2026-27 Topps Flagship Basketball Deep Dive

[00:00:07] Hello and welcome to Talking Cards with Grand Salami and The Jewce. I am your host, The Juice, along here with my co-host, Bert. Jus, what's up? Doing good. How you doing, Burt? I'm doing good, man. I'm doing good. It's a crazy, crazy week of releases. Crazy week. So what we're gonna focus on, or at least try to, is the 2026-27 Topps Flagship Basketball release.

[00:00:30] So, Basketball is back, and nothing signals it's back like the first main release of the year for the product. And we are going to be giving you a deep dive, all the information, the checklist, the rookies you need to know, the different product hits you can look for, the different formats. This is the Talking Cards Podcast where we don't just do deep dives for products, but we also give you the latest hobby news, hobby information.

[00:00:55] We also like to have guests on from all over the industry. And before we get started into our deep dive, I do always like to shout out Card Purchaser. So if you are hyped for this upcoming Flagship Basketball release, but you don't know where to find it, make sure you follow Card Purchaser on Twitter or X if you aren't already at Card Purchaser. He always has the latest info on product drops and releases. If you want the quickest updates in real time, though, join us Discord.

[00:01:20] You can find more than just product dropped info. You can also get notifications for restocks across retail, all categories, sports cards and trading cards. So if you're looking for lasters or hangers of this stuff and you want to get it from Target or Walmart, just join that Discord and hold out those links for you. All right. Flagship Basketball. So the main things that you need to know going into it is it comes out Thursday, November 5th, 12 o'clock Eastern time on the Topps website.

[00:01:45] This will not be EQL. This is a regular drop. If it's anything like the preorder, it's not going to be impossible to buy if you try hard enough and you aren't dissuaded by the long waits and everything and add into your cart over and over. You should be able to get it. Hobby is going to be the main one on the site at $179.99. And we're also going to have Jumbo up. I don't have the pricing on that. I believe it was $359.99 for the pre-sale.

[00:02:14] Hobby boxes, 20 packs per box, 12 carts per pack, and it has one auto or relic. You're going to get more relics than autos typically. Usually you're looking at an auto like what? Every four boxes or so. We don't have odds yet. And the Jumbo has your guaranteed auto. So you have one relic and one auto guaranteed. And that is going to be your first sellout besides cases. So if you're debating between Jumbos or hobbies, hobbies will be a little easier to get.

[00:02:42] Jumbos will sell out first. But if you really want to make sure you get your hands on it. Yeah, just go for those hobbies over the Jumbo or have two tabs open and go for both. Yeah, it looks like hobby 180 and Jumbo 350 tomorrow. Okay. Bumped up only $10 from the pre-order price back on October 6th. They also got Megas at 60, Value Blasters at 30 it looks like. And that I'm sure that will just stay consistent and you'll see a lot of those prices hit the shelves.

[00:03:11] Yeah, resale on those. Those should be on shelves. So you shouldn't really see any resale that's crazy on those. You should be able to find those at depending on your area, but usually you can find those at your local Target or Walmart for at least like a day or two. Those should not sell out immediately. It is flagship. So this stuff is going to be printed to the moon. Not quite as much as baseball, of course. That's always the high. We'll see. Yeah, we'll see. I don't know. I guess. Yeah, we'll see.

[00:03:39] Slab Squatch at Wax Metrics will have that detail, those details. He always gives us the print runs, gives us the odds breakdown. And this is one of the products that you want the odds breakdowns for with so many different formats. You know, if you can gain an edge by getting into a certain format, that's really what you want to follow. So, yeah, Slab Squatch is really good for this. Hopefully they have the odds up by release time. All right. So as far as the design, this is going to be the same design that we've seen through 2026.

[00:04:08] Same as baseball and football that we've seen. It's got like that ribbon kind of thing on the side. And it's got the card framed team logo player name. It's very basic overall design. It's not the best. It's definitely not the worst. I'd say it's one of the better designs. It doesn't take away from the card, but it's nothing overly special. I would say. Mm hmm. There's one thing that's different, though, juice. Have you seen baseball?

[00:04:38] Have you seen the new rookie card logo? For basketball? Yes, I have. What are your thoughts on it? I'm good with it. I like it. It's yeah, I. It's different for sure. Yeah, it's got the self. You haven't seen it. It's got the basketball logo man. It's got the Jerry West and then next one on the side. It has RC vertically.

[00:05:04] I'm wondering if it would look nicer horizontally, but the NBA logo man is vertical. So I guess it matches up with that nicely. Yeah, but yeah, the vertical part is throwing me off a tiny bit. But yeah, it's it's nice. It doesn't distract from the card. Okay, so you're you're you're a proponent then of the the league specific RC logo. Yeah, I'm not going to nitpick that overall.

[00:05:31] If there was one nitpick again, it would be the RC being horizontal. But I don't know design wise how much that would be possible. Yeah, it's going to take some getting used to for me, man. It's a it. It looks a lot different. It's one of those things like remember when back in the day whenever they updated Facebook in high school and everybody got all upset because they they upset it or they they like redid the UI or whatever and then a week later you forget about it and you're like totally adjusted to it.

