. Coincidentally, all of the ROY favorites are in this checklist.

Elsewhere on the checklist, Final Draft gets a graffiti and street art treatment, and it might be our favorite insert in the release. Crystallized, Bowman Spotlights, and the GPK crossover round things out. None of them are going to be the reason you buy a box. All of them are cards you'd be happy to pull.

Talent Watch

The international class Bowman Chrome is built on

Luis Hernandez, SS - San Francisco Giants

Luis Hernandez, SS - San Francisco Giants
2026 MILB Stats: 289 AB • .277 AVG • 8 HR • .817 OPS
The headline 1st Bowman of this release, and Topps knows it. A $5M bonus, the top international ranking on the board, and a Rookie of the Year season in Venezuela's pro league hitting .346 at 17 years old.

There's a wrinkle though. Hernandez plays short and third, and those are positions currently filled by guys making major money in San Francisco. Moves will have to be made before we see him get the call. He'll be one of the most expensive cards in this product on day one, and the road to the Bay is longer than that price tag suggests.

Angeibel Gomez, OF - Kansas City Royals
2026 DSL Stats: 144 AB • .361 AVG • 9 HR • 1.120 OPS
An 80 percent contact rate, a groundball rate under 30 percent, and exit velocities that touch triple digits on a regular basis. He's the best player on this checklist currently playing in the DSL. He's also a prospect at a premium position that Kansas City actually needs filled, and that matters more than collectors give it credit for. If he keeps raking, we could see him move quickly. Nothing lifts a 1st Bowman market like a clear path to playing time.

Francisco Renteria, OF - Philadelphia Phillies
2026 DSL Stats: 198 AB • .379 AVG •11 HR • 1.152 OPS
Big toolsy frame with real present game power. The hit tool is the open question, but it reads as a pitch selection issue rather than a chase problem, and that tends to get cleaned up.

The timeline is the catch. Renteria is still playing in the Dominican Summer League. It could be a while before we see his name mentioned in a rookie checklist. Highest ceiling of this group, longest wait.

Sebastian Dos Santos, SS - St. Louis Cardinals
2026 MILB Stats: 286 AB • .252 AVG • 16 HR • .892 OPS
Signed for $75,000. Not a typo, and a rounding error next to what the other three commanded.

He was the top name on last year's Top 50 DSL performers list and he's already producing in Low-A as an 18-year-old, with a pull-side swing, above average power projection, and a good eye at the plate. Add a rebuilding Cardinals club with every reason to let a kid play and Dos Santos could arrive sooner than the bonus suggests. Cheapest entry point of the four by a wide margin.

Rookies Worth Mentioning

Roman Anthony (Red Sox), JJ Wetherholt (Cardinals), Kevin McGonigle (Tigers), Jacob Misiorowski (Brewers), Munetaka Murakami (White Sox), Konnor Griffin (Pirates), Cam Schlittler (Yankees), Trey Yesavage (Blue Jays), Bryce Eldridge (Giants), Sal Stewart (Reds), Chase Burns (Reds), Nolan McLean (Mets), Samuel Basallo (Orioles), Chase DeLauter (Guardians)

💰 Box Breakdown

Not all boxes are created equal, especially at these prices. Here we lay out the formats, the price for each, how many cards come in a box, and the resulting $/card.

Hobby Box: $329.99 / 60 cards per box → $5.50 per card
- 2x Autographs, 1x Prospect Shimmer Parallel, 1x Prospect X-Factor, 1x Travel Tags, 6x Inserts
Breaker’s Delight: $719.95 / 10 cards per box → $72.00 per card
- 3x Autographs, 3x Numbered Geometric Refractors, 1x Insert
Mega Box: $50.00 / 36 cards per box → $1.39 per card
- 2x Mojo Inserts, 2x Prospect Lazer Refractors

Pack and card counts are exactly the same as last year's. Every year, we always get a little nervous that Fanatics/Topps will continue to skimp on the cards.

That $72.00 per card on Delight looks brutal. Delight is built to be ripped through breaks. Buying one to rip yourself is almost always a losing play. Buying a spot in a case break is better for these.

A word to the wise.

Mega doesn't arrive until the 23rd. That two-week gap is going to put a premium on singles, because a good chunk of collectors can't clear $330 for a hobby box and the only cards on the market will have come out of one. If you're buying singles from this release, wait. Let the Megas drop, let the supply catch up, and understand that base card prices won't really settle until a couple of months after release.

🎯 Verdict: Rip, Flip, or Skip

At The Hobby Wire, we like to keep it simple.

Rip → The checklist, price, and excitement all line up. Bust down the door.
Flip → Solid class, but prices are too high to rip comfortably. Buy singles on the players you want. For wax, grab a box or two to sit on and sell in a year or two once the rookie class starts to prove itself.
Skip → Junk Wax. Hard pass. Overpriced, overproduced, or saddled with a weak class.

