What about the kids, Topps?

 I was reading about Corbin Carroll’s extension and decided to see if he had a card in 2022 Topps. He didn’t, but when I was googling it, I stumbled upon a sell sheet for 2023 Topps Big League. Apparently they skipped the 2022 version. 

It was my understanding that the Big League set was a kid-targeted set. With the news on the sell sheet, Topps may claim that the set is for kids, but this set, along with the news that Opening Day is being shelved proves that it doesn’t. If you don’t want to look at the sell sheet, I’ll cut to the chase. 

The base set is broken down into tiers, 200 ‘common’ cards, 50 ‘uncommon’ foil cards coming at 1 per pack, 25 ‘rare’ blue foil cards falling at 1 in 18 packs, 25 ‘super rare’ red foil cards which are 1 in 90 packs, and 10 ‘legendary rare’ gold foil cards which fall 1 per case, which is 1 in 360 packs. 

I do applaud the company for putting mascots in as inserts (1 in 9 packs), but how do you make 10 cards in the set fall 1 in 360 packs and call it a ‘kids set’?!!  If Kyler wanted to put this set together, let’s imagine the blue and red cards don’t exist. Maybe a box or two and I can pull most of the foil cards. I’m either going to have to buy 10 cases, and have perfect collation in order to complete the set, or spend 20-50 bucks (I’m estimating) for 10 cards in order to complete the set. Not kid (or parent or low-budget collector) friendly!!!  I’m assuming since they are legends that I might not have Rays I have to chase from those 10 cards, but half a chance that one may be a Tiger. You can count this as another blow to team collectors as well. How do you basically put SSP’s in a kids set?!!!  I don’t mind if there are super rare parallels, but don’t put the case hit as a card in the regular set!!! Nobody is going to have the patience to build a set of you keep doing this, especially to the bottom rung sets. I swear if you don’t leave flagship alone and start putting SPs as part of the regular set, I’m done. This set is a kick in the gonads to kids who need a cheap product that they can spend money on that has a good number of players to get them familiar with them and no SPs so they can try to complete the set. It’s a kick in the gonads to team collectors because of the case hit cards and mid tier SPs have a good chance of knocking 15-20 teams out and people who collect those teams will either have to pony up the dough and get the cards they need  from flippers, or just have another uncompleted set to deal with. It’s a kick to the player collectors because you know Trout, Machado, and Judge are going to be SPs and they have to make a choice. This set is really a total win for the f-ing flippers since they control the market because they get the cards first and buy the majority of the boxes because of it. They will buy enough product to pull the SPs everyone wants and will be able to set the price as high as the feel they can get away with and just sit back and wait for bids. Way to appeal to all collectors Fanatics Topps!

With that being said, I’ll probably get a few packs in order to get some of the mascot cards since 2023 Topps Opening Day is not going to be happening. 2023 is a weird year in baseball cards with all of the late releases, no news on when products are going to be released, products being released at unusual times, a number of sets getting scrapped, and things being added or taken away from sets, but maybe if we endure a weird 2023, we will get some of the scrapped sets back (even if we might have to have them released at unusual times).  I just hope for the sake of the kids and team, player, set collectors, and average Joe collectors will have a set they can afford, have access to, and be able to complete without having SPs. Is that too much to ask, Topps?