2026 Topps Chrome Baseball Leads a Busy Fanatics Fest Month

[00:00:05] Hello and welcome to the Talking Cards Podcast with Grand Salami and The Jewce. I am your host, The Juice, Solo here today, and we are going to be doing a little bit of a July product preview. If you haven't listened to us before, we talk about a lot of new releases, mostly baseball, but all things cards. We talk about the latest news, what you can expect, and we do deep dives on the biggest products. Make sure you know what to buy, what to pass on, and what you might want to break. Also, we are now a partner with Card Purchaser on TwitterX. Make sure you follow him at Card Purchaser.

[00:00:35] If you want the latest info on product drops in real time, he likes to give you the links of where exactly to find the products and when so that you can be ready to go to get those hard to find products. But if you really want to be able to get an edge in getting products, follow him on Discord. That is where he has real time drops for retailers as well. You can get real time alerts too. Very helpful if you're someone that is looking to buy products for all types.

[00:01:00] So as I said, today's episode, we're going to be talking about the different July releases that you can be excited for. The first one is today. It is 2026 Topps Chrome Marvel Comics. So if you're a Marvel Comics fan, this is the one for you. Remember, this is not for the MCU. For those that don't know, MCU, Marvel Cinematic Universe, that's for the movies. This is for Strictly Comics. Believe it or not, there is a difference with licensing and a number of things.

[00:01:28] But this is this is the premiere release. This is the premiere release for Marvel Comics this year. It is coming in at $2.99 a box today at 12 o'clock. You can purchase it. Well, hopefully you can purchase it. It's got, of course, all your favorite characters, Spider-Man, Thor, Iron Man, what have you, all the Avengers, all the big guys that they don't have to worry about which license this universe has because it's all just comics.

[00:01:52] One thing that I really liked last year, I'm not a big comic card collector. I try not to spread myself too thin, but they do have these Wolverine card, Wolverine card variations where it's I guess it's die cut, but it's in the middle of the card because it has like the three Wolverine slashes through the card and they look really nice. Anytime I've seen them, they really pop. And it's not just Wolverine cards. It is across the board for a lot of different cards.

[00:02:19] So that's probably the big thing to look for. That's what a lot of people were looking for last year. Just a really cool SSP that you can find. It's like Wolverine himself slashed across the card. And there are different parallels for that as well. Of course, you can find autographs. You can find facsimile autographs kind of like you can with Disney. I'm looking at one for Vision. Obviously, they didn't get Vision the character to sign. But if you do want some authentic signatures, they do have them by the artist.

[00:02:45] So once again, as a reminder, this is not MCU. You won't find the actors that portray these guys in the movie signing the cards. You will find the artists. So they probably don't go for as much as you would for an actor just because they're not as mainstream. But still really cool hit to find. It looks like those ones are sticker autos.

[00:03:02] The next big release, we will swing on over to Top's Finest Baseball. And this is one of the top releases for me, at least this month. This is coming out Wednesday, July 8th. And this is just a really fun product that I've liked throughout the years. It comes with two autos per box. That's for hobby.

[00:03:21] It used to be hobby only, but now they do have some retail available. There will be mega boxes. Who knows how that's going to impact the print runs on things. I don't think it's going to matter that much for us hobby box buyers. Maybe we'll get like one less parallel, but I think that'll be balanced out by retail exclusive and hobby exclusive parallels. So we'll have to wait and see once we get odds. Most of these things that I'm going to go over, we really don't have odds for yet. So it's going to be hard to say.

[00:03:45] The big thing that's making its return this year, that is one of my favorite inserts of all time is the man insert. And I don't know why I love this insert so much. It's very 90s. It's very cheesy. They did have it. They brought it back with Finest Basketball, I believe earlier, but I'm very happy to see it in baseball again. These are going to be really, really hard to hit and they will go for a premium. Just, just a really fun insert. And then you can find autos. You can find a lot of the big rookies. You can find McGonigal, JJ Weatherholt.