[00:06:00] It's going to be the same way with this rookie card logo. I think I think that's fair. Yeah. Yeah. Once once you rip I don't know if you're ripping any but it once you rip your boxes, you'll get used to pretty quickly the amount that you go through. Yeah, but so getting into the base checklist. We have a 300 card base card checklist and it's got 43 different parallels all the way

[00:06:25] from your non numbered and remember these are it's 43 different parallels, but they're gonna be different depending on retail versus hobby or jumbo. I'm sure honey and jumbo has some exclusives as well hangers. Everything's gonna have its own. So you got like rainbow foil board, aqua rainbow storm hollow foil, aqua pink victory sand glitter season tip off and these are all non numbered. Then you get into number you have the gold out of 2026.

[00:06:55] And then when you get into the real more numbered stuff blue sand glitters the highest out of 500. You're gonna have all your true colors. A black is out of 75. They have one out of 25. And then you have your one of ones. They have four different one of ones for the base cards. They have first card, which is the first of the print. Hopefully they didn't forget to put the one of one on these. Oh, no, it was when they first did this. This was with baseball. They forgot to put the one of one on it and on the back they put like the first card

[00:07:24] or something actually reverse it. No, they had the one of one. I don't remember whatever, but they messed it up. Rose gold hollow foil one of one season tip off rose gold hollow foil and foil fracture. So remember it's paper. You got foil fractures in this. Those are your true one of ones that you're looking for this. And let's see if I can see how many rookies. Bert, why don't you start us off with the big rookies that we're looking for this season? Yeah, for sure.

[00:07:53] A lot of people have pretty rave reviews on this rookie class. I think a lot of folks would say that it's got good depth to it as well as a really, really, really high potential group of names at the top of the list. It all starts with the first overall pick in the draft. A.J. DeBonsa. He plays for the Washington Wizards. He's had a couple of nice games recently, but he is a potential future superstar in my opinion.

[00:08:18] DeBonsa has got some serious game and he plays that kind of shooting guard wing position that tends to have a lot of hobby glory in basketball, too. Then there's Darren Peterson. He plays for the Utah Jazz. He was the second overall pick out of Kansas. Really good player guard. He's had a little bit of a slow start, I would say. His odds to win the rookie of the year are not very high right now. A guy who's going to be a really popular chase is going to be Caleb Wilson, who was drafted by the Chicago Bulls.

[00:08:47] He's getting a starring role in Chicago already, getting a lot of volume, a lot of minutes early on kind of a weak Chicago team. He's fun. He's also like invested in the hobby. I feel like he I've seen like stuff with with Caleb ripping and stuff. So that's pretty cool. And another guy who's definitely been getting some serious volume is Darius Acuff Jr. for the Sacramento Kings. Similar situation, but much more extreme than Caleb Wilson. He's this man is not afraid to shoot.

[00:09:16] He has come out the gates and he's averaging a crazy amount of shot attempts per game. Like they're they've given him the green light to basically just go and run this team already, which is I think caused a little bit of friction within that Kings locker room. But it's not going to be a good team either way. You might as well let this kid have a shine. I think he's got a really good chance at winning the rookie of the year, just given how much the kid is shooting. He's already had a couple 30 point games, too. He's a polarizing figure. A lot of people are like, oh, is this Montee Ellis?

[00:09:44] And some other people are like, oh, is this Allen Iverson? Like he's he's kind of a polarizing one. Another polarizing one, too, for the Golden State Warriors is Yaxel Lendeborg. So Yaxel has made a lot of headlines, mostly because of things that he's been saying, picking fights with Luca, talking about his relationship with Draymond, picking fights with people, speaking his mind, having no filter. He's played a lot better than people expected him based on his draft position. He was not a top five pick. He was a little bit later in the first round out of Michigan.

[00:10:15] He's a little bit older and I think more NBA ready. But a lot of people think Yaxel has has some superstar potential, too. And it could be the heir apparent in Golden State. And the last one that we'd have to mention is the current rookie of the year favorite, which is Cameron Boozer for the Memphis Grizzlies out of Duke University, son of Carlos. He has come out the gates really hot, looks looked very solid in Memphis. Kind of a triple double kind of guy, like puts up a really impressive stat line points, rebounds, assists, can do a little bit of everything.

[00:10:43] I don't think he does anything amazingly, but he does everything pretty well. So he's going to be he's going to be a big chase, especially for that for the Dukies who are very have a very loyal hobby following to. Yeah, and the rookies actually are a much smaller part of this checklist than I expected. So it's 300 guys and the rookies don't start until part two fifty six and it's the rest of them on down. So that's just forty five rookies on the checklist there.

[00:11:12] That is definitely a stark difference in from what we usually see. So but I like it. I'm good with it. Yeah, because basketball, the vets sell a lot better than than you see in other sports, too. Yeah, that the superstars just that there's just a lot. So I'm good with that. Then there's also base cards blackout, which is the same checklist. And then we get into the flagship collection base cards.