Here’s what’s actually carrying this product.

It isn’t the prospects. The 1st Bowman checklist has generally been the weakest of the three major Bowman releases, and international signings are a mixed bag by nature. What’s changed is that these guys aren’t moving through the minors the way earlier classes did.

We like the four names we ran. But we don’t love them. And certainly wouldn’t pay $300+ to pull them out of some wax.

This rookie class is a different animal. Two Cy Young front runners, and a stack of guys who project as faces of their franchises. Their chrome rookies and autos are what makes this wax worth owning.

It reminds us of 2018 Bowman Chrome. A hobby box that sold for $140 at launch. Recent eBay sales have it around $5,600. A huge amount of that is Shohei, and we’re not pretending otherwise. We don’t think this product gets anywhere near $5,600. But a hobby box of 2026 Bowman Chrome isn’t going to be cheaper in two years than it is today, and a rookie class this stacked forces the wax prices upward.

This is a flip if we’ve ever seen one.

Our call on the 2025 product was to wait until February for hype to cool. February came, but we weren’t keen enough on any prospect in that checklist to pull the trigger. Hobby was pushing $400 by then anyway. Waiting cost us. The difference this time is that we’re not waiting on prospects to prove anything. The rookies in the checklist already have.

We passed on the preorder window because that money is going toward other releases this fall. If you can take the $329.99 drop today, we think that’s a good flip. The secondary market price is already $145 higher and it isn’t coming back down.

We’re also leaving our verdict on the Mega Box open…for now. The format still has a place here as the more accessible way into the product, but the parallel lockout makes it checklist dependent. This year, the checklist is good enough that pulling Mojos of the year’s hottest rookies just about covers what’s missing from the rest of the packs. Barely. If the odds sheet shows Topps reworked the format to include real color, autos, or more inserts out of base packs, this call goes to Rip almost immediately.

We’ll keep you posted as soon as we see an odds sheet. If we see a mega or two in the wild, we’ll probably grab a few to rip…for science 👀.

👉 Verdict: Flip
🏆 Most Valuable Format(s): TBD (Pending Odds)

Are you excited for Bowman Chrome? Tell us where you land in the comments, and we'll revisit the second Topps drops the odds.

Disclaimer: The content in The Hobby Wire is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Commentary, analysis, and opinions on sports cards, rookies, and the hobby are not financial, investment, or professional advice. Collectors should always do their own research before buying, selling, or trading cards. Market values are volatile and can change rapidly—past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Unless specified, all pricing references are based on the Prizm/Refractor parallels of an athlete’s Chrome rookie card, with prices from market movers, alt.xyz & 130pt.com.

Any odds mentioned were derived from DraftKings Sportsbook.

C.J. Stroud: A Collector's Case Study

The Hobby Wire — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 21:27:26 GMT

C.J. Stroud’s rookie cards have been sliding for two straight years. His Silver Prizm in a PSA 10 averaged $1,442 around his rookie season. This past season? $294.

That’s a 79% haircut on a 25-year-old quarterback who’s never missed the playoffs and just went 12-5.

So which is it? Either the hobby soured on him too hard and too fast, and there’s a bargain sitting in front of us. Or collectors are still paying for what they saw in 2023, and these prices have further to fall.

Let’s rip in.

For Cryin’ Out Stroud!

2023 Donruss C.J. Stroud #D-2 Downtown! SSP Insert

QB / Houston Texans / Draft Info: Round 1, Pick 2 (2023)

C.J. Stroud arrived in Houston as the fix for a problem the Texans never expected to have. They’d found their franchise quarterback in Deshaun Watson back in 2017, then lost him to circumstances that had nothing to do with football. Two seasons of Tyrod Taylor and Davis Mills followed. Seven wins between them. Houston took Stroud second overall in 2023.

He didn’t need a redshirt year. As a rookie he threw for 4,108 yards with 23 touchdowns against 5 interceptions, won Offensive Rookie of the Year, made the Pro Bowl, took the AFC South, and won a playoff game in January. A three-win team turned into a division champion in a single season, and his rookie cards became the centerpiece of the 2023 football class almost overnight.

His game is built on calm rather than fireworks. He throws with anticipation, reads coverage early, and doesn’t rattle when the pocket squeezes. He’ll pick up a first down with his legs when he has to, but he isn’t a runner and never has been. Everything he’s worth is tied to what he does as a passer.

Then the arrow turned. Three seasons, three declines. 4,108 yards, then 3,727, then 3,041. Not all of it is on him. He’s been sacked 113 times in 46 games, and injuries have pulled his top receivers off the field in each of the last three years. But January hasn’t helped. Six playoff games have produced six touchdowns and six interceptions, capped by a divisional-round loss at New England where he threw four picks and completed 42% of his passes.