[00:04:15] For example. And then you can find Otani as well. This is broken down in an interesting way. As far as what you can find on the checklist for this is broken down into the common, uncommon, rare and super rare. I never really liked the idea of breaking it down this way. Just because I prefer numbers, numbered cards, unless it's like a super short print where the numbering doesn't really matter. It just speaks for itself.

[00:04:40] But with these, it never really, even the super rare ones, I don't know if it's going to get the, the dollar value that it deserves for how rare it is. That's why I don't like it for whatever reason doesn't carry over into the market. Then again, if you're on the side of where you're trying to do singles, you're trying to collect, you know, the whole set or something that could be better for you. Cause that's going to be a tough set to collect because of the super rares that are considered base cards. And yeah, as far as the autos all on card, I believe you have the finest ink.

[00:05:08] I mean, you have dual autos, you're going to have a very deep auto checklist. The autos are going to be hard to come by, but yeah, for, for what we're getting for this product, it's just such a fun rip. After the recent products that we've had, we've had dynasty, which is literally one card a box inception, which was just a few. We had tier one, which was just four cards in a box. Now we're getting back into our normal pack format. I believe it's eight packs a box or so, and then two autos. So you really feel like you're ripping something.

[00:05:37] For a personal rip, this, this is a really fun product to do. Next up, we have 2025 tops, chrome black football. I've seen different dates, either July 9th or July 10th. So just be aware for that for the following week. And this is going to follow the same format that we're used to with baseball. You're going to get most likely two packs, and then you're going to get one slabbed autograph. Football, this design carries over well enough. It's a very simple, clean design. I don't see a reason why it shouldn't.

[00:06:04] As far as the checklist goes, that is out. We have a hundred card checklist plus another 50 rookies on the checklist. So that is 150 cards on that checklist. We do have the rookie design variations. It's going to carry over to this, which I loved in baseball.

[00:06:20] And as far as the insert goes, we have black lightning hit the lights, nocturnal death. The darkness is coming to football. As I mentioned in our baseball deep dive on this product. I love death of darkness. This year was actually a bit of a miss for me, though. I did not like it as much as last year. The design just for whatever reason didn't pop as much as previous years. So we'll see how that looks for football auto checklist. You know, you have a full auto checklist. You're going to have all the rookie autos.

[00:06:47] Then you're going to have the rare ivory autographs of new and old guys. Let's see. We have Aaron Rogers, CJ Stroud, Caleb Williams, Drake May. You have Drew Brees here. Cool. Jackson Daniels, John Elway. Jerry Rice is a nice one. Pukinokua, Randy Moss. Tom Brady has an auto.

[00:07:06] So for you baseball fans that only collect baseball cards, everyone knows that Tom Brady is a goat. He's like the Otani of football cards as far as that goes. So that's the name that you always want to be looking for. Super Futures is making an appearance in here as well. And then you have pitch black, pitch black pairings. We're going to do a deep dive on all these. I shouldn't say all these on all the baseball for sure. Maybe chrome black football because I really do like that product. I think it's fun. I think it's going to be a really fun breaker product.

[00:07:35] But we will see. One thing I can tell you that we won't be doing a deep dive on is Topps Museum UEFA Club competitions 2025-26. That is coming out. It might be a pre-order July 9th because I've seen on the official Topps website. It's not available until August 13th.

[00:07:52] So just something to be ready for. It looks like it is all sticker autos for this release. Just what Topps website is saying. Inside each hobby box, you'll find one numbered base card parallel, one autograph card, one relic card, and one autographed relic card. One pack per box, eight boxes per pack. 100, 100. We have a hundred base card checklist. And yeah, it looks like it should have a museum collection, even though it doesn't have the word collection there.