[00:11:41] This is a 90 card checklist and the rookies are from 61 to 90. So 30 guys on that part of it. The flagship collection chrome base cards. So do you know what these are for the flagship collection base? One quick note to still, I don't know if you're going to get here, but there is an extension of the base checklist and it's LeBron James as a 76 or they're calling it SB. But his his base card in the base checklist is as a Laker.

[00:12:11] And then it looks like they threw in a late addition 76ers instead of waiting till update or series two or whatever they're going to do. I'm good with that. We've seen that in baseball before. I remember Soto when he became a Yankee in top series one baseball. They did that for him. So we've seen that that's going to be a chase card for sure. Usually I remember in tops update baseball, actually the most recent one. They had a couple of guys with their new teams.

[00:12:36] I think Adley, for example, with Boston as an SP and it was not really an SP. So we'll see if we don't have the numbers yet, but I think there were 5,000 of those cards. It's LeBron James, so they're still going to sell like crazy. But if the print run is the same as we've seen in baseball, then it's not me as rare as you think. If you hit one of those early, I would sell it before people realize.

[00:12:59] Again, we don't have the actual numbers on this, but if it's seeming like it's coming out like Adley Rutschman came out of tops update baseball, you know, it's probably a good sell. So yeah, for sure. It looks like there's a full parallel rainbow just for the LeBron going start starting with the blue out of 150 all the way down to foil fracture. Yeah, and LeBron, they're doing a bunch of stuff as always, which LeBron sells. So why not? He actually signed in quite a few of these subsets, but we'll get into that. Yeah. And then not initially, I don't think, but he's going to have that 24 years patch.

[00:13:28] That's right for every game that they're going to end up putting in cards. So yeah, they got project rookie, which is 10 cards. Some of those top guys that you mentioned break point 10 cards again, rookies and for that'll be it for those actually next. Let's get to the insert cards.

[00:13:55] So the most common insert is going to be the 81 to 82 tops basketball. That's also we're going to see the silver parallels in the silver pack. So just like in baseball, you can find silver packs for these. We've got. 100 different guys on this checklist. So you have like the big names, SGA, Wemby, Brunson, Giannis, Kat, LeBron, of course, KD. I'm trying to get to their rookies here.

[00:14:23] So that's going to be card 61 to 100. So that's 40 guys and you're going to have all the major rookies that you mentioned before. So if you are really looking for chrome, you're going to find them in these silver packs. And if it's anything like baseball, I know I keep going back to that. I use that as a crutch because that's what I watch the most of. But baseball update, at least the silver packs were loaded this year. Right. It seemed like they were an update. Yeah. So definitely. Hopefully that trend continues.

[00:14:50] We were seeing a lot of color and then we were seeing about an auto a case, whether a jumbo or a hobby. Each case is the same number of silver packs, even though jumbo is half the number of boxes. It has twice the silver packs per box. I do like this 81, 82 tops design. It's cool. It's got a little bit of a comic book feel or a little bit of a superhero feel. Yeah. Got kind of like that. Bam in the corner. Yeah.

[00:15:20] It'll look good. I think in the silver pack in the chrome. Yeah, I think for sure. I think you're right. All right. And then we are going to get into one of if not the big insert chase of the product. Uh huh. All kings and this year they are going to have all kings one of one for basketball. Uh, this is limited to 24 players and these are going to be extremely tough to hit. These are awesome if you haven't seen them before. So it looks like a playing card, like a king, and then it's got the player in the middle.

[00:15:49] It's like a matte black. It's got the rounded corners. If you open a pack with this and you look to the side, you'll be able to tell that you're about to hit one and you can hype yourself up for it. As far as the players, you know, it's an elite group here. We got Giannis. Uh, we got Kareem. Cooper Flagg, LeBron, Luca Wembe, Anthony Edwards, Jokic, Curry, Durant, Shaq, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird.

[00:16:17] Um, and then we have the big rookies, 10 of them to Bonsa, Darren Peterson, Cameron Boozer, Caleb Wilson. I think those were the big ones that you mentioned. If I'm missing one, let me know. So yeah, that's a, that's a big deal, right? Cause the last year there was a flagship release. Tops had just gotten the licenses. I think it was one of the first basketball products that they, that they came out with, but 2526 did have a flagship release and there were all Kings. For example, LeBron did have an all Kings, but there were no one of ones.

[00:16:46] So this is the first time that you'll see a one of one LeBron James, all Kings. Six figure card. Yes or no? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I think safely. Yeah. Okay. I think the most expensive all Kings of all time was $55,000 or so. Oh, Tony one of one, or? You know, I, I, I might be thinking of just basketball before the one of ones came out. Um, I was reading some tweet so I could be completely wrong on that, but, uh, all right.

[00:17:14] And then new this year, they're going to have base card clear variations. These are the acetate cards. This is limited to 100 guides in the checklist. I'm not going to go through these like crazy. These unfortunately don't sell for as much as they should. And these are such a tough grade. Also that could be a part of it. They are very rare. I think they're one of the cooler cars that you can hit. I love these clear cards. And yeah, it doesn't have its own separate checklist. It's the base checklist limited to a hundred cards picked out of that. We have the base card team color board variations.

