If you drive a Benz, never have dinner without fine wine and your furniture is made of rich Mahogany, you’ll appreciate the marketing push behind 2016 Topps ‘The Mint’ Baseball, which released this week.
The company went the ‘luxury’ route in introducing the new product, one it teased during last spring’s Industry Summi
t in Hawaii. Pre-order pricing is currently running $900-$1100 per box/pack.
Current players and retired stars and Hall of Famers are featured on the checklist, which you can see below.
“We are very thrilled to bring The Mint Baseball to all of our fans.” said Brand Manager Zvee Geffen. “We look forward to raising the bar for premium card collecting with this product and the exciting and unique items within it.”
Among the autographs is an unforgettable bonus baby who was no stranger to the spoils of 
being a top prospect: Nuke LaLoosh. Although he wasn’t mentioned in the preliminary product info, Topps did include an image of the fireballer from Bull Durham with a signature from actor Tim Robbins. Topps also featured the Bull Durham cast and autographs in its 2016 Archives Baseball product.
2016 Topps The Mint Configuration
Calling it “an unblemished trading card experience” that will “raise the bar for premium card collecting” with a “laboriously honed checklist”, Topps says 2016 The Mint will have five cards per pack/box—all autographed and sequentially numbered.
Some packs will have a bonus 1/1 memorabilia card such as game-used bat
ting glove pieces in book card f
orm. There will be four boxes per case.
Autographs
Autographed Content will include Franchise, which will feature current “upper echelon” players according to Topps; Gem Mint 10 (where Nuke’s card will go—along with “new additions to the Topps product family,” according to sales info), Arrivals (2016 rookies who may have added their MLB debut date inscription if they arrived last year) and Golden Engraving (retired legends). 
Each autograph will be done with metallic ink. Topps says there will be “extremely limited” image variations for some cards and they are promising only three autograph parallels: Blue (# to 50), Green (# to 10) and Red (# to 1).
Fans of retiring Dodgers’ play-by-play legend Vin Scully will be excited to see his autographs in the product.
Autograph and Relic Cards
Auto Relic cards will include only pieces with MLB authentication. Milestone Home Run Jerseys will showcase the actual jersey worn by the player while breaking a monumental record. Fans could open a box of The Mint to fi
nd a card containing a piece of the jersey worn by Adam Jones of the Baltimore Orioles when he passed Frank Robinson on the Orioles’ all-time home run list, or one with David Ortiz’s jersey when he hit his 512th and surpassed Mel Ott for 25th place in MLB history.
Franklin Batting Glove Book Cards, which feature large pieces of game worn batting gloves embedded in cards of the game’s best sluggers including Joey Votto, Yadier Molina, Hunter Pence, Starling Marte, Robinson Cano, Edwin Encarnacion, Miguel Cabrera, Dustin Pedroia and others.
Authentic Patch Autographs will be multi-colored jersey pieces. Look for Green (# to 10) and Red (1/1) parallels on those.
2016 The Mint Baseball is available now. You can see what’s listed on eBay here.
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