At 25 he’s young enough that none of this has to stick. He’s also three years into a rookie deal with no extension in hand, on a team that just told the league it plans to run the ball more. A live, unresolved story. Exactly what makes him worth studying right now.

Do The Texans Help or Hurt?

The State of the Hobby - September 2026

The Hobby Wire — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 18:10:34 GMT

Welcome back to The Hobby Wire: the newsletter for collectors, investors, and everyone trying to make sense of this wild hobby.

Before we get into it, one quick note.

This post marks one year of The Hobby Wire. We’re sitting at 750 subscribers and counting. That’s further than we ever would have expected to get in twelve months.

We’re thinking we might just stick around a bit.

One ask, and it’s the only one we’ll make up top. If something we’ve written over the last year helped you make a smarter buy or dodge a bad box, send it to a collector who’d use it. That’s how this thing grows.

Share The Hobby Wire

Back to the grind. August didn’t slow down at all.

Let’s rip in.

Slow Card Sales? Here are 6 Things to Try.

Previously on The Hobby Wire…

We stayed busy last month. Here's the short version:

We put out a Wax Watch and Value Index for 2025-26 Topps Chrome Update Basketball, though we couldn't find any in the wild to rip for ourselves.
We took a hard look at Adley Rutschman to see whether the Red Sox trade opened a buying window on his cards.
We kicked off a new series, Under the Hammer, where we give firsthand accounts of working with the hobby's biggest auction houses. First up: Goldin.
We contributed to ’s MLB Rookie Rankings piece, weighing in on the Munetaka Murakami card market.
We provided full coverage of the 2026 Topps Flagship Football, start to finish.
And if you've ever watched your team draft their QB of the future only to have him hold a clipboard for two seasons, we went back through recent examples to figure out when the right time to buy actually shows up.

Around the Hobby

There was other news in August. All of it got buried by the Cooper Flagg Rookie Debut Patch Auto.

The bounties started before Chrome Update Basketball even hit shelves. The Dallas Mavericks offered 32 years of season tickets to whoever pulled it. Ken Goldin offered a $1.5 million cash advance. And Alt did something we’ve never seen before. They auctioned the card without any agreement to sell it, just to show the owner what their platform could do.

None of it was enough.

Fanatics came in aggressive and kept the card in-house, adding it to their September Premier Auction along with the Dylan Harper and Kon Knueppel RDPAs. The terms of that negotiation stayed private.

So Fanatics made the card. And now Fanatics is selling the card. We’re not surprised.

This is exactly what they were describing back in May at the Topps Industry Conference when they talked about streamlining the whole redemption process.

August also saw Fanatics deliver on another promise from that same conference. Topps Instant Packs. Released alongside 2025-26 Topps Chrome Black Basketball, collectors could buy individual packs on Fanatics Collect. The experience is fully digital, but you're still pulling physical cards that live in the Fanatics Vault.

We bought a couple packs and, honestly, we’re kind of here for it.

Instant Packs give collectors a way into a premium release without buying a full box. Keeping the whole thing inside the Fanatics ecosystem also stops scalpers from buying up inventory and doubling the price overnight.

Where it needs work is the odds disclosure. These shouldn’t sit separate from the regular odds sheet. Especially when you can pull the same parallels and case hits out of both.

Baseball

With the final month of the season here, teams are locked in on the playoffs. Collectors? We’re watching the MVP race.

Yordan Alvarez has the AL all but wrapped up. The NL has been neck and neck between reigning MVP Shohei Ohtani and Cubs superstar Pete Crow-Armstrong. After the August Crow-Armstrong just put together, if you participate in the Topps Chrome MVP buyback program, you might want to start getting those PCA cards in order.

His rookie auto is already up 400% since Opening Day. There's room for it to keep climbing.

2024 Topps Chrome Pete Crow-Armstrong Rookie Autograph PSA 10 Price History

Going the other direction, and just as surprising, is Cal Raleigh.

A year after belting 60 home runs, he's hitting .171 with only 20 to his name. This is starting to feel like more than a slump for the Big Dumper, and collectors are heading for the exits. His rookie refractor is down almost 60% on the year.

2022 Topps Chrome Cal Raleigh Rookie Refractor PSA 10 Price History

Is this the end of the line for Raleigh collectors, or the buying window of the year? When the season wraps, expect Collector's Case Studies on both of these guys.