[00:17:44] So once again, just a hundred of the cards are going to get this variation. And then we have bounce. And this is, this looks new. This has like, it looks like a, like a print of a basketball behind the player and action shot. And it's like a mood ring kind of color styling to it. I don't know how to describe it. You think that's, that's about it.

[00:18:14] It's got, it looks like it's got a lava look to it, but I'm curious to see how this, how it shows up on paper, you know, cause this is not going to be Chrome. I was, that was my next point. I think for a Chrome card, I think that this might've been a home run. Hopefully we do see it in Chrome. You never know. But yeah, I think for Chrome, this would look really cool. I think that they could do a lot of cool things with it. Maybe give it like the lava texture that we see, but yeah, overall it's, it's a cool insert. I don't think it's going to be that. I don't think it's a rare insert.

[00:18:44] I think it is a rare insert. Let me check. I read it somewhere. Oh no, it is a super short print. Okay. Yeah. Bounce is a super short print. Yeah. Featuring innovative car technology designed to mimic the texture of a real basketball. Hmm. So the all Kings, the bounce, and then the quest for the crown are the SSP. Okay. Interesting. Quest for the crown.

[00:19:13] Another one where I wish they did not have the word printed directly in the card. So large, I wish it just let it, they let it stand on its own a little bit, but what can you do? Certified cold. Uh, this seems like an interesting one. This is 10 cards. It does not have it listed as one of the SSPs, but it's got really good names. Wemby SGA, LeBron, Lucas, Steph Curry, then five. The exclusive to Bonsa Peterson, Boozer, Wilson, and Mikel Brown. Yeah. You won't find those in hobby.

[00:19:44] Class of 26 is 20 cards. You just got the base red and foil fractures for these all rookies, just the top 20 rookies in the product. Comic court, 20 cards. And again, I wish that we could see some sort of a preview on this, but yeah, no, no preview to be had as far as I can see for comic court. On my checklist, it says case hit under it too, which is interesting.

[00:20:14] Okay. Crafted excellence. This is all very tough without odds. Yeah, it's, it's tough. Crafted excellence, 25 cards, all rookies. We're not going to go into the authentic fanatics redemptions. Generation now. This should be a more common insert because it's got base rainbow and then it starts at purple at a 250 down to foil fractures. 20 cards. 20 cards. And this is all rookies once again. So yeah, this will be a common insert here.

[00:20:44] Hardwood stars. So if you like heavy lumber and baseball hardware stars is the basketball equivalent to that instead of like what from like a wooden bat. Of course, you're going to have hardwood like the hardwood floor. It's I always like these. I think these are a cool car. This is 25 cards, 10 of them rookies and all big names. You have legends on here as well. That's legends and rookies.

[00:21:23] This is what I was looking for before. One second. It's so interesting on checklist insider. Some of these insert sets they label with case hit. Some of them they just label with SP and the other ones they label as SSP. So where does it fit in that spectrum of speed to SSP? I don't I don't know if it's a true case at one per case. I don't even consider those SP anymore. I would highly doubt that there's going to be any true case hits in this at tops has

[00:21:52] been gone away from that, but yeah, I don't know. And then what do we have next for the parallels? We have limited stock 50 cards and we have a mix of vets and rookies here. I wish that we could get some better pictures of these cards. Tops did not really want to give us many previews. This is an insane. Can I just say this is an insane insert checklist. Look at how many subsets are are in here, how many insert subsets there are.

[00:22:22] It's insane. That's bled. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. There's like there's 25 insert subsets. We have new school, which is 40 cards. This should be more common ones. You have green out of 99 on here, along with base and then all the other parallels. This is 40 cards. This is all rookies. So you can get the best and the worst of the rookies. No limit, which is 40 cards.

[00:22:50] And to this one, I see no 40 cards on this one. Once again, another common insert mix of actually not a mix. This is all rookie straight up. We have rookie code, 40 cards, common insert again, all rookies scan and slam 40 different cards on this. No 50. We have vets and we have rookies on here.

[00:23:20] The journey, 25 cards, all rookies. And then on the checklist. So this should be an SSP golden mirror image variation one. So this is 100 cards. And then we're going to have a second part of this checklist. I'm sure maybe even a third, but golden mirror image variations. These end up being one of the chases for flagship products. For sure. These are typically in the, maybe not quite SSP, but right there.

[00:23:48] And these are usually really awesome looking cards. You usually see these advertised all over and they end up doing a pretty good job of the images on these. If you don't know how to find a golden mirror image variation, of course, it's going to be a different image. That's going to be maybe the easiest or the toughest tell depending the tops foil logo on the card won't be its regular silver. It'll be gold. Easiest way is the back of the car. It's going to be all gold. That's your easiest way.

[00:24:18] So make sure you look at the back of your cards, especially if you're new to collecting. Poster factory seems like it'd be a fun insert. We have 20 cards. It will be common though. As far as the answer goes. And this is all bets as well as the legends. We've been at Gavin's car here. I'm assuming these are all dunks. Quests for the crown. So this is, you mentioned, these are going to be SSP very short checklist. Just 10 guys here. I'll go through them quickly.

