Welcome to Wax Watch — The Hobby Wire’s quick-hit look at upcoming releases before they hit shelves. We break down what the product is, who you’re chasing, and whether it’s worth ripping, flipping, or skipping.
After flying under the radar since its announcement last month, we're taking a look under the hood at 2025-26 Topps Hoops Basketball.
Let’s rip in.
The Lowdown
Release Dates:
Hobby Box — 05.14.26
Jumbo Hobby Box — 05.14.26
Value Box — 05.14.26
Hanger Box — 05.14.26
Fanatics Value Box — 05.14.26
Hoops has been a fixture in the hobby since 1989, known for its accessibility, its loud designs, and its role as the entry point for a lot of collectors who eventually go deeper. It’s an IP owned by the NBA itself, meaning whoever holds the trading card license gets a crack at it. This year, that’s Topps. And they’re swinging for a new identity.
The stated vision: something fun, colorful, and bold, with subtle nods to the Hoops sets collectors grew up on. Whether they nailed it, we’ll find out when we can rip it.
Here’s the thing, though. Under Panini, Hoops was always the first affordable release of the season. That’s not looking like the case anymore. Hobby boxes are running $260 to open, which puts this product closer to Bowman pricing than flagship. That’s a different promise of something more premium. And it puts more pressure on Topps to deliver.
The base set clocks in at 300 cards: rookies, veterans, and legends. As for buzz, this one quietly got lost in the shuffle of a packed release calendar. Whether collectors were right to let it slide, is TBD.
If we’re being honest, modern Hoops has never really wowed us. Let’s see if Topps can fix that.
Chase Cards to Know
Topps has marketed a full lineup of chase cards for this release, but none of them have caught fire on hobby Twitter the way cards like Kaiju or Tecmo did when they were first announced. Some of these concepts feel a little too random to stick.
It’s genuinely hard to tell which case hit will emerge as the most sought-after before release.
Oasis has the best design of the case hit lineup, but it leaves us asking “why?” There’s no obvious basketball connection. The closest we can get is the basketball-players-in-Cancun meme. We doubt that’s the intent.
Joy’s concept is fine, but it’s not exactly original. That design could’ve slotted into next season’s Fanatical inserts without anyone blinking.
Talent Watch
These rookies are driving nearly all of the hobby interest in this checklist.
Cooper Flagg, Forward - Dallas Mavericks
The newly crowned Rookie of the Year, and for good reason. Flagg spent his first season proving he's the real deal: a five-tool forward with genuine superstar upside. If you were watching Mavericks games this year, you were doing it to see this kid cook. He averaged 21 points, 6.7 rebounds, and 4.7 assists per game and became the youngest player in NBA history to drop 50 in a game. The hobby has noticed.
Kon Knueppel, Small Forward - Charlotte Hornets
Knueppel is the new face of the Hornets. Full stop. Lights out from deep, and he's got that dawg in him. The numbers back it up: 18.5 points, 5.3 rebounds, 3.4 assists. He's not sneaking up on anyone anymore.
Dylan Harper, Shooting Guard - San Antonio Spurs
Harper is fitting in nicely alongside Victor Wembanyama and reigning ROY Stephon Castle in San Antonio's loaded young core. He's a smooth shot creator off the bench with real playmaking upside, the kind of guard breakers and collectors tend to latch onto once he slides into a starting role. His story is still being written, and with the Spurs positioning themselves for a deep playoff push, the best chapters may still be ahead.
VJ Edgecombe, Shooting Guard - Philadelphia 76ers
Edgecombe looked every bit like the high-upside two-way guard scouts projected, just further along offensively than expected. He's not just an athlete. He's a legitimate on-ball creator with defensive playmaking upside. The next step is tightening his handle and half-court reads so he can evolve from dynamic secondary star to true lead guard. The ceiling is there.
Ace Bailey, Small Forward - Utah Jazz
Bailey was always the boom-or-bust pick of this draft class, and his first year in Utah was an okay first chapter: 13.8 points and 4.2 rebounds per game. There's room to grow. Collectors buying his cards now are betting he makes a real leap next season. We'll see.
💰 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: $399.95 / 160 cards per box → $2.50 per card
1x Autograph per box
Jumbo Hobby Box: $749.95 / 200 cards per box → $3.75 per card
2x Autographs per box
Value Box: $34.99 / 56 cards per box → $0.62 per card
Exclusive Green Hoops Parallels
Hanger Box: $17.99 / 25 cards per box → $0.72 per card
Exclusive Orange Hoops Parallels
Fanatics Value Box: $39.99? / 56 cards per box → $0.62 per card
Exclusive Green Hoops Parallels
We had to make a call on the Fanatics Value Box with no pricing confirmed yet. We're assuming the standard $5 bump over the brick-and-mortar value box, with pack counts held the same. Treat that number as an educated guess until Fanatics confirms.
📈 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
This one is a genuine tale of two products. There is almost no overlap between hobby and retail formats, which makes it more important than usual to know what you're chasing before you rip.