MVP Odds

NL
Pete Crow-Armstrong — -1600
Shohei Ohtani — +900
AL
Yordan Alvarez — -2500
Junior Caminero — +1300

CY Young Odds

NL
Jacob Misiorowski — -1400
Chris Sale — +750
AL
Cam Schlittler — -170
Dylan Cease — +145

Rookie of the Year Odds

NL
Sal Stewart — -600
Nolan McLean — +500
AL
Kevin McGonigle — -450
Parker Messick — +270

Basketball

We’re in the quiet months of NBA news. Klay Thompson got bought out by the Mavs and is headed to Miami. Cleveland landed Peyton Watson in a five-team trade, adding the wing defense a Donovan Mitchell and James Harden core badly needed.

The bigger story is in Los Angeles. The Lakers just sold for $12.5 billion, and Luka Dončić cards have been basically flat for three months running. If new ownership commits to building a real contender around him, this might be as good a buying window as we get on a top-five player.

2018-19 Prizm Luka Donćič Silver PSA 10 90 Day Price History

2026/27 NBA Championship Odds

San Antonio Spurs/OKC Thunder — +270
76ers/Knicks— +900

MVP Odds

Victor Wembanyama — +225
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — +350
Nikola Jokić — +475

Rookie of the Year Odds

Cameron Boozer — +300
Darryn Peterson — +330
Caleb Wilson — +350

Football

T-minus nine days to kickoff.

August gave us training camp and preseason answers to some of the biggest questions collectors carried through the offseason.

Kyler Murray did, in fact, take the QB1 job from JJ McCarthy in Minnesota. Since that announcement landed on 8/11, their Silver Prizms have gone in opposite directions.

Murray is up a respectable 23%. McCarthy has dropped 52%.

Preseason doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme. But if you’re a rookie QB and you throw a few picks, the hobby gets shaky fast. Fernando Mendoza, the cover man for 2026 Topps Flagship Football, did exactly that.

The cards haven't been out long and the drop is already steep. When the parallels start free-falling too, that's a sign that this isn’t just the hype of a brand new release fading away.

2026 MVP Odds

Josh Allen — +600
Lamar Jackson — +800
Joe Burrow — +850

Upcoming Wax Releases

September is looking like a month with a lot of premium releases:

2026 Panini Donruss WNBA — 09.04.26
2026 Bowman Chrome Baseball — 09.09.26
2025-26 Topps Definitive Basketball — 09.17.26
2025-26 Topps Pristine Basketball — 09.24.26
2026 Topps Baseball x KAWS Box — 09.28.26
2026 Topps Museum Collection Baseball — TBD September
2026 Topps Cosmic Chrome Baseball — TBD September
2025-26 Topps Royalty Basketball — TBD September

Release dates sourced from Steel City Collectibles and are subject to change.

Collector’s Corner
(Recommended Reads)

A few articles from around the hobby caught our eye this month.

How Fanatics Landed the Cooper Flagg Debut Patch Auto for Consignment — Lucas Mast, Sports Illustrated

Ballcard Genius

Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate and being a part of the eBay Partner Network (and other programs), if you follow these links and make a purchase, I’ll…

2 months ago · 4 likes · 2 comments · Ballcard Genius

Card Chat

The Post-National Blues

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Thanks for Reading!

That’s a wrap on this month’s State of the Hobby. Jump into the comments and tell us what you’re watching, how you’re reading the market, and what you want us to dig into next.

Your feedback shapes how we cover this thing. See you next month.

— The Hobby Wire Team

Disclaimer: The content in The Hobby Wire is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Commentary, analysis, and opinions on sports cards, rookies, and the hobby are not financial, investment, or professional advice. Collectors should always do their own research before buying, selling, or trading cards. Market values are volatile and can change rapidly—past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Unless specified, all pricing references are based on the Prizm/Refractor parallels of an athlete’s Chrome rookie card, with prices from market movers, alt.xyz & 130pt.com.

Any odds mentioned were derived from DraftKings Sportsbook, unless otherwise specified.

Wax Rewind: 2024 Topps Chrome Baseball

The Hobby Wire — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 22:03:06 GMT

The 2026 MLB National League MVP race has been something to watch. In one corner you have Shohei Ohtani, the best baseball player on the planet. The reining MVP three years running. He’s mashed 30 homers and is twirling the pill to the tune of a 1.79 ERA. How could anyone possibly measure up to him?

Enter Pete Crow-Armstrong.

He’s spent the whole season proving to fans on the North Side that the first half of 2025 wasn’t a fluke. He’s putting it all out there. He’s paired up a 30 home run, 30 stolen base season with Platinum Glove-level defense and some of the most clutch at-bats we’ve seen from anyone this year. It’s truly electric.

We’ve been quietly stocking up on some 2024 wax for the last couple of months, holding some, but ripping too in the hopes that we pull something of PCA’s. While we’ve mostly stuck to flagship releases, we want to know if we should open our wallets up a little more and start scooping up one of the most liquid releases of that year.

Let’s rip in.