[00:24:49] Giannis with the heat, LeBron, Luca, Wemby, Anthony Edwards, Steph Curry, Jokic, SGA, Kate Cunningham and Jason Tato. So these are going to be a tough pull for sure. Have we seen any images of these? Cause I have not. No, I have not either. So yeah, I guess we'll see. How is, how did they not have Jalen Brunson on here? He's wearing the crown.

[00:25:19] His quest. Is it over? It's delivering it up juice. I love it. I got it out. You never know. There might not be another one ever. I know that. That was, that was magical for sure. You know, as much as I like to think of back to back, you know, I don't know where they are in the odds right now, but probably better than they were last year at this time. Sound check is up next 20 cards.

[00:25:46] This is all vets and legends stars of destiny, 25 cards right here. And we've got, once again, vets and legends drivers, 40 cards, common insert, all vets, stars of NBA, common insert, 40 cards, the daily dribble, 20 cards. And it looks like it's still a more common insert, maybe a little less common than the others.

[00:26:15] But it green is the highest parallel out of 99. And then you have base levitation. These cards I can't see. These look pretty cool. This is like the guy like on the moon. Then you got the earth in the background. Yeah. The team's flag on the moon. So these are cool looking cards. I wish I knew how common they were. They look like they're more common than not.

[00:26:37] Just 10 guys, uh, VJ Edgecomb, SGA, Jalen Brown, Bonchero, Luca, Dwyane Wade, Vince Carter, Thompson, Paul Pierce, and Dennis Ron. From the vault, we have 40 cards. Looks like a more common insert. And this looks, yeah, from the vault. So it's all old school guys, all legends.

[00:26:59] Dylan Wang has cards base and from the stands for the Lakers. Should I know who that is? He's a fan of the Lakers. He's not, he's not an actual player. Actor and singer. Yeah. Okay. So I'm sure there's going to be a market for that. So if you don't know who that is. Yeah. Those, I wouldn't be surprised if those are SP or I don't know.

[00:27:29] Base facts, still similar graphs. So these are fake autos. We've seen with Disney and Marvel that these should be extremely popular, but that's because those people aren't real. I hate to burst your bubble on that for some of you. Yeah. I don't know how sought after these are going to be. I don't, I don't know. I wish we had odds, but this is based off of the base checklist, but it's abbreviated to 100 cards. Hopefully it's in like black and it's very obvious that it's facsimile.

[00:27:57] We don't want to have another, what was it? Top through the years situation on our hands. Right. But if we do, then hold on to those LeBrons because those are going to end up worth a lot. Hold on to those Wembees. Player number variations. So again, we're just getting to variations now. Levitation rookies. So Levitation to the top 10 rookies. We've talked about those before. The Daily Dribble rookie.

[00:28:27] 1981 to 82 basketball. This is a hundred cards. So we talked about how this is probably gonna be the most common parallel. Golden mirror image variation two. So this is the next hundred cards in the checklist. Golden mirror image variation three and the final one. So every card on the base checklist has a golden mirror image variations. I don't know why they split into three. I never understood that. Um, maybe so they could play with the odds a bit.

[00:28:55] Yeah, that's my only thought, but we'd have to actually be able to see odds to know. Next is the thing that you probably don't want to hit. So when you have a hobby box, the relic or auto, I always say this with flagship. Relic comes up and you're like, damn, I did not want to hit that. So we'll go through these quickly so we can get into the autos because that's what people really want to hear about. And I don't want this to be an hour and a half episode. So franchise fabrics. This is 20 cards and this is just rookies.

[00:29:26] We have to assume these are not game used. These are probably at best player worn, but I'm sure it'll say not guaranteed for any specific game or event. 20 cards on this part of the checklist. Your parallels are green, gold, orange, black, red, and foil for actor. You have rise to the occasion. Once again, all rookies, 40 cards in the checklist. This will probably be one of your more common ones. We have rookie round ball remnants. Should be very common as well.

[00:29:56] Woven relics, 20 cards, all rookies. And these look like lesser rookies. Yeah. So you really don't want to hit these. Impact relics. Now we're getting into actual, I don't know if these are going to be game worn or anything, but we're getting into vets as well. Same parallel structure. So these should be common as well. You do have LeBron on here and Luca. So you do have some big names, but overall it's not that impressive.

[00:30:25] Jalen Brunson as well. Anthony Edwards. Own the game. 37 cards. Once again, same parallels. Bert, stop me if I'm rolling through something that you want to add to. No, you're good. Keep going. Nobody wants to hear about the relics. Flagship real one relics. If you hit a relic, this is what you want to hit. Yeah, that's the one you want to hit. It's the same design as the base card. Obviously, the flagship rookie card is the one that people are going to remember. So having it on the same design and the image is that is pretty awesome.

[00:30:55] And here you have base gold rainbow out of 50 orange rainbow black rainbow red rainbow and foil fracture. So yeah, and you have 50 cards on this and start to have some better names. You have Kawhi Leonard LeBron Jalen Brunson Luca Wemby Kate Cunningham. Oh, G. On and no be SGA. Yoke. Con can apple Cooper flag. And these are all game use. I don't know if we mentioned that.

