Topps Cosmic Chrome Baseball 2026 arrives
Wednesday, November 4th
. Hosts Evan (the Jewce) and guest Corey (SlabSquatch) went through the full checklist, the odds and the print runs on Talking Cards. Here is what matters.
The basics
Price:
Pre-orders came in at $489.99. Expect about $500 a box on release day.
Box makeup:
20 packs per box, 4 cards per pack, and no guaranteed autos.
Release type:
It looks like a straight release, not EQL. Evan and Corey both say they've had better luck fighting the bots than with EQL.
Case size:
Corey has 8 boxes per case, the same as last year.
Print run: up a little, not a lot
Corey's numbers show a small increase:
Total cards:
About 5.8 million, versus roughly 5.47 million last year, which is about
7% more
.
Hobby boxes:
About 73,000, up from a little over 68,000.
Cases:
A little over 9,000.Both hosts were fine with an increase under 10%. They said a jump of around 40% would have upset a lot of collectors.
The new design
The base cards now have a vector-style design that breaks off into space, with planets and a cosmos theme. Evan likes it. Corey wants to see it in hand first and finds the base a bit busy compared to last year. Both love the new Magenta Cosmos Refractor parallel, which is numbered to 299.
Base set at a glance
200 players, with 14 parallels
78 rookies across the full checklist
A base print run of about 22,500 per card
The inserts
Anti-Gravity variations
25 players, with base, black, red and superfractor versions
About 1 in 961 packs
Roughly 60 copies of each base card, which makes them very scarce
Constellation variations
25 big names on a black-and-white night-sky design
Both hosts think the player graphic is a bit heavy this year
Last year's Ohtani sold for about $3,000 as a plain authentic
Cosmic Dust
A print run of about 100
A strong checklist, though both hosts wish the card didn't print the words "cosmic dust" on it
Planetarium
Layered, thick-stock cards
A base print run of about 60
Last year's Ohtani still sells for about $1,300 to $1,400
Planetary Pursuit
Every player has 10 cards, one for each planet plus the sun
Print runs: Pluto 5, Neptune 7, Uranus 12, Saturn 20, Jupiter 30
A new planet number in the corner shows how rare each card is
Stars in the Night and Stella Nova
Both are numbered to about 730 this year
Stars in the Night is 1 in 4 boxes, and last year's Ohtani base sells for around $1,500
Stella Nova was 280 last year, so it's roughly three times as many this time
Supernova
Base cards only, with no parallels
Only 50 copies each, so they could be a sneaky value play
The hosts also covered Mars Attacks, Extraterrestrial Talent, Launched into Orbit, Stellar Stars, the star cluster inserts and Forces of the Diamond. Their view is that these are fun but more common.
Autographs
About
37% of boxes
should have an auto, which is roughly one in every 2.7 boxes, or about three per case. Evan and Corey say the auto checklist is thinner on big veteran names than in past years. Their advice is to chase the short-printed inserts and parallels rather than autos.Highlights:
Launch into Orbit autos
have the biggest names, including legends.
Dual autos
are a favorite, with pairings like Judge and Barry Bonds.
Cosmic Explorer's Cut Signatures
are new. They feature 17 space figures such as Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Carl Sagan. Corey calls it his favorite addition.
Lunar boxes
These are the ultimate treasure hunt. Every pack in a lunar box has a lunar parallel numbered to 10, and each box has several autos. There are
200 this year, up from 150
last year.
Is it worth buying?
Corey's take is that Cosmic Chrome has never dropped in price after release, and boxes are already reselling for around $900 to $1,000. Even at $500, he calls it an "insta buy" if you can get one. He may not open his own four boxes, because he doesn't want to rip a thousand-dollar box. Evan's advice is to buy more than one box if you can get them. Both say it's a fun rip because the cards look great.
Get the data
Corey posts his odds and print-run breakdowns on X at
@Waxmetrics
and on his Substack at substack.com/slabsquatch.
