It’s been a wickedly good year for baseball, thanks to Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger and a few other rookies who are playing well beyond their experience level. Every new trading card release seems to sell, whether online or at local shops who are having a tough time keeping some products in stock–and the restock price is often a lot higher. Into that cauldron comes 2017 Topps Chrome baseball, officially arriving Wednesday but already trickling into the marketplace.
Chrome will again incorporate the same design as the flagship Topps Series 1 and 2 sets within the framework of a 200-card base set.
2017 Topps Chrome Basics
You’ve got a choice of two different types of packaging. A hobby box will contain 24 packs, with four cards to a pack. There will be 12 boxes per case. Jumbo boxes will have 12 packs per box, with 13 cards per pack. The jumbo product will have eight boxes per case.
Topps is promising two on-card autographs on average in a hobby box, and an average of five in a jumbo; the jumbos also will contain, on average, a dozen refractor parallels.
Parallels
Base set paralle
ls will be plentiful, with refractors, Prism refractors and Negative
refractors. Refractors with color will include purple, blue, green, Blue wave, gold, a hobby-exclusive orange (numbered to 25), red (5) and 1/1 SuperFractor and printing plate.
Autographs and Inserts
Base rookie autographs return with on-card signatures. They will have the same parallels as the base set, including the 1/1 SuperFractor and printing plate cards. Sophomore Stat Lines Autographs will honor those second-year major-leaguers who have excelled. There will be parallel in orange, numbered to 25; and a 1/1 SuperFractor.
Inserts will provide some nostalgia and some looks to the future. Most conspi
cuously, the 1987 
Topps Baseball parallel will feature modern stars framed against the wood-grain design of the ’87 Topps set, which, if not iconic, was certainly plentiful 30 years ago. Future Stars will take the 1987 design to tout up-and-coming young players.
Bowman Then & Now returns with a design that shows a current player coupled with his early Bowman cards. Freshman Flash utilizes a swirling, wispy-like enhancement to the player’s photo and features the top rookies for 2017. And MLB Award Winners will fall one per case and will feature award winners through the years.
All of these insert sets will have parallels, in orange (hobby-exclusive, numbered to 25), red (5) and 1/1 SuperFractors.
The 2017 Topps Chrome baseball set will definitely have a familiar look to those who put together the flagship set. There will be a hint of nostalgia for those collectors who began collecting cards during the late 1980s boom, too.
Online, you can order hobby boxes for around $135. Jumbo boxes are starting at about $250.
You can see single cards just listed on eBay here.
2017 Topps Chrome Baseball checklist
