2026 Topps Inception Football Deep Dive

[00:00:05] Hello and welcome to Talking Cards with Grand Salami and The Jewce. I am your host The Juice and today we are going to be doing a 2026 Topps Inception Football Deep Dive. So if you're at all interested in football cards and this is a set that you're thinking about getting, then this is the episode to listen to. I will go over the checklist, what you can expect from each box, the pricing, the release, and pretty much everything you're going to need to know about this product.

[00:00:30] Before we get started, I do want to shout out that we are now partnered with Card Purchaser. Make sure to follow him on X or Twitter if you're already at Card Purchaser. He always has the latest info on product drops and releases. If you want the quickest updates in real time, join his Discord. They can find more than just product drops info. You can also get notifications for restocks across all retail, all categories of sports cards, and trading cards. Alright, let's get right into what you can expect.

[00:00:55] So, 2026 Topps Inception Football. This is going to release Friday, November 6th at 12 o'clock Eastern Time. This is an EQL release. I really would not use my EQL points on this. Unless you're really into Inception and you really like the design, it's going to come in at hobby boxes for $379.99. So, $380, let's call it. One pack per box, seven cards per back, and just one auto in the box.

[00:01:21] So, these are thicker cardstocks, so not normal paper. They are definitely not chrome. Think of it like, if you're comparing to Panini, I always thought of this as like the Panini origins of Topps. So, if you're a Panini transplant, that's about what you can expect from this. Maybe on a lesser level though, I'd probably put it a little below that. So, I wouldn't put this as a mid-tier product. I'd put it between, definitely above paper.

[00:01:47] But, you know, I would rank it below something like museum collection or something like that. But, there is no retail. There is no other format besides hobby. So, this is just a straight hobby box release. And, yeah, so if you want to enter that, it's going to be 12 o'clock Eastern. You'll have that hour window to enter. But, as far as what you can expect, so each box, seven cards and one auto.

[00:02:11] So, the main bulk of it, we don't have Aja or anything, but 200 cards make up the base card checklist. And, 50 of those are rookies. So, 150 vets and then just 50 rookies. I don't see any legends on the base checklist. But, as far as the vets you can find, you're going to find, you know, just a mix of guys from all over the league. Pretty much all names that you should recognize.

[00:02:41] Lamar Jackson, Kyle Pitts, Josh Allen, James Cook, Caleb Williams, Roma Dunze, DeAndre Swift, Joe Burrow, Jamar Chase, Dak Prescott, Miles Garrett, CeeDee Lamb, Bo Nix, Amonra St. Brown, Sam Laporta, Matthew Golden, Jordan Love, Micah Parsons, Jonathan Taylor, Daniel Jones, Travis Hunter, Patrick Mahomes, Max Crabby.

[00:03:08] Justin Herbert, Matthew Stafford, Pukenakua, J.J. McCarthy, who is a Viking in this product, by the way. Jackson Dart, Cam Scadaboo, Saquon Barkley, Aaron Rodgers, T.J. Watt, Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle, Kenneth Walker, Cooper Cupp, Baker Mayfield, Jaden Daniels, Debo Samuel.

[00:03:32] So, a lot of the checklist, the guys are chunked together on the numbers with their own teams, but then there are some just dispersed throughout. It doesn't really matter, though. And then for the rookies, of course, we're going to have the big guys. We're going to have Fernando Mendoza, Jeremiah Love, hopefully you can start to do something, Carson Beck, Makai Lemon, Casey Conception, Denzel Boston.

[00:03:57] So, yeah, we're going to have all the big rookies that you can expect in this product, and I wouldn't expect anything less out of football. They usually have all the players that you're looking for. The base set comes with 10 different parallels. You have unnumbered base, green, which is unnumbered as well, and then in the numbered stuff, you get to purple out of 150, right out of 99, aqua out of 75, gold electricity out of 50, hot pink out of 35, blue out of 25, orange out of 10, sky out of 5, and inception 101.

[00:04:28] So, not the normal rainbow structure that you would find in chrome or paper products. Yeah, because usually you would see something like red, not out of 99. Usually that would be out of 5, but yeah, that's definitely not the case here. Gold electricity and hot pink are new color parallels in this, so I'm interested to see how they will look. I'm assuming hot pink pretty much speaks for itself. Gold electricity, I don't know if they're going to add an extra flair to that.

[00:04:56] Not just a straight gold pattern, but maybe some just extra lightning things going or streaks with it. But yeah, that remains to be seen. I don't see any mock-ups of that yet. And for the inserts, this is really nothing to really write home about for the inserts. They're all rookie inserts. You have the launch, which is 25 cards, base and alpha, both unnumbered as far as I can see.