2024 Topps Chrome Baseball

2024 Topps Chrome Baseball #RR-7 Pete Crow-Armstrong Radiating Rookies Insert

Since it’s release in July of 2024, it feels like there’s been a constant cycle of which rookies in the 300 card base checklist are the the ones people want the most. When Chrome was first released, collectors were salivating over Elly de la Cruz and the Jacksons (Holliday, Chourio, and Merrill). Then, when 2025 rolled around, all four of those guys were old news as everyone jumped on board the Yoshinobu Yamamoto hype train. Now, in 2026, it's PCA. (Remember that Paul Skenes was a later call up that year and only surfaced in Topps Update releases.)

It’s the reason why we’re bullish on the entire 2024 baseball release lineup. Sure, we’re shooting for PCA right now. But with all those other rookies on the checklist, the floor is nice and high too.

Finally passing Shohei as the NL MVP frontrunner has done nicely for Pete’s Chrome card market. A PSA 10 of his base card is selling for $298. His refractor? $425. And don’t forget his rookie auto. Currently selling upwards of $1,875.

Where’s Pete?

Before you pick a box of ‘24 Chrome, you need to know where PCA actually lives on this checklist.

Pete shows up eleven times before you start counting parallels.

Base Cards

#16 — Available in all but Breaker’s Delight

Inserts

Radiating Rookies #RR-7 — Hobby Formats Exclusive
1989 Topps Baseball #89CB-19 — Available in all Formats
1989 Topps Baseball Chrome Layer Variation #89BCL-19 — Available in all Formats
All Etch Rookie Rush #CERR-7 — Available in all Formats
Topps Chrome Exposé #TCE-26 — Available in all Formats
Let’s Go! #LGC-36 — Available in all Formats
Youthquake #YQ-7 — Breakers Delight Exclusive
Helix #HX-15 — Hobby, Jumbo, Breakers Delight, Value Box

Autographs

Rookie Autographs #RA-PC — Available in all Formats
Radiating Rookies Autographs #RRA-PC —Hobby Formats Exclusive

The good news is that most of the PCA cards are spread across every format of this product. The bad? A quick search online will show you that a lot of Pete’s Superfractors have already been pulled.

But we’re realists here at The Hobby Wire. We operate under the assumption that big hits like that are out of our reach anyway. So let’s dive into the odds. Is there still any value in 2024 Topps Chrome Baseball, even though prices have mostly doubled since release?

Ripped: 2026 Topps Flagship Football

The Hobby Wire — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 12:05:18 GMT

Welcome to Ripped — where we tear into the hobby’s biggest new releases and show you what’s actually inside.

In our Wax Watch, we were up front about our feelings on this 2026 NFL Draft class. We don't have high hopes for this crop. We still called 2026 Topps Flagship Football a tentative rip.

We snagged two Hobby Boxes when preorders went live. From there, the more information that came out about the release, the more uneasy we got about our choice of format.

First we found out that Hobby Boxes only averaged one numbered base parallel per box.

Yikes.

Then our Wax Value Index gave us a sliver of hope. Hobby looked like the best route to the top tier rookie chases.

Well, we’ve got the cards in hand now. Were we right to have our doubts about this massive release?

Let’s rip in.

Base

The design is nothing new. We’ve already seen this jersey stitching in baseball and expect to see it for the NBA later this year. We’re still in the camp that wishes Topps would build three different base designs for the three different sports. We like it. We just don’t want to see it over and over again all year. At least they made an effort to match the jersey pattern to the look of a football jersey.

The photo selection is solid too. In baseball, it seemed like Topps wanted to bring the cards to life with athletes constantly popping outside the boundaries of the card border. For football, they’ve taken a much more cinematic approach.

This Mason Taylor base card looks like a still from a movie.

Quality control on the base is top tier. Sharp corners, crisp edges, everything nicely centered. It's on par with Series Two Baseball, which is probably the best base card QC we've seen all year. Good to know for grading purposes. Though with the print runs on modern flagship, we'll admit we're not looking to grade base cards any time soon.

Verdict: A — Excellent photography paired with some of the best QC of the year.

Inserts

The insert lineup is largely a repeat of what we’ve seen from this year’s flagship sets. You got your All-Topps Team, your 1991 35th Anniversary cards. They even brought over Big Ticket Players, Greatest Hits, and Profiles.

Greatest Hits is a missed opportunity. In baseball, it was a showcase of last season’s clutch at-bats. In football, it should have been a tribute to last year’s hardest hitting defensive stars. Just our opinion.

We got lucky on this rip and pulled a Divisional Dominance insert. At 1:244 odds, it’s a case hit. Nice foil finish, high energy design, and we’d be lying if we said we weren’t at least a little disappointed. Inserts built around game scores typically don’t hold value. Making one a case hit seems a little silly.