[00:08:18] But yeah, it has the exact museum collection symbol on it, the MC. So yeah, it's definitely the museum collection spinoff on this. Museum collection is okay. It's fallen off in recent years. All those sticker autos, not great, but the patches can really pop. You can get some really cool patches out of it. I used to really like the four mini boxes, but obviously I said one pack and one box. So that's all you're getting. Yeah. So not much for me to say about soccer at all. I just don't know too much about soccer.

[00:08:47] So I'm not going to bore you with my lack of knowledge. But if you aren't into soccer, I want to at least make you aware of a pre-order for it for this month. Next up for July 9th, we have a 2025-26 Topps Motif Basketball. This is an okay product. It's kind of like an Inception-like product as far as the design goes. It looks like they have on card and sticker autographs. She also has some really nice patches here. It does. We're going to have to see how these cards look. I would recommend if you're thinking about a break, don't pre-order the break.

[00:09:16] I would recommend seeing how those boxes actually turn out. The odds are available. I believe that Slab Squatch will have, if he hasn't already, a breakdown of this. So definitely check him out. He's on Twitter at Slab Squatch. We've had him on here before. He really knows how to break down these odds to let you know what you can expect and whether or not something is worth your purchase. Yeah, but you had the big guys for the autos. You have Cooper Flagg. That's who you need.

[00:09:40] You have Wembe Yama. It is going to have NBA Logo Man cards and NBA Logo Man autograph cards of this year's rookie class. So it's going to have the first ones of those. Those will definitely be a chase, but I don't know if this one's going to be a must-buy. We'll get more info hopefully for you before July 9th on that. Next up, we have 2026 Topps Dynamic Duels Baseball. This comes out July 15th. This has been an online exclusive in the past. I don't know if it's going to be available in hobby stores or not.

[00:10:09] So if that's how you get your cards, just be aware. The checklist is actually really good on this, but it is a very niche release. And it's not especially good for breaks because half of the checklist, you're going to have the players on different teams. Or even for a player break, you only have a 50% chance of that card. So if there's a card you really want, make sure you get both players or both teams for that. The base checklist, though, is just 55 cards. And they do have some short printed ones. Judge and Otani, Ellie, De La Cruz and Paul Skeen, Soto and Acuna, Trout and Griffey, Roman Anthony.

[00:10:39] Jack Hags. All those are pairs of players on different teams. Just to back up what I said before, there are some inserts. But what you're really looking for here is the auto cards. The base card autos is actually a really solid checklist. I'm struggling to find one of these autos where at least one of these players isn't somebody that I wouldn't mind having. As always with a dual auto, you have to worry about one of the players falling off or being not relevant or not being part of your PC or an easily resellable player.

[00:11:08] But it starts off strong. It starts off with Soto Lindor, Jack Hags and Witt, Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, Skeens and Misarowski, Judge and Trout, Otani and Betts. Yeah, these are all fantastic. And this goes all the way down to 50 cards. And yeah, it's hard to find something that I really wouldn't like to have. Yeah, Cam Schlittler, Max Freed, Acuna and Chipper Jones, Chase Burns, Andrew Abbott, Will Smith, Rokie Sasaki. That could be the weakest. I don't know. Trey Savage, Vladdy Jr.

[00:11:37] Ben Rice, Luis Hill. I guess if Ben Rice doesn't continue what he's been doing and lacks in the second half, that would probably be the weakest card of the bunch. But it rounds out with Sandy Koufax, Nolan Ryan, Rodney Clemens, Gary Crochet. I can't really complain about this checklist. So yeah, this could be a really fun one, but probably one they want to rip yourself and not get into breaks for. Next up, we have another soccer release. It is 2025-26, Topps Pristine Premier League.

[00:12:03] This comes out July 16th, and it's pristine like we know it from baseball. It's the pack within a pack within a pack. I'm sure it's going to have some encased cards. I know sometimes I call them slabbed in these. I always mean to say encased for these. But yeah, I like Christine as a product, as a baseball product. I've always been a big fan of it. It's just it's a lot of fun for me to rip all those packs. Some people can't stand it, which I totally get. From a breaking perspective, it could get a little tiresome.