[00:05:21] And yeah, just 25 guys on the checklist, but all the major guys, Carson Beck, Fernando Mendoza, Ty Simpson, Arvel Reese, Kai Lemon. Yeah, so you're going to see all the big guys that you expect. And then there's rookie short prints, 25 guys on this checklist as well. And I think it's actually the same exact checklist. Yeah, all the numbers are matching up from what I can see. So the same 25 guys are going to be able to be found across the board on these two.

[00:05:48] So it's 25 guys have additional inserts. And these usually don't sell for much. These aren't like SSP inserts that you can find in products where they're going to sell for a crazy amount. I would say the rookie short prints are probably closer to the top strong black rookie variations where you don't really get a crazy premium on those. I would say it's even less so for this because for this, you're really not looking for base. You're really not looking for short prints or inserts. This is going to be all about the auto.

[00:06:18] So that's where we're going to be spending most of our time for this episode talking about. It is just one auto guaranteed per box, but this is where this product lives in breach. You're paying for this auto. That's what your 360 is going towards when you're buying this. This is where, or I should say 380. Yes, 380 is what you're paying for. And as far as the autos go, you know, we have a mix of a lot of different ones. I'm going to go through each of the different types in the checklist.

[00:06:47] There is regular autos. There are relic autos and there are dual. Some are on card. Some are sticker. I'm not seeing a rhyme or reason for it right off the bat for which ones are sticker. Usually what we see with something like this is the relic autos are going to be sticker autos, but I'm seeing stickers on base cards as well as insert autos as well. And the dual autos have stickers. The one that I see for sure are going to be like silver signings.

[00:07:17] So those are, of course, going to be on card. So getting right into it, we're going to go a little out of order because we still don't have Beckett back. But let's start with the dual autographs. These should be pretty rare. We have seven cards on the checklist. So 14 players. And it starts with gold out of 50. So there's no unnumbered base. Blue out of 25. Orange sky and inception. For the Steelers, we have Drew Aller and Jeremy Bernard. Cardinals. We have Jeremiah Love, Carson Beck. Jets. We have Kate Clubnick, Kenyon Sadiq. Chiefs.

[00:07:47] Garrett Neusmeyer. Emmett Johnson. Eagles. Mikhail Emicholpaten. Rams. Ty. Simpson. Max Clare. Titans. Carnell Tate. Nick Singleton. So, of course, dual rookie autographs. These are all rookies. But the good thing is that they're all with the same team. So it's nice to not see a cross team. We'll see if that remains to be the case for the other duels that we find. We also have dual rookie relic autograph books. These look pretty nice. They're usually tough to display. They don't sell as much as like a regular duel could.

[00:08:17] Just because relics are, well, relic and books are always going to be tough grades. So that also can hurt the value a bit. But for PC, these can be fantastic. And it looks like we have a pretty similar checklist. Some different ones I'm seeing is the Browns are on here with Casey Conception and Denzel Boston. That seems like it would be a must-have for a Browns fan. Carnals. Jeremiah Love. Carson Beck. Raiders have Fernando Mendoza. Mike Washington Jr. So we have that addition here.

[00:08:47] And everything else looks about the same. Nothing really to know. Genesis. This is 24 cards. I don't see a mock-up image for this, but this is usually a pretty good looking card as far as the different chases can go for the autos. So this is going to be rarer as well because this starts at purple out of 25. And then you have the same from there on down. Gold out of 15. Blue out of 10. Orange out of 5. Skies out of 2 on the autos. And then Inception is your 1 of 1.

[00:09:17] These are all rookies for Genesis. Genesis beginning. Makes sense. Just trying to see if I can see a mock-up of it. Nope. No mock-up of it. But yeah, these are going to be coming out about half as much as probably or way less than that of like the standard autos. We'll get to that. Those in a little bit. But as far as the rookies, you're going to find the major rookies here. Carson Beck. Let's see. Fernando Mendoza, of course. Jeremiah Love. Darian Price. KFC Conception.

[00:09:46] Makai Lemon. Ty Simpson. So yeah, you're getting all the big guys here. Carnell Tate. This is one of my favorites because this one is definitely on card. Inception Silver signings. And these look great. So this would be one of the things that if I was doing Inception, I would definitely be chasing. This is a horizontal, a landscape card. You have the player on one side. You have the paint messiness of Inception that you can find on the side of the player.

[00:10:14] And then the auto really takes center stage. It gets over half the card's real estate, it looks like. And it is in silver ink. It looks fantastic against the black as always. And these, we just have 10 cards. Base and gold ink inscription. So that speaks for itself. We can expect from that one. Arvelle Reese, Carson Beck, Caleb Downs, Carnell Tate, David Bailey, Fernando Mendoza, Jeremiah Love, Jordan Tyson, Makai Lemon, Ty Simpson. All rookies on that.