Recent eBay sales of 2021 Contenders Football Playoff Ticket Inserts

Insert QC was good overall. Just like Series One Baseball, the edges on All-Topps Team cards can be tricky because of the black borders. Every other insert we pulled looked clean.

Verdict: B — Not much new here. And not much that’s football specific.

Parallels

We’re not going to sugar coat this one. The parallels disappointed us.

Start with the good. The golds, numbered to 2026, look great. We pulled a couple and there wasn’t a single quality issue to find. The numbered autos (see the hits below) came out clean and crisp.

It’s the Rainbow Foils where this falls apart. The color is vibrant. The condition isn’t.

You see a sliver of orange in the pack and everything speeds up. Then you see it’s Christian McCaffrey, numbered to 25, and you start running the math on what it might sell for. Then you see the bottom right corner.

Our biggest hit of the rip came out of that pack with a bent corner. It was the only card in the pack with that damage, so it had to have happened during printing or collation. It isn’t enough damage for Topps to replace the card. So we’re just sort of stuck.

Our second Rainbow Foil, a Green Ed Oliver /99, had peeling edges everywhere. If it were a bigger name, we’d send it back. But this is a $5 card on a good day. Not worth a 13ish week turnaround.

Edge peeling on a Green Ed Oliver Rainbow Foil /99 & Dinged corner of a Christian McCaffrey Orange Insert /25

We’ve ripped a lot of wax this year. Parallel QC has never been the thing we’ve had to write about. Flagship Football changed that.

And the issue isn’t how many cards came back with defects. It’s which ones. Both of the cards we most wanted out of these boxes came out damaged. Think about what that means if you’re the one who pulls a Red Rainbow Foil of Fernando Mendoza and the edges are peeling. Two boxes isn’t a sample. It’s still enough to give us pause.

Verdict: D — The defects landed exactly where they hurt most.

Hit Consistency

Product odds tell one story. Actual pack distribution tells another.
🔥= Better than expected hits

Our Rip: 2x Hobby Boxes

Hobby Box #1 🔥🔥
9x Inserts • 1x SP Insert • 2x Parallels • 1x Numbered Parallel • 1x Numbered Auto

Hobby Box #2 🔥🔥🔥
9x Inserts • 2x Parallels • 3x Numbered Parallels • 1x Numbered Auto

Two boxes is enough to spot a pattern. Not enough to confirm one. That said, a few things jumped out once we cracked these open.

There was never more than one notable card per pack. Every pack gave us an insert, or a parallel, or the auto. Some packs gave us nothing at all.

Of the 40 packs we opened, 11 held nothing but base cards. That’s not new to flagship. We had the same experience ripping Flagship Baseball all year long, and our thoughts haven’t changed. The fun gets sucked out of a hobby box when more than a quarter of the packs are dead.

Hit placement had some variance. Our two autos landed in different quadrants. But the bigger takeaway is that the bottom half of the hobby box is where the money is.

Every numbered parallel and every auto came out of quadrants 3 and 4, with quadrant 3 holding the bulk in both boxes. The top half gave up a single Rainbow Foil in packs 1 and 2 of each box and nothing else worth writing down. Base and common inserts the rest of the way.

Collation patterns like this aren’t new. We find something like this in most releases. But if we can find it, so can everyone else. All the more reason we keep saying it.

Do not buy loose hobby packs unless you get to pick the pack yourself.

Final Thoughts

We were right to be uneasy. Just not for the reasons we thought.

Our doubts going in were about the class, and holding the cards hasn’t swayed us the other way. We just don’t see a lot to chase in this crop.

But the class isn’t what soured this rip. That happened the second time we fanned out a pack and found nothing but base. Here we go again.

Here’s the part we want Topps to pay attention to.

Two Hobby Boxes ran us around what a single Jumbo would have cost at preorder. That Jumbo would have left us a few cards shy of the base set and guaranteed an auto, a relic, and three numbered parallels. Our two Hobby Boxes came back with two autos, four numbered parallels, a 1:244 case hit insert, and an orange parallel that shows up once every 120,000 packs. We beat the Jumbo.

At this point, we’d still take the Jumbo.

The Jumbo’s floor is guaranteed and ours wasn’t. Every Jumbo pack puts something in your hand, and 11 of our 40 packs held nothing but base. When a box outperforms its own odds and still feels this thin, the odds aren’t what’s broken.

So did our Wax Value Index steer us wrong? Not exactly. Hobby Boxes still give you the best technical shot at the top tier rookie chases. But odds are only half the equation, and we aren’t sure the floor here justifies taking a shot at the ceiling.

These empty packs aren’t just a Flagship Football problem. This is the third flagship Hobby Box this year that’s left us cold, and we’ve been saying it since February. Series One gave us long stretches of base and common inserts. Series Two did it again in June. Now Flagship Football. Three products, two sports, more than a quarter of the packs coming up empty every time. Topps doesn’t publish print runs, so we’re guessing right alongside you on why.