[00:12:30] But as far as I know, you know, this should be if it's anything like baseball, this should be a fun release for soccer fans. And you're going to have those patch autos. You do have some sticker autos with those patches involved. So be aware of that. But you do have on-card stuff. And I just really like the way that pristine pristines can pop, especially in those encased cards. All right.

[00:12:53] Next up, we have the biggest release of the month, and that is 2026 Topps Chrome Baseball. We are going to be doing a much bigger deep dive on this. We're going to make sure you have all the info you need on this product. But it's going to be, of course, as always, hobby jumbo. You're going to have mega boxes, value boxes. This comes out July 27. 300-card checklist made up of guys from Series 1 and Series 2. The auto is going to be in the main chase.

[00:13:22] I talked about it in a brief for a little bit of time. The auto checklist is under 100 cards for this. That's one of the big pieces of news. It used to be well above 100. But the other piece of news is that, unfortunately, jumbo boxes are down to two cards box, down from three. And it used to be five. So they keep shrinking that. But shrinking the rookie auto checklist definitely helps because it's going to be less garbage rookies. They do have all the big rookies that you can expect that you were able to find in Series 1 and Series 2 here.

[00:13:51] Just to name a few, we have Bryce Eldridge, Brandon Sprout, Chase Burns, Chase DeLauder. We have Jack Caglione, J.J. Weatherholt. Do we have Kevin McGonigal? Yes, we do have Kevin McGonigal here. Very important to have him. Let's see. Sal Stewart we have here. Trey Savage. And I'm not so sure if I mentioned Cam Schlittler is not on the... No, he is. I just messed up. All right. Cam Schlittler is.

[00:14:19] He tricks me with the CA and then his checklist name ends up being CSC. That always throws me off a little bit. But Carson Benj is not on here who is someone that I really wanted to be on here. But I didn't do a full deep dive into the checklist. We will do that. Make sure that you have it. As always, this is the premier Topps product. This is the rookie card you want for these guys. If you're someone that likes debut patches, that you have to wait for Topps Chrome update. Otherwise, these are the cards to get.

[00:14:48] On July 23rd, we have 2025-2026. Topps Inception Basketball. We just saw Inception with Baseball. This is similar to that. You have those gold ink signings as one of the top chases of the product. You have patch autographs with the sticker autos on there. You have non-patch autos where they're non-stickered, which is nice. Those ones are on card. You're going to find the biggest rookies. They're already out of the Jalen Brunson train. That's one of the card arts that they're showing off.

[00:15:16] It looks like it's called Splashdown, that card. That looks like a pretty cool card. I'm more on this, I think, than I was on baseball. This design lends itself to basketball even more. But yeah, definitely going to be a fun set to have. This is July 23rd. This is going to be the single box. Just a few cards in the box. I don't have the exact numbers per patch in front of me. You do have the silver signings as well. LeBron James does sign in this. We have the dual auto book cards too.

[00:15:44] Yeah, some really, really nice stuff in this. The first milestone relics are returning for basketball. I think I was dead on with baseball where it was a little underwhelming because so many players on that milestone checklist were underwhelming. With basketball, hopefully we're seeing better players as far as value-wise and chase-wise for this because milestones can be so much fun. But if you don't care about the players, it's just not going to matter. For basketball, we'll do a breakdown and see how that's actually looking. But it is coming back for inception if that's one of your chases.

[00:16:12] The last release of the month that I want to discuss is 2026 Topps Tribute Baseball. So this is one of these between mid-tier and high-tier products. Kind of like five-star, I would put it. It's not quite Dynasty or Diamond Icons level, but it's definitely a step above, I would say, something like museum collection, things like that. So this is coming out the 29th. 100-card checklist. Six packs per box. Three autos. Three relic cards. Three memorabilia cards.

