At this point, Topps has most of their product lines in a row. One of the most influential brands Topps has had over the past two decades has been the Chrome nomenclature. Ever since Chrome came out in the time frame after the 1994-95 Baseball and Hockey labor issues were settled, the mere Chrome name has become synonymous with a more “finished” version of the base cards. Topps has used the chrome nomenclature for Topps, Bowman and Heritage among other parallels.
Because these cards are usually considered very attractive collectors always look forward to the new Chrome products the 2013 release has been very anticipated in no small part due to the popularity of rookies such as Yasiel Puig, Jose Fernandez and Shelby Miller among others. The 2013 Topps Chrome was released almost simultaneously with Bowman Chrome yet the Topps Chrome has continued to do very well.
My local card store (Triple Cards,Plano, TX) said he has already gone through 5-6 cases at the $75 per box level while leading on-line retailers are currently at $70-80. There are 24 packs per box with four cards per pack. Each box says there will be two autographs. Please note many of the autographs are redemptions but in the words of Triple Cards’ owner, for once they’re not so bad because collectors were well alerted.
His only comment was some of his clients were turned off when both autographs in the box were redemptions. He thought there should be a way to get at least one live autograph in each box.
Here’s what we pulled:
Base Cards: 76 of 220. This is a tad over 33 percent of the set. This means even with perfect distribution one needs at least three hobby boxes to complete a set
Refractors: Brandon Barnes, Carter Capps, Brandon Maurer, Andrew McCutchen, Kendrys Morales, Marcell Ozuna, Mariano Rivera. My LCS owner reported one hot box purchased in his 
hop that had all refractors
X-Frractors: Madison Bumgarner, Carlos Beltran, Desmond Jennings, Craig Kimbrel
Blue Refractor (#d to 199): Carlos Santana
Black Refractor (#d to 100): Casey Kelly
Chrome Connection Die-Cuts: Matt Holliday, Stephen Strasburg
Dynamic Skills; Justin Verlander
1972 Chromes: Clayton Kershaw, Hyun-Jin Ryu
Autographs: Jeurys Familia, Paco Rodriguez (Redemption)
The die-cuts are especially cool in Chrome. Even my wife called them “distinctive”. So we got our two autographs of which one is a redemption which is not a surprise. No real big hits for us, however. No Puig for us either, but considering his NLCS performance so far, maybe interest will start cooling on him anyway.
Collectors over the years know what they are going to get from a Chrome box and continue to buy a lot of this product. Over 24,000 listings were on eBay at last check. Click here to see those closing right now.
Rich Klein can be reached at [email protected] .