Base Card Parallels
There are four parallel lines in this release: Rainbow Foil, Pixel Burst, Light Burst, and Hoops parallels, each with its own rainbow. Pixel Burst is hobby-exclusive. Light Burst and Hoops parallels are retail-only. The only parallel available across all formats is the base Rainbow Foil, and if that’s your target, Value Boxes are your best play.
For hobby-exclusive Pixel Bursts, the odds favor Jumbo Hobby despite the steeper price tag. For Light Bursts, Value boxes are the best for base. However, the Fanatics Value Box shows significantly better odds for parallels than its brick-and-mortar counterpart. And for Hoops parallels, it’s simple: orange is hanger-exclusive, green is value box-exclusive.
Inserts
Same story. Hobby and retail don’t share insert lines.
In hobby formats, you’re hunting Bounce House, Next Episode, Dunk-umentory, Pay Attention, Finals Pursuit, and Hoopers. Case hits include Oasis, Joy, Checkmate, and Hoopnotic. Hobby boxes offer better value on base insert pulls, but Jumbos are the better play for insert parallels and Finals Pursuit cards specifically.
In retail, you’re looking at Hardwired, The Buzz, Net 2 Net, and Jam-Packed, with Block by Block and Boom Shaka Laka as the case hits. Hangers win on base inserts, with expected spend nearly half that of a value box. But for case hits and parallels, the Fanatics Value Box runs away with it. On parallels especially, you can expect to spend roughly a third of what hangers or brick-and-mortar value boxes would cost you.
Autos
No overlap here either. Hobby gives you Hoops Rookie Signatures, Hoops Signs, Dual Autos, Triple Autos, and 1989 Signatures. The Jumbo Hobby’s two-auto guarantee carries serious weight, and the numbers back it up.
In retail, there’s a much tougher shot at First Signs Autos and Hyper Signatures, with limited 1989 parallel pulls. The most common retail auto, First Signs, comes out of roughly one in every 207 value packs, or about one in every 30 boxes. That’s effectively a case hit, not a box guarantee. If autos are the goal, hobby formats are where you want to be.
Popular Chase Cards
With any brand-new product, it's hard to gauge what collectors will gravitate toward. Based on the current odds, here are the formats offering the lowest expected spend for these specific chase targets:
Base Rainbow Foil — Value Boxes
Pixel Bursts — Jumbo Hobby Boxes
Base Light Bursts — Value Boxes
Base Hobby Exclusive Inserts — Hobby Boxes
Hobby Exclusive Insert Parallels — Jumbo Hobby Boxes
Base Retail Inserts — Hanger Boxes
Retail Insert Parallels — Fanatics Value Boxes
Hobby Autos — Jumbo Hobby Boxes
Retail Autos — Value Boxes
Retail Auto Parallels - Fanatics Value 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.
We’re not going to sugarcoat this one. It’s weird.
Usually when a new IP gets announced, you can read the room pretty quickly. Is this a premium product or an accessible one? Who’s the target collector? What’s the headline chase? With Hoops, we don’t have clear answers to any of those questions.
What used to be one of the cheapest boxes in the Panini calendar is now $260 a hobby box. That’s premium pricing. But the design language and energy feel aimed at younger collectors just getting into the hobby, which usually signals accessibility. Those two things don’t line up.
Our best guess? Topps is using Hoops as an experiment.
The style and color palette bear a striking resemblance to the Celebration boxes that have come out alongside Series One Baseball the past couple of seasons. We’re wondering if Hoops gives Fanatics a runway to see whether that concept can hold up as a standalone release. If it works, great. But right now, collectors are the ones absorbing that risk.
The bigger issue is the checklist segmentation. For a first-time product, splitting hobby and retail into completely separate lanes feels like a real mistake. Until cards are in hand, nobody knows what collectors will actually gravitate toward. Light Burst parallels could look way sharper than Pixel Bursts, a parallel that historically gets lukewarm reception, and if that’s the case, retail boxes suddenly look a lot better than hobby. Topps is betting on the wrong thing before they’ve seen the results.
And honestly? What concerns us most is how quickly the hobby moved on after the announcement. That could be the ghost of Panini Hoops following this product around; it was never the most exciting release of the season. It could also be release calendar fatigue, with Chrome Football, Bowman Basketball, and Bowman Baseball all stacked against this in the same window. Or it could be that the hobby has already picked up that this is a sub-par product and adjusted accordingly.
Here’s the frustrating part, though. The rookie class is genuinely good. Flagg is the real thing. Knueppel has star written all over him. Harper’s ceiling alongside Wembanyama and Castle is as interesting as anyone’s in this draft. The cards are worth owning. We’re just not convinced this is the right box to find them in.
Skip the wax. At least until we see how it plays out after release.
👉 Verdict: Skip
🏆 Most Valuable Format(s): Jumbo Hobby Boxes
What's your read on Hoops? Are you ripping, or sitting this one out? 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.