[00:16:42] So you're going to find an even split on those. You're going to find one hit per pack. Half of them autos, half of them relics. The auto checklist is actually higher than the base card checklist. It's 106 cards. You can find a lot of the top rookies here as well, which is good to see. The thing that this one lacks on, though, is the design. It really doesn't do anything special to stand out. I'd rather get two or three finest boxes than one of these boxes. This does have a higher floor than finest, but it's just not as fun for me. The patches are pretty nice.

[00:17:11] I'm looking at a WIC card where it's got like the swoosh 101, the Nike swoosh. I do see a Scooble card where it's got like a little logo man on it. It's even got the authenticity stamp, like the ones where you can look up the serial, the cert number, and you can see where the actual game is from. So those are always fun. Those are always cool. But overall, I'm not a big fan of the design. These are a tough breed. These are the thicker stock, like Inception. Some of the cards look great. I'm looking at a Trout and a Bonds, and they both look really great.

[00:17:40] But overall, not the set for me. It's the relic cards. They do have nice relics in them, but that's never going to really be the chase. So nothing too special on there. The last thing I want to talk about that is happening this month in terms of the hobby world in cards is Fanatics Fest. That is July 16th to 19th. Even though I live on Long Island, this is in New York City, so I'm not far from it. I will not be there this year. But if you have the chance to go, I would go.

[00:18:07] I haven't heard any really bad things. I heard that they do a pretty good job of it. There's a lot of stuff for cards, card collectors. They even have a couple of exclusive things that they sell there. So you do have to enter in a lottery. It is tough to get these things. But these are, I guess, technically releases this month. So it does make sense to be part of this episode. The first one is 2026 Top Series 2 Baseball Fanatics Specs Exclusive. So this is where you find Series 2 cards, but then you can also find randomly inserted Chrome cards. And it gives you that New York City background.

[00:18:37] You have one where it's got the Empire State Building. Actually, I think that's a Chrysler. You have one with the Statue of Liberty. It's at the Brooklyn Bridge swinging for the stars autos. And then there's a special super rare Lady Liberty Home Field Advantage insert. So, yeah, that's another one that you can find. And if you do manage to get one of these, I don't really recommend ripping it.

[00:19:00] Honestly, someone probably standing right behind you at Fanatics Fest, if you go, will probably buy it from you for four times the price that you've purchased it for. Maybe more. It is something that could be fun to get into breaks for. Usually what they'll do is they'll do two boxes of this and like a case of Series 2 or do some sort of a mixer. Just because these are so rare and hard to get a hold of. It's going to be priced at $300 per box. That's what I'm seeing on their website. You can honestly probably get $1,000 or more when you're trying to resell that. So it's just such an easy flip.

[00:19:29] But these cards do sell for a premium, these singles, especially if you have the right player as always. The other one that is a Fanatics Fest exclusive is Topps Chrome FF NYC Edition UCC. Again, I am not a soccer person, so I don't know much about these, but it does have the similar stylings of the baseball ones where you're going to see different New York City landmarks in there. It is going to be $350 a box.

[00:19:54] I'd expect it to resell for a much higher amount, especially because it is a chrome product. Even though in the baseball, a lot of the inserts are chrome, you should still. In the baseball, a lot of the inserts are chrome, but in soccer, it is exclusively chrome. So just a little bit of a difference there. Something to be aware of. If you are going to Fanatics Fest and you are new to cards, there are a lot of things that can help people that are beginning.

[00:20:20] They got a lot of different tables where they can explain, you know, just different types of cards we can be looking for. They have like a whole like ripping station. They have something called Pack Science. It's where hobby shops help you out. They teach you about different products and things. You can watch breaks live from a breaking studio if you want to see how that's done in person, how they might be like storing and sorting the cards there. I don't know, but it could be interesting. They have a grading station. You can see how professional graders actually do it.