The fix isn’t much. A couple more inserts per box, a few more unnumbered parallels, and none of it cuts into anything scarce. This was their idea in the first place. When Fanatics and Topps started shrinking pack counts, the reasoning we got was that they were trimming the fluff so every pack would feel like it carried something. A few years later, that goal seems to have gotten lost. One or two nothing packs in a box is fine. Eleven is ridiculous.

The QC is a separate conversation and a shorter one. Rainbow Foil condition has never been something we’ve had to write about this year. Flagship Football is the first. We’re hoping it’s one bad run, and we’ll be watching the next flagship release to find out.

For those still deciding on which format to buy, think about this. The window to get Hobby Boxes at preorder pricing is closed. You’re looking at $250 on the secondary market for a format that came up empty in a quarter of its packs and dinged two of the four cards we cared about. The Fanatics Value Box is still $30 on the Fanatics website. Sit with that for a second before you click anything.

If you happen to be sitting on a Hobby Box or two, flip them. At $250 the odds aren’t in your favor and somebody else will gladly take the shot. The Jumbo still has our attention for future releases.

Our product verdict hasn’t moved. One format underperforming isn’t enough to steer us off entirely. There’s only one Flagship Football release. If you want to collect these rookies without breaking the bank, this is still the product to do it in. We’d just do it out of a Fanatics Value Box.

We’re stripping the Hobby Box as a Co-MVF, which leaves the Fanatics Value Box standing on its own. Same print run, same QC risk, a whole lot less money on the table. We’ve already got a couple on the way and we’ll run a short update when they land. If those come back as thin as this, we’re moving the verdict to singles only.

Final Verdict: Tentative Rip
🏆 Most Valuable Format: Fanatics Value Box

Hit Me!

Check out some of what we pulled below! If you ripped any yourself, drop your best hits in the comments.

Dont’e Thornton Jr. Green NFL Stars Autograph /99

Ryan Fitzgerald Green 1991 Topps Auto /99

Christian McCaffrey Orange Profiles Insert /25

Kenneth Walker Divisional Dominance SP Insert

Joe Burrow Rainbow Foil

2x Fernando Mendoza Base Rookie Cards

Disclaimer: The content in The Hobby Wire is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Commentary, analysis, and opinions on sports cards, rookies, and the hobby are not financial, investment, or professional advice. Collectors should always do their own research before buying, selling, or trading cards. Market values are volatile and can change rapidly—past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Unless specified, all pricing references are based on the Prizm/Refractor parallels of an athlete’s Chrome rookie card, with prices from market movers, alt.xyz & 130pt.com.

Any odds mentioned were derived from DraftKings Sportsbook.

Wax Value Index: 2026 Topps Flagship Football

The Hobby Wire — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 20:36:53 GMT

This odds sheet was something else. It took us longer than usual to get this one out because we had to cut repeated odds and dead formats before the math would run clean. But here we are. Another Wax Value Index as promised.

If you read the Wax Watch, you know where we landed on this release and on the 2026 NFL Draft class as a whole.

We also called our shot. We said retail might carry the better value here, and we leaned specifically toward the Hanger Box on a gut feeling.

Now, after a whole lot of time cleaning up that mess of an odds sheet, we can run the numbers and see which format actually has the most value. And whether our gut feeling holds up.

Let’s rip in.

What the Numbers Say

We didn't need to squint to see it. Secondary market prices have already moved where the value lives.

2026 Topps Flagship Football at MSRP

2026 Topps Flagship Football at secondary market prices

The cost of a Hobby Box has nearly doubled. The cost of a Jumbo Hobby has more than doubled. And a whole lot of green has migrated elsewhere on the Index.

One Small Note

If you look at the odds sheet, you'll see a Sam's Club Exclusive Box listed. We chose to cut it. That box is essentially a Super Box with different exclusives. Both share the same bulk packs. So whenever we talk about Super Box Bulk Packs below, that includes what you'll find at Sam's Club.

Base Card Parallels

Base parallels showed up all over this odds sheet. Duplicated, then listed again by category: veterans, combo cards, rookies. We're treating base cards as one group here. If you want the deeper split, we built a separate tab in the Index for it.

If you’re hunting non-exclusive base parallels, look no further than the Fanatics Boxes landing in a couple of weeks. It’s a clean sweep of green across the board, with Fat Packs and Jumbo Hobby right behind them.

Seeing Jumbo Hobby in the green at all is the real surprise. Their dollar-per-pack usually sends expected spend on base parallels through the roof. The 3x numbered parallel guarantee is what moves the needle.