[00:10:42] And yeah, we're going to, looks like we're sticking with all rookies here. Just double checking it in. Click rookies only. So yeah, this is going to be all about the rookie chase in this, which is true for most products. But if you're someone that's chasing vet autos and things, or you're doing player breaks where they have vet autos available, they're going to be really, really tough hits. So make sure you watch out for that. NFL First Milestone Relic. So we have, these are going to be very rare. Base out of two.

[00:11:11] Team Liner out of two. Brand Logo 101. Laudery Tag 101. Button 101. NFL Shield 101. And NFL Drip Hit 101. So if I'm counting right, we are going to have just under 10 of these cards for each player. And yeah, these are going to come from typically their first game or some sort of a milestone. The Relic itself should be game use and should be able to point to what exactly that is.

[00:11:38] This is going to be all rookies and very similar checklist to the one that I just read. And Arvell Rees, Caleb Downs, Carnell Tate, David Bailey, Jeremiah Love, Mekhi Lemon, Ty Simpson, Sonny Stiles. So 12 guys total there. I didn't read through all of them. But yeah, this is a big chase. But these are going to be super tough to hit. We saw in the past with things like this that they had a huge checklist of guys. So we saw these coming up a little bit more. But it was for players that were pretty garbage. That is not the case for this.

[00:12:07] Unfortunately, Fernando Mendoza doesn't have a card yet because he hasn't really done anything in a game yet. That could be one of the reasons why. But yeah, it's still 12 upper rookies, I would say. Now we're getting into more patch autos. Providence patch autographs, 43 cards. And this is going to be definitely more common than the ones that I've read so far.

[00:12:31] We start off with purple out of 150, red out of 99, aqua out of 75, gold, blue, orange, skies out of 5, inception 101. Once again, all rookies on this checklist are Val Rees, Carson Beck, Caleb Downs, Carnell Tate, Enzel Boston, Fernando Mendoza, Jeremiah Love, Casey Conception, Mekhi Lemon, Nick Singleton, Ty Simpson, Zachary Branch. Which, yeah.

[00:13:01] So that's where we're starting with our patch autos right here. The ones to really look for with the relics, though, we're going to get to it soon, are going to be the rookie jumbo relics. One thing about Inception, though, is the relics usually look pretty great. They're not usually game used, but they use that to their advantage to at least supply us with, when you start to get to the lower numbered stuff, these relics can really start to look awesome. And they can also, they also go outside the box a little bit.

[00:13:28] You can find, I got in sock relics from Inception, things like that. Helmet relics. So even though not everything is going to be game used or player used, you can still buy some really cool stuff. If that's not something that you care about, this can definitely be more up your alley for a break. Then we have rookie autograph variations. So we have base cards that are unnumbered, green unnumbered, purple, red, aqua, gold, blue, orange, sky, and inception.

[00:13:58] So a lot of parallels. This is going to be one of your more common ones. And we also have regular rookie audits, which I'm going to get to in a second. But this is a shorter checklist. So this is 20 guys on here. Carson Beck, Caleb Downs, Carnell Tate, Denzel Boston, Fernando Mendoza, Jeremiah Love, Casey Conception, Makai Lemon, Ty Simpson. And then we get to the regular rookie autographs. This is 46 cards. So this is over twice a checklist. And we can find the same guys plus all the lesser guys as well.

[00:14:28] I do like that they do this because it just means that we have more chases for the top guys. Pretty much they took the top 20 guys and they gave them twice as many autos it looks like. And yeah, they shouldn't really be much rarer. I guess if you compare 20 cards to 46 cards, yeah, they're going to be twice as rare. But if you do it on a player by player basis, it has the same exact parallel breakdown. So the rarity shouldn't really change per player much. Rookie Jumbo Relic Autographs.

[00:14:56] These are usually like one per case, I believe. And it's got a standard parallel structure that we've seen on this product so far. You have base. There's no green on this. And it starts at purple out of 150. With eight parallels down to Inception, one of one. And of course, we have the big rookies. Arvel Reese, Carson Back, Denzel Boston, Fernando Mendoza. It's just me saying the same names over and over. You get it at this point. Charged Particles. So I think I saw a picture of this. Yes, this one is making its debut.

[00:15:26] And this one, we are finally going to start seeing some bad autos. But they are sticker. At least the one they're showing off. They're showing off of Josh Allen. The car looks okay. You know, I'm not going to complain about getting a Josh Allen auto. It's got like a circle. They're describing it as a glowing ring and orbiting sparks of colors around each subject. Giving a lab-like high energy feel across its parallel tiers. I don't know.

[00:15:51] Yeah, it looks like it's a super particle collider thing going on behind them, maybe. That's my best guess of what they were going for. But this is all bets on the checklist. So that is a nice change of pace for sure. And I don't have odds, but the parallel structures tell me they aren't going to be stupidly rare. Because we have red at a 99, gold at a 50, blue, orange, sky at a 5, and inception 101. So no unnumbered cards here.