[00:20:48] You know, maybe educate yourself a bit so that you can help yourself when you want to do a submission. Yeah, and they show other things, but this is pretty much a big advertisement for Fanatics at the end of the day. So even though it could be a lot of fun, they are going to be trying to sell you a lot of stuff. So just buyer beware. And then the other cool thing they have is they're going to have their advertising 250 different dealers. So a lot of stuff to be had. This is more than just one big card show. So you're going to see a lot of the biggest brands.

[00:21:15] You're going to see a lot of people that you wouldn't find at your local show because everyone comes out to this. It's kind of like the national in that sense where all the big breakers, all the people that you see on Fanatics Live or even a lot of the big card shops online. Dave and Adams, I'm assuming, will be there. Layden, Steel City, Blowout. One thing that Blowout has that I really like every year, they have this thing called the Mega Mixer. It's usually about like $200, $150 a box. I think this year they said it's going to be a little higher.

[00:21:42] But it's literally just one giant box of like 20 different retail products. Some good, some not great. But if you're just someone that just wants to open up a bunch of stuff, this is pretty much just stuff they're trying to get rid of. But what they do is one in every three boxes, they insert some sort of a chase, whether it's a hobby box, they can put in Blowout, Credit, something like that. It is a lot of fun to open and rip.

[00:22:04] So if you're able to try to get three boxes to really try to skew the odds in your favor of finding a couple of those, you can view not with us, but with others past years of them opening up these Blowout Mega Mixers. And they can certainly be a lot of fun, especially for someone that just likes to rip stuff. So on a case or a box by box basis, you're not going to get your money back because it's just stuff that they're trying to get rid of. But opening 20 value boxes, hopefully you can find something fun out of that, especially if you have kids or something and you just want to find like a bunch of cheap stuff to rip.

[00:22:33] You can really get this done. And it's just it's a lot of fun. They sell it. Now that I'm talking about it, I'm remembering this is not a Fanatics Fest thing. This is a national thing. So, yes, you can get it at the national actually, but you can also order it off of their website directly to you. So even if you aren't going to the national or as I'm talking about Fanatics Fest, you can still get this product. So just correcting myself on that. That is for the national, not Fanatics Fest. They are also hoping that Fanatics Fest a trade night. So I'm sure that if you have some stuff you want to trade, always better to trade in person than online.

[00:23:02] You're going to have a huge amount of people there to be able to do that with. The other thing about Fanatics Fest that I've liked, I haven't seen anything on this yet. But in past years, they have done the Topps Redemption, where if your redemption has been sitting for a certain amount of time, it's either six months or a year. You can trade in if you have at least $250 in value for these Topps Redemption boxes. And you can get some really cool stuff out of it. If you're not going to be there, you should still be aware of this. Because I was able to get one of those boxes for a steal online.

[00:23:32] Someone listed in on eBay before people were really sure of what the value was on it. So I got a box for pretty cheap. It was more than $250. But I was able to get a box. And that's how, in that single box, that's how I have my only Aaron Judge autographed card. People are also hitting Otani out of this. There are cards that aren't as great, of course. I saw a lot of Jazz Chisholm rookie cards in that. But yeah, your odds of getting something cool out of that are good. So if you had the opportunity and they are doing it this year, you should definitely try to trade your redemptions for that.

[00:24:01] Because you could really make out like a bandit. And you should also search for them on eBay when Fanatics Fest is happening. If that is available, they might do it at the National instead. All right. Well, thank you for listening to our latest episode of the Talking Cards podcast with Grand Salmi and the Juice. I am just the Juice here solo. Grand Salmi will be back with us. And that is all we've got. Definitely check us out. You can find us in a few different places. If you are listening and you want to watch us, you can watch us on Spotify now. YouTube, as always.

[00:24:29] You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram. We're all over the place. We try to be available for you. Thank you so much, everyone. Have a good day.