[00:31:26] Flagship real one rookie relic. So these wouldn't be I want to assume these are not game used, right? You know, it's it. I always assume the real ones were game used. I've seen one player worn. And what I was reading the real one relic is game used. I'm just surprised that they got them in this quick. They might not. It might not be consistent. I'm looking at a Kate Cunningham out of five and it is game use. I am looking at the same one. I just clicked it to zoom in. Yeah.

[00:31:53] Okay, but we have 58 cards for the rookies. So yeah, pretty much any rookie on the checklist. If you want to be able to find a relic, it looks like they will almost all have some sort of a relic to find. Let's get to the autos though. And the first auto that we're going to have on the checklist is the level up signatures. These are all rookies. We are limited to 39 cards on this.

[00:32:20] The parallel structure is base rainbow unnumbered green at a 99 then gold orange black rainbow red and foil fracture. You have looks like all the major rookies here, right? Bonsa Karen Boozer. Caleb Wilson. Which ones are we? Are we looking at 81 82? No, I'm looking at level up. I'm on card Smith breaks. Okay.

[00:32:50] Level up. Looks like it's probably going to be fairly common because of the parallel structure. Rainbow foil board unnumbered green rainbow at a 99 gold rainbow at a 50 orange rainbow at a 25 black red foil fracture. And then for next up, we have new applicant autographs, same exact structure, 39 cards as well.

[00:33:18] So yeah, that's going to be just, it should be the same odds. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be unless the number of base cards is different. Rookie pathway 20 cards. These are a little less common. We have base and then gold, orange, black, red, and foil fracture. And this is limited to 20 rookies. So these should, these are going to be about half as common, maybe even less than the other ones. Trying to see if we can get a look, see out one of these. There is one.

[00:33:47] Usually the rookie autos aren't really that impressive. Like they're spinoff autos from like the non real one autos, but there is one that we're going to get to that I'm excited to talk about. And that is the next one. Okay. I'm happy. Have you seen these rookie photo shoot autographs? They look really good. Perfectly done for a paper auto. So clean. It looks like they have, maybe have a matching ink to the parallel perhaps. So for the parallels, we just have base red out of five and platinum one of one.

[00:34:16] I'm assuming the one you're looking at is Caleb Wilson. And that is a gorgeous card. So it's not an action shot. It's more of a photo shoot shot, hence the name. And then the border, the parallel, it just looks fantastic. It is, except for the top you have. So the two sides in the bottom are red on this red parallel. And then you had the red ink, the bulls logo in the middle. You have the color match, obviously for being a bulls card.

[00:34:43] And yeah, these just, these are great. This, I feel like might be their answer to the 52 rookies for. I was going to say the same thing. I was going to say the same thing. I think that's exactly right. It's going to be super rare. It looks like they only have red and a one of one for the parallels. The base is probably out of 10. We didn't see that on the insert checklist, right? Any rookie photo shoot, not autos. No, that's, I feel like that's a missed opportunity.

[00:35:11] I feel like they, they could have made those just not limited to 25 or 50 cards. But yeah, these are rookie autos that you're going to want to find. Uh, these are really good looking. You do have 39 cards in the checklist. So for as rare as they are, it's going to be even tougher to hit one of the big rookies, but good luck. And then they do have rookie photo shoot, do all autographs. We don't see what those cards look like yet. They're limited to just the base out of five and a platinum one of ones, just 10 cards here.

[00:35:39] And these are cross team. So if you're in a team break, if you have this problem, you are very, very lucky because 10 cards, just six each. So just 60 cards total across all these boxes and cases. So yeah, these are going to be very rare, very, very tough hits. And I wonder if you're going to be horizontal. Some interesting combos too. They put, they put Caleb Wilson with Cameron Boozer, for example. So that's going to be really interesting for ACC fans, especially if you're along Tobacco Road, one Tar Heel, one Blue Devil.

[00:36:11] You're brish to me. Yeah. And then we have signed. That's literally the name of this part of the auto checklist is just signed. These look like they're a little more common. 19 cards though. So it's a smaller checklist, but we still have that same green rainbow parallel structure. And yeah, you're going to have all the big rookies here. Yeah, there's no big rookies in this one too. So watch out.

[00:36:39] If you get one of those, you're probably going to be in trouble. It's a tough break. Then we have the baseball stars auto equivalent right there. It might be probably. Yeah. And then if you're looking for vet autos, we are going to get into game script. We have 46 cards and same parallel structure that we've seen from the more common autos. Really not that many impressive names, if any.

[00:37:08] J.R. Smith is my favorite name there. Which one? J.R. Smith. I loved him as a Nick. Which set are we talking about? We are talking about game script. Game script. Yeah, a lot of mid names in here too. Yeah, this is again, not something you don't want this parallel coming up. Zeebo, Zach Randolph, Moritz Wagner.

[00:37:38] That's very strange to include him. Yeah, it's. Jamal Crawford. So there's some retired players. We love Jamal here in Seattle. Another weak part of the auto checklist at first glance. Contemporary marks. Once again, seems like a more common auto. So, and. Here are really not many impressive names. John Starks. I like. The retired players are better than the active players by a lot in these ones. Walt Frazier. Dwight Howard. Or Gary Payton.