[00:16:16] But, you know, when you're getting cards at a 99, you know, where you have about, you know, 180 for each player on here. And we have 12 players. So, yeah, it's going to be tough. But it's not going to be amazingly tough where it's going to be, you know, like those supernovas that I saw for Topps Chrome, Cosmic Chrome today, where I didn't see one. But we have Ashton Janty, Brock Bowers, Cam Ward, Caleb Williams, Derek Henry, Drake May, Josh Allen, Jackson Dart, Josh Jacobs, Kenneth Walker, Puka Nakua, and Pat Sertain.

[00:16:47] So Josh Allen, Drake May are the big names really helping us out. Jackson Dart is also a big name, but unfortunately he's hurt. So pretty solid checklist. It's not amazing, but it's nice to see some vets in here. But once again, if you're looking for vets, this is not the place for you. Then we have Immersion Autos. Once again, we are looking at vets, and these are going to be sticker autos.

[00:17:12] They kind of have a color splash on the side, and then the parallel color really takes prominence on the card for like the top and bottom. We have red out of 99, gold out of 50, blue out of 25, orange, Gyan Inception. So about the same or exactly the same as charged particles. So same rarity, but more guys.

[00:17:37] Brock Bowers, Bo Nix, Cam Ward, Caleb Williams, Drake May, Jaden Daniels, Jackson Dart, Malik Neighbors, Tyler Warren. So no Josh Allen on this part of the checklist. You do get Jackson Dart and Bo Nix here, though, along with Caleb Williams. So you're trading that name for a few names that aren't as big. You can argue Caleb Williams is on his way. But yeah, these aren't terrible looking. But yeah, they will be a tough hit, but not the toughest.

[00:18:07] Dawn of Greatness autographs. We have 20 guys on the checklist for this. And these are all going to be legends. We have some really nice names on here. I have to assume that these are going to be stickers. I've not seen the mock-ups. They haven't released any mock-ups for these. And I'm assuming that they are all with the teams that drafted them. At least that's from what I'm seeing.

[00:18:34] Aaron Donald, Antonio Gates, Adrian Peterson, Barry Sanders, Dan Marino, Donner McNab, Earl Campbell, Ed Reed, Jerry Rice, Michael Strahan, Peyton Manning, Sterling Sharp, Brady is with the Patriots, Manning's with the Colts, Terrell Davis. So yeah, I'm assuming that that's kind of the idea behind it. We have the same parallel structure as the last two. And we have 20 cards. So they should actually be a little more common than the last two that I read.

[00:19:04] But as I always give the heads up on, someone like Tom Brady, he's not going to be as common in here as someone like Donner McNab, for example. He's just not going to have, he probably skipped red or something. Or they might even short print the numbers for each parallel. But yeah, Tom Brady is a chase on here. Which you always want to see. Peyton Manning is always great to see as well. But this is a very, very solid checklist, I would say, of Legends. I'd be very happy to pull pretty much any one of these guys. I think that you'd be pretty excited about.

[00:19:34] Then we have NFL Draft Commissioner Combo. Not so sure what these are. But we just have base and inception one of one. So as far as what the odds could be, no idea. I'm assuming these are going to be very short printed though. I'm not even seeing any mockups for this either. But all rookies here. 16 guys. Mendoza. Jeremiah Love. Cornell Tate. Arvell Reese. Caleb Downs. Ty Simpson. Makai Lemon. So yeah, these I'm assuming are going to be the hardest hits.

[00:20:04] Except for maybe those Milestone Relic Autos. These should be very tough coming out. But yeah, that's really all that there is for inception. It's not that crazy or deep of a product. You know, you're going to get those thicker stock cards. Going to be a tough grade. Just one auto per box. And then they do typically have case hits of like a jumbo patch auto or something like that. But without odds, I can't tell you for sure what that's going to be.

[00:20:31] I recommend following at Waxmetric on Twitter. That is Slapsquatch who I like to give my shout outs to because he has the bets odds out there as far as making sense of them. So mostly sticker autos as well. The only ones that I've seen for sure so far is the silver signings, of course. And then Ty Simpson, his rookie auto here. It looks like it's on card. So some of these rookie autos you could probably expect to be on card.

[00:20:59] But yeah, sticker autos are not your thing. 360 is a lot to pay for one auto. And yeah, I just don't think this is the best product to rip yourself. For braking though, you know, for getting into brakes, I think that this is more of a braking product being just one pack. 360 to open up one pack with just one auto and six base cards that usually aren't great, even if you get a really nice parallel for a rookie. If you do hit one of those, I recommend selling right away. They do not retain their value for Inception.

[00:21:30] It's very rare that they do. All right. Well, this was the Talking Cards podcast with Grand Salami and the Juice. I'm your host, The Juice. Thank you so much for listening. Have a great day and good luck with Inception, everyone.