Big League baseball returns after a one-year absence, and the fun-friendly set has made some changes to its 2023 product.
The 310-card set will have five tiers of scarcity. The first 200 cards will be commons, but then it becomes more difficult to complete the set.
Cards 201 to 250 are Uncommon Foil cards, with Rare Blue Foil covering cards 251 to 275. Those can be found in every 18 packs.
Super Rare Red Foil cards, which will fall one in every 90 packs, cover cards 276 to 300. And the hardest cards to find — Legendary Gold Foil — make up the final 10 cards of the set and fall once every 360 packs.
Good luck.
As usual, I bought a blaster box, which contains five Electric Orange parallels. This product has 10 packs, with eight cards to a pack. The box I opened had 59 commons and 10 Uncommon Foil cards.
The player’s name begins across the left-hand side near the bottom of the card. His name is in all capital letters, and his team and position is in smaller type. The team’s logo anchors the right-hand corner of the card front.
The design appears to be mostly vertical, which I prefer. There are some horizontal designs, too. The Big League logo — “BL” is found in the upper left-hand corner.
The design for the card backs uses a horizontal format. It’s clean-looking and attractive. Every player has a four-line narrative that points out highlights and fun facts.
There are also year-by-career and career statistics, which take up the bulk of the card back.
The Mascots insert comes over from Topps’ Opening Day set and has 27 cards. The card I pulled was of the San Diego Padres’ mascot, the Swinging Friar.
The 8 Bit Ballers has a 1980s feel to it, with the background resembling a video game. There are 20 cards in this subset, and collectors can expect to find one in every four packs they open. The cards I pulled featured Derek Jeter, Adley Rutschman and Jazz Chisholm Jr.).
I pulled two cards from the 20-card City Slickers subset. These also fall one in every four packs, and I pulled Mike Trout and Juan Soto cards. The players in this insert are depicted wearing their City Connect uniforms.
he artwork was done by CES, which is among the artists featured in the Topps Project70 series. The card I pulled was Bo Jackson.
The Big Leaguers set, which has 30 subjects, features interesting typefaces, Some look like 1960s or 1970s artists inspired them. The cards I pulled were of Willie Mays, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and a rookie card of Riley Greene.
I did not pull any autographs from the blaster box, nor did I expect to. That is for hobby box buyers to seek.
Topps Big League is a fun product. It is straightforward in its main design, and there is room for fun in the inserts. Unlike the Opening Day product, this early season release does not mirror the flagship product too closely. That’s a good thing.The base set seems easy enough to complete if you are a set builder, although the four foil tiers may pose a challenge.But it is a pleasant task.