Topps won’t be wasting any time pushing out 2022 baseball card products when the calendar turns to the new year. The company is planning to release 2022 Sterling Baseball on January 12, four weeks ahead of the annual Series 1 flagship product. The 2021 edition was just released in May so it’s a pretty quick turnaround for Sterling, a high-end brand that sticks to the hits.
2022 Topps Sterling Baseball Configuration
Exclusive to hobby shops, Sterling offers two packs per box, with each pack containing only one card. One pack will contain an autographed relic numbered to 25 or less. The second pack will have either another auto relic or a 1/1 relic or auto relic. There will be a theme to each box.
Each case will contain eight boxes.
Relics and Autographed Relics
Among the themed cards are:
Sterling Seasons – Focused on a particular player’s great season, these will contain an on-card autograph along with two relic pieces and will be numbered to 25 or less.
Sterling Strikes – Pitchers are the theme here with cards containing an on-card autograph and relic piece. They’ll be numbered to 25.
Sterling Swings – The league’s best hitters are showcased with two memorabilia pieces joining the autograph. Each will be numbered to 25 as well.
The three subsets above will have Blue parallels numbered to 10 featuring three relic pieces, Red parallels with four relic pieces that are numbered to 5 and 1/1 Silver parallels with five pieces of memorabilia.
Sterling Splendor Jumbo Patch Autographs will have a varied checklist of top players with cards containing a large patch piece and an on-card autograph. They’ll be numbered to 5, 3 (Red) or 1/1 (Silver).
In Sterling Debuts, members of the 2022 rookie class are featured with their first on-card autographed relic cards of the year. They’ll be numbered to 25 with Blue, Red and Silver parallels as above.
Sterling Sets Dual Autograph Relics will include on-card autos and game-used memorabilia pieces from “players sharing a common bond,” according to Topps. They’ll be numbered to 15 with Red parallels (# to 5) having four relic pieces (two per player) and 1/1 Silver parallels having three pieces per player.
Sterling Sets Triple Autograph Relics – Notable trios are featured here with on-card autographs and game-used relic pieces, all numbered to 10, 5 (Red) or 1/1 (Silver).
Found two per case, Unique Relics are all 1/1. The breakdown includes:
- Jersey Letter Patches – Oversized relics of the featured player’s jersey letter patches.
- Bat Knob and Autographed Bat Knob cards – Game-used bat knobs from MLB greats
- Bat Nameplate and Autographed Bat Nameplate Cards – Cards containing the nameplate from a game-used bat
- Cut Signatures – Cards containing cut signatures from well-known past figures from baseball, politics, and entertainment
- Legendary Relics – A checklist featuring Hall of Fame members and other well-known names with three pieces of game-used memorabilia.
- Legendary Cut Signature Relics – Vintage cut signatures alongside two game-used memorabilia pieces.
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