Collectors, dealers and breakers who’d been opening Hobby and Jumbo boxes of 2022 Topps Chrome Baseball since it arrived late last week began wondering why the promised five rookie short print (SSP) cards didn’t seem to exist. The cards numbered 221-225 were supposed to be a little hard to find, but even those who opened cases were coming up empty.
No Julio Rodriguez or Bobby Witt Jr.
Spencer Torkelson and CJ Abrams were MIA.
Hunter Greene was nothing more than a rumor.
Late Monday night, Topps admitted that a communications issue with the company that produces and packages its boxes had led to them not being included anywhere within the contents. Now, the company says it will undertake steps to at least try to get them into the hands of collectors, blaming a late effort to get some of this season’s more popular rookies into the product.
“We now understand that the planned bonus short print parallels of five rookie subjects were incorrectly not included in the collation of the hobby boxes,” Topps stated. “As the short print parallels were originally not part of the set and later added for an additional chase element, there was unfortunately a technical miscommunication about the product mix in the production process.”
That meant every case was missing a critical part of what had been the big selling point of the product: the chance to pull some desirable, rare cards of some of 2022’s top rookies. Prices had already dropped over the weekend as collectors became aware that something was wrong. Topps spent Monday hammering out a way to try get the cards into the market.
“For all future shipments of Chrome & for customers that have already purchased product thru Topps.com & hobby shops or breakers that purchased directly from us, we will provide 1 additional 2-card silver pack for each 2022 Topps Chrome Baseball Hobby box purchased,” they stated. “The short print parallels will be randomly inserted in these packs. We are working directly with every distribution channel of the product to ensure these packs are properly distributed through the original sellers.”
Exactly what the composition of those silver packs will consist of wasn’t revealed, if in fact, it’s been determined.
Collectors who have already bought boxes at shows are probably out of luck and those who purchased via their local hobby shop might have to produce some sort of proof of purchase or rely on the store to fashion some way of distributing those packs fairly. The silver packs will only be distributed with Hobby boxes.
Online retailer Blowout Cards stated it would be “shipping packs to all those who ordered and continue to order (Chrome) baseball from Blowoutcards.com. Not an ideal situation but the right thing to do for our customers. As soon as we get the packs we will begin to process shipments.”
The missing rookie short prints is a major snafu for one of the company’s most popular products, but illustrates the issues that can arise with so many new releases entering the market each year. It’s certainly not the way the Fanatics owned company would have preferred to start a new week.
“We are quickly working on this and will provide further updates ASAP,” they stated.
Topps Chrome box prices dipped over the weekend and are now being offered on eBay for a little over $200.
Boxes on Topps’ website, which will include those silver packs, are selling for $299 with cases also being offered.
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