[00:38:10] Dylan Wang is going to have his own part of the checklist. So. Yeah. And it's showing. I guess it's not kanji. Because that's Japanese. It's showing some Chinese writing under his name on the checklist. So I'm wondering if he's going to sign in Chinese or. Mm hmm. But that's considered a Lakers card in the checklist. If you are hunting him. Then we have the silver autos. So again. You're lucky to usually get one per case of these. If it's like update. It should be pretty decent. And these are sticker autos.

[00:38:39] If they're anything like we've seen in the past. I don't see why it would change. But I always like to say that. For whatever reason. These sticker autos don't bother me as much as other sticker autos. The stickers. For whatever reason. Look more flush with these cards. And they aren't bad. And they always feel like extra hits the silver packs. So maybe that could be a reason why I don't mind them. But this is for the rookie side of the checklist. We have 38 cards. You're going to have gold, orange, black, red, and foil fractures. And they usually go for a decent amount.

[00:39:06] Because they're the first chrome autos that you have of these guys. Yeah. Solid list too. It looks like they got the top guys. I see AJ. I see Darren. Yaxel. Did they get Acuff in there? Ooh. Did they get Acuff? That would be a miss. Yeah. No Acuff. Interesting. For a sticker auto. You'd think they would have them.

[00:39:34] And then one of the more beautiful autos of the checklist for sure. The flagship real one autographs. These are going to be tough to hit. They're going to have base, gold, orange, black, red, and foil fractures. 46 cards in the checklist. And this does have much better names. If you want to see and you're watching on YouTube, you can see this. What a real one autograph looks like out of a Topps flagship product. I have this Carson Bench card right here. Let's go. Who pulled that?

[00:40:03] Grand guy. I don't know. Delusions of Grandeur maybe. I'd probably take it out of the Topps a little bit. But as you can see. It's a beauty isn't it? Yeah. Oh, it's a beautiful card. And it's perfect for PSA opening their stuff back up. Good. As you can see, this is on card. And you're going to have the regular base card image design. And then it's got that parallel structure, which are great parallels. You have the foil.

[00:40:32] So these cards look fantastic. Bert, I'll let you go through the names on the checklist that you like here. Well, so yeah, so these are going to be some of the bigger chases in the product. I believe Steph Curry signed in this subset. Did he not? Steph Curry signed in this. That'll be a big card. I see Shaq, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson. Do we have a LeBron sighting?

[00:41:04] We got Jalen Brunson. Jokic is in here. Cooper Flagg. Yeah, a lot of the second year guys, Knipple's in here. And then rookie wise, I see AJ. I see Darren. I see Boozer. I see Caleb. Hey, Acuff. They might have missed Acuff here too. I don't see the rookies on my part of the checklist. Yao Ming. For the Rockets.

[00:41:34] Yeah, interesting. Pretty solid checklist here. 86 names is pretty lengthy. There's definitely some guys on here. If you pull a flagship real one auto, you're going to be pretty hyped. But a couple of a handful of these guys, if you pull them, you might be a little bit disappointed. Some of the lower end rookies. Yeah. The next part of the checklist. Is this just printed twice?

[00:42:01] 81 to 82 tops chrome basketball rookie autographs. Um, yeah, it looks like it's just printed twice. They have a separate checklist for the vets and the legends from the rookies. I'm seeing it come up twice with two different numbers. Oh, like the first one, the DeBansa is 81 BR-1 for the 81, 82 tops basketball rookie. Uh huh. No, that, that was, that first part of the checklist was the paper, not the chrome. Okay. That makes more sense.

[00:42:31] And then we have the chrome checklist, which is 39 cards. Looks like it's the same checklist. That's the 81 CRA. That's what I'm seeing. So yeah, there's the, there's, there's the paper insert autos and then there's the silver, the chrome autos. Okay. So that was, I assume the other ones were the crow. And then of course we have the 81, 82 paper basketball autos for the vets. And we do have decent names here for sure.

[00:42:58] Carmelo, Ace Bailey, Dylan Harper, Cooper flag, Dennis Rodman, Giannis, James Harden, Kevin Durant, Concan apple, Kat, Larry Bird. We have LeBron here, Jokic, Magic Johnson, Shaq, Curry, Wemby, Yao Ming again. So yeah, definitely decent checklists. And I'm impressed with that list. Honestly, that's a really, really good list for 81, 82 autos.

[00:43:27] Cause those are going to be pretty common too. I think. Yeah. They're going to be less common than like the other autos that we heard for sure. Cause it just starts with base and then gold out of 50. Um, and then we have the tops chrome basketball vet autos. So this against silver pack, Ace Bailey, Anthony Edwards, Carmelo, Cooper flag, Dylan Harper,

[00:43:48] Mitzke, Jalen Brunson, KD, Larry Bird, LeBron, Magic Johnson, Steph Curry, Steve Nash, Shaq, Wemby, Yao Ming. So similar, if not exactly the same. Mm-hmm. And then the real ones are the rookie autos. So 40 cards on this checklist, but these are the rookie autos that, that you want to hit besides the, the photo ones.