Then there’s the Super Box Bulk Packs, running a full Jekyll and Hyde routine. They have zero shot at most of the non-exclusive base parallels. No Golds, no Independence Days, no Foilfractors. But they hold one of the most coveted cards in the product, and there’s no better place to pull it.

Golden Mirror Image Variations come out of Super Box Bulk Packs at an expected spend of almost half the next best format, the Fat Pack. If you’re chasing those, stay away from hobby entirely. You’d be looking at roughly 7x the spend for the same card.

Where hobby formats do earn their price is the Foilfractors, and that’s by design. Topps made sure those 1/1s only come out of Hobby and Jumbo. Nothing else.

We hate when Topps keeps all the goodies behind the most expensive formats. It would have been nice to see retail give us a shot at them too. Especially in what’s supposed to be the most accessible product each year.

Inserts

Insert value leans squarely retail. The Fanatics Box takes the prize again, with Fat Packs and Hangers not far behind. If inserts are your thing, hobby formats are the ones to skip, with Jumbo the worst of the bunch and Hobby right behind it.

Super Boxes fall out of favor here too, though you at least keep a shot at some parallels.

The caveat is the Touchdown! SSP. Topps has been advertising it hard, and it lives in Hobby and Jumbo only. If that’s the card you want, you have to pay up for a chance at it.

Autos & Relics

Autos and relics spread out evenly in Flagship Football this year, which caught us off guard. This is the category hobby formats usually own outright in a flagship release.

Hobby and Jumbo still hold the best value on parallels of each autograph type. But the base versions come out of a format we haven’t had to mention yet. The Walmart Exclusive Mega Box sits right behind both hobby formats overall, and it’s the format to get if you’re chasing a Real One Auto. On parallels, it’s neck and neck with hobby.

Standard relics like NFL Materials and their parallels are better found in retail Value Boxes and Mega Boxes. And while Fat Packs are limited in what relics you can pull, they do hold the best value for the 1991 Rookie Relics.

Here’s the kicker. That retail wall of green can be deceptive. Split these cards by veterans and rookies and hobby formats reign supreme again.

Walmart Megas hold up for any auto, rookies included. Everywhere else in retail, you’re most likely pulling veteran stuff.

The format to avoid outright is the Fanatics Box. Autos and relics aren’t impossible there, but that wall of red and yellow running all the way to the bottom of the Index doesn’t inspire much confidence.

Popular Chase Cards

At current pricing, here’s where the lowest average spend lands for the most popular chases:

Rainbow Foil — Fat Packs
Gold Base Parallels — Fanatics Box
Golden Mirror Image Variations — Super Box
1957 Rookie Variations — Fanatics Box
Base Foilfractors — Jumbo Hobby Box
Real One Autos — Walmart Mega Box
Rookie Real One Autos — Hobby Box
Touchdown! — Hobby Box
Rookie Autograph Patch Cards — Hobby Box

These rankings will shift as sealed pricing adjusts.

The odds stay fixed. The market doesn’t.

Most Valuable Format?

Our original thought would that this would be a good product for Hanger Boxes. After crunching the numbers, that’s not the case at all (though we do still love our Diamante Foils).

What we found instead is that the hits are sprinkled around all formats. But the two biggest things that carry a flagship release (the rookie autos and SSP Inserts), more or less lean towards hobby.

Generally, we pick our Most Valuable Format based on which format delivers the best value across the most categories. That test breaks on 2026 Flagship Football. Here, if a format is great at pulling one card, it's a wasteland for everything else.

Fanatics Boxes are by far the best for base parallels and inserts, and they’re terrible for Golden Mirrors or autos. Two of the biggest chases in the checklist. Walmart Megas are the mirror image, an absolute beast for autos and a dud everywhere else. Hobby Boxes are the play for rookies and not much of a fun rip past that.

It really forces us to consider how we define the most valuable format.

Is the most valuable format the one that gets you the most cards, or the one that gets you the card? This year's Hobby Box is bad at nearly everything and still holds the best shot at Rookie Autos.

Our verdict hasn’t changed. We’re tentatively ripping some flagship, because our belief in the 2026 NFL Rookie Class is shaky at best.

The value is spread out far enough with 2026 Topps Flagship Football that the only fair call is Co-MVPs.

👉 Verdict: Tentative Rip
🏆 Most Valuable Formats: Fanatics Box (For Base Parallels & Inserts) & Hobby Boxes (For Rookie Autos & Relics)

UPDATE 8/27:

We previously reported that it was impossible to pull relics out of fat packs of 2026 Topps Flagship Football. That statement was incorrect.

While fat packs are limited in what relics can be pulled out of them, there is still a variety that can be. Generally the relic value of fat packs is pretty mid. There are still better formats to buy if you’re hunting relics.

Thanks to the community for pointing us in the right direction!

Where are you putting your money on this one? Tell us in the comments, and we'll pull the best takes into the next Index.