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You are here: Home / Sports Card News / Modern Sports Card News / Check Those Base Cards: Topps Acknowledges 1/1 ‘First Card’ Parallels Are Missing Front Stamp

Check Those Base Cards: Topps Acknowledges 1/1 ‘First Card’ Parallels Are Missing Front Stamp

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Earlier this month, Fanatics/Topps used social media to tout a new one-of-a-kind parallel that was part of 2024 Series 1 Baseball but after about two weeks of seeing countless boxes opened, there was no sign of the “First Card” designation the company had promoted.

Unless you flipped it over.

The cards were meant to showcase the first printed copy of each card in the base set.

However, on Tuesday, the company admitted the ‘First Card’ variation was actually missing the stamp on the front that would have made them easy to spot when opening a pack.  

What ‘First Card’ parallels were supposed to look like.

The only way to tell if you’d pulled one of the cards–said to be the first card to roll off the production line–was to look at the back where the “1/1” stamp did make it into the production process.

The First Card of rookie Jose Fermin carries the 1/1 stamping on the back, but the First Card stamp on the front was left off.  -Photo from eBay

The Jose Fermin rookie card with the 1/1 designation on the reverse recently sold for $400.

It’s safe to say breakers, dealers and some collectors who bought and opened large quantities of the product may not have flipped every base card over so there may well be First Card 1/1s in monster boxes all over North America. You’ll have to turn over all of your base cards to see if you’ve got one with a 1/1 stamp on the lower right side of the back.  One copy of all 350 cards in Series 1 were printed with the 1/1 designation on the back.

Topps stated Tuesday that it would attempt a fix for collectors who do find them.

“For those who may have pulled these cards, we would like to offer to stamp these cards with ‘First Card’ as well as provide you with Topps credit,” the company stated. “To initiate a request for the stamp and Topps credit, please go to your topps.com account to file a claim.”

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About Rich Mueller

Rich is the editor and founder of Sports Collectors Daily. A broadcaster and writer for over 40 years and a collector for even longer than that, he's usually typing something somewhere. Type him back at [email protected].