[00:44:20] Photo shoot. Yeah. The real one autos. We have the base gold, orange, black, red, and foil fracture for these. And that actually takes us to the end of our checklist. So what are your thoughts on flagship basketball? I'm holding off any thoughts until I see the pack odds as per usual. Yeah. Um, I really liked this rookie class.

[00:44:46] I just, maybe I'm a little fatigued cause we're just coming off the back of tops update, but I'm a little bit flagship out at this point in time. I just think that very few of these cars have, cards have major staying power. If people want to go back, if, if one of these guys becomes a hall of famer, best of all time, let's say it's like an AJ DeBonsa. I don't think the base paper card holds that much value anymore.

[00:45:13] I think people will look at the tops Chrome rookie as being the first of his major rookies. That might be controversial. Not everybody will agree with that, but even the parallels and such, I think people are waiting for tops Chrome to come around, especially with how successful tops Chrome basketball was last year. There's a very widespread between flagship and Chrome in terms of price and what people are willing to pay on the singles, maybe even wider than in baseball. So I don't know.

[00:45:40] I, I think at the price it's decent, right? Like you get a hobby box for less than 200 bucks. That's not that bad, but you're not guaranteed an auto. And just to get one auto and a jumbo, what are you paying 350? Yeah, it's tough. That's if you can get off of tops.com right away. Yeah, they're probably going to start reselling for like 450. I would assume right off the bat. It doesn't look too bad as it stands right now on dealer net. We're sitting here on Tuesday.

[00:46:05] We have two days till release, but the hobby boxes, people are buying up cases at 230 a box. And in jumbo, people are buying up the cases at 475 a box. Okay. Yeah. So still a good, if you can get it even after tax and all that stuff on tops.com, like it's still a lot. It's good value there. It's not like you're going to be underwater or anything like that. Okay. Yeah, I agree with what you're saying.

[00:46:35] You know, just all the newer people into the hobby are typically going to prefer Chrome. Most of the people that are like, like your veterans are talking like pre COVID. Those are the guys that really have that paper appreciation. I think the real one autos though. I think those definitely help buoy the product to our level. Yeah. All Kings chase for sure. The all Kings. Yep. Yeah. All Kings. It's even including all the Chrome inserts, SSPs that are awesome.

[00:47:05] All Kings. It's just, it's a top five insert right now. Probably. I think that's fair to say. Yeah. It's really interesting seeing a lot of folks come from that. All they, all they've known major basketball collectors. If you've just collected basketball for the last 10 years or whatever, and you're coming from the world of Panini. It's interesting to see people make the comparisons from Panini products, the tops products. A lot of people are like flagship reminds me of, of Donruss. Like very similar in a lot of ways.

[00:47:32] And I think they've even taken some of the concepts out of Donruss basketball and kind of added them in here too, in some different ways. So what do you think hoops reminds them of? Hoops. Hoops, I think is actually next week. That's right. If you're looking for something different than flagship, you know, you're just not a flagship fan or you're just a big hoops fan and just hold out another week. You'll be good with hoops. Yeah. Yeah. I am interested to see how it all shakes out with the rookies too.

[00:47:59] Cause you look at the rookie of the year, future odds, and it's a lot different than what the draft, than how the players were drafted. I just wonder, you know, kind of where it's like, you talk about what's hobby value versus real on court value. Like I, I'm curious to see how it stacks up. If I was to guess, I would guess like the Bonsa one and this, I might totally push. I'd say the Bonsa one.

[00:48:26] And then I'd go a cuff Wilson, Boozer, Peterson. Oh no, no. Yaxl Yaxl above Peterson, I think. And then Peterson, but I don't know. We'll see that. That part I'm interested in. It should be fun for sure. If you are interested in this product, breaks can be a little rough and boring with flagship.

[00:48:52] You know, if you're looking for something to watch like all day, a 10 case break can actually be pretty cheap, especially if you're doing like a player break. Cause yeah, flagship is just a cheaper product. So if you're just looking for something to have on and chill and just watch, and hopefully something comes up for you. Great. If you are doing like a player break of one player and doing like a hundred case break, that is going to kill you with how boring that could be. Like there are a ton of like 50, 20 case breaks. And if you're just doing a couple of players, man, that could be rough.

[00:49:20] So this is really a, and enjoy the rip product. I think that's what I usually say for flagship, you know, basketball season has started. You want to see all the guys finally with their cars being released, their official cards, and just try to spot those big rookies. See the guys on their new teams, maybe get that LeBron SP for the Sixers. Yeah. So this is, don't expect your, don't expect to make a killing on this. It's going to be tough if that's what you're trying to do.

[00:49:49] But if you're just looking for the fun of the rip, this is a great entry product for it. Yeah. Well said. Well said. Well, that's all we got for you today. Thank you so much for listening. This is Talking Cards with Grand Salami and the Juice. Nice for being here today, Bert. Absolutely. Thank you, Juice. Thank you everybody for listening. Have a great day, everyone. Have a great day, everyone.