2026 topps series 1 hobby box review

beckett tells me that all i can expect in my hobby box is one autograph, one silver pack, 20 packs with 12 cards each. i couldn't find odds on individual inserts or parallels, but my box seemed a bit watered down in that regard, which could indicate an even more astronomical base print run than in previous years. i'm not disappointed at all - just observing.

here are some cards i scanned.

pack 1:

some things to discuss there.

sean manaea leads things off this year with a card that shows a decent look at the mets' ed kranepool memorial patch. the combo card features bobby witt jr and series 1 darling jac caglianone. there are two giants and two white sox players in the packs with four different uniforms which is not strange, but it's not just home whites and away grays these days. the insert here is ichiro's 1991 topps design card. i find it interesting that topps left off the 35th anniversary logo that has been present on these year specific design inserts since they began repeating 35-year old designs in 2018.

of course, the big card in that pack is clayton kershaw's. let's linger on it

i like the card design. legible names and positions, and plenty of room for the photo. maybe the only thing is the stitching stripe, and it might be specific for the dodgers. from what i saw, most teams seem to have a primary or complimentary color for their stripe, but the dodgers have gray. why not blue?

anyway, finding this card in the first pack gave me positive vibes for the remainder of the year in terms of collecting for sure. it is a true final tribute with his complete major league statistics on the back:

seeing that career strikeout total and the singular team in the second column to the left makes me smile. this is definitely among my all-time favorite card backs, joining the likes of the 1973 topps roberto clemente and 1988 score steve garvey cards.

pack 2:

i got a bit aggressive with the scanner. don't worry - we will see that league leader card again. here are the other three cards from the pack:

the pink parallel of ryne sandberg's 1991 card was backwards in the pack which had me thinking it might have been something more than just the pink. oh well. local team gold parallel is nice to see.

pack 3:

the all topps team card of bobby witt jr is a base version, not a gold parallel or anything like that.

that's enough of the pack-by-pack approach. from here on i'll just show some of the cards that were of interest to me.

one thing that confounds me a bit is why topps would make each team's three-letter location abbreviation part of the base design when one team doesn't have one. thanks to that design decision, we have cards like this

with the team name scrunched up there. last year, the portrait cards had the team nickname, while the landscape cards went with the abbreviation (which i didn't understand, either), but this year both styles have the abbreviation. here's the athletics' team card

that says "athletics" twice. here's the back:

which also doesn't make any mention of where the team plays. here's the back of the mets' team card

that does list citi field. just weird stuff. i get that, for whatever reason, mlb doesn't want to recognize sacramento beyond a sleeve patch, but they do play in a stadium, correct?

i think topps would have been better suited to just leave the abbreviations (and in the athletics' case, the team name) off of the cards. the future stars cards don't have that, and i think they look just fine without it

since that's a landscape card, i will note that the images used on those formatted cards run the gamut from full body shots to images cropped at the waist. the portrait cards, however, are pretty much all full body shots like alex bregman's card shows

or close to it. bryce harper's card

is one of the more tightly cropped portrait cards i found.

and then there are cards like jacob young's

which is fantastic. it makes me think of 1973 or 1974 where card subjects were sometimes a very small part of the image on their cards.

here's the american league home run league leader card

and the back

i'd have to go back and look, but i don't recall photos on the back of league leader cards before. i also didn't recall jo adell hitting 37 bombs last year. and, while i am thinking about adell, the angel cards use "laa" as their abbreviation which is fine, but they still aren't referenced as the "los angeles angels" on card backs.

here's the al rbi leader card again

and the back

i really would not have guessed that jo adell was top 10 in homers and rbi last year. this is what happens when you don't play fantasy baseball anymore.

here's another card back - it's taylor trammell's

i just wanted to show it to recognize his short stint as a dodger in 2024. no dodger cards of him exist, and you can see why by checking out his stats above.

i found the hot rookie cards - roman anthony

jac caglianone

and jacob misiorowski

another rookie that caught my eye even though they weren't as highly touted as those three was kyle karros

a year too late to be part of a father/son card in topps heritage.

as always, i keep my eyes open for memorial patches, and andrew abbott's card

shows us the patch worn for pete rose. these two brewers cards

feature the bob uecker patch, and these two white sox cards feature the patch that was worn for bobby jenks

this nick gonzales card

shows some of the patch that the pirates wore for dave parker. it's obscured a bit by his glove, which is too bad. gonzales wore parker's number 39 but has said that he thinks it should be retired by the club in honor of the cobra.

i'll be on the lookout for better representation of those patches throughout the year, as i am taking a more patient approach to filling that particular collection. i am also going to be patient in picking the flagship card to represent this year's set in my topps through the years collection. one front runner is cal raleigh

based on his monster 2025 season. i think it would be a pretty good choice, but i am going to wait.

one card i don't have to wait on is number 350. this year, it's mike trout

who hits the checklist at that number. here's the back

it's trout's first time at 350, and he joins my collection celebrating the players who have held that spot in the checklist since 1957.

one more non-dodger base card to show, and it's gabriel moreno's

i scanned it because of the dodger stadium setting. i'm not sure i will add this to my dodger stadium collection as there are a lot of cards like this and at this point i am sort of looking for more unique background images. or the unocal 76 sign - that will make the binder every time.

parallels, i found a few. rainbow foils of hayden birdsong

and the witt/caglinone combo card

by the way, these cards are not checklist cards. in fact, it seems like checklist cards may not be thing in flagship anymore. i didn't find any.

insert time! here's a new one for 2026 - big ticket players (mine is ronald acuna jr)

and here's an oldie but a goodie - profiles (from 1996) featuring ken griffey jr and, in this case, pete crow-armstrong

those original profiles cards were foil (this one's not but i bet there are foil versions) and were "by" kirby puckett (american leaguers) and tony gwynn (national leaguers). i'm guessing the kid is on all of them this year. for the record, i would prefer that these sorts of redos be left to archives, but i don't get a say.

here are some more 1991 design cards - paul skenes

carson williams

james wood

and don mattingly

whose card looks a bit washed out.

i found a couple of 2025 greatest hits inserts

which featured homers by jasson dominguez and raleigh, and then i found another one in pink holo foil fashion

that highlighted pete alonso's all-star game home run.

my guaranteed autograph was also a parallel - a blue one of luis morales

they are numbered to 150 on the back

the other guarantee in the box was the silver pack. it included this promo card

showing some of the most iconic rookie cards in the brand's history, plus a bit of a shohei ohtani signed insert. the back shows that card in full

i did not find that card in my pack. instead, i did find ohtani's regular chrome card

plus cards of christian yelich, nolan arenado, and fernando tatis jr

as for dodger base cards, i did pretty well

and i spy the unocal 76 logo on tommy edman's card!

mookie betts' card is a good one

so i am showing it solo.

freddie freeman made one of the league leader cards

which is worth a closer look

only one national league qualifier surpassed .300 last season. crazy. 

i am guessing ohtani will get two base cards like last year. in series one, we have his dh card

and here's max muncy's card

along with a muncy insert

celebrating his 200th career home run.

those last three cards (plus a second kershaw card for my final tribute collection) didn't come from my hobby box. i stopped at target on thursday morning and was surprised to see a fully loaded shelf. my targets have not been that timely with a new baseball release for a very long time. i bought a hanger and an easter egg and found a couple more 1991 inserts - frank thomas

and pete alonso

who is sporting the ed kranepool patch

as for parallels, here's a pink holofoil one of tomoyuki sugano's card

plus a diamante parallel for cj abrams

the other guaranteed diamante was a twin that i hope to hand over to brian at the monthly card show.

the easter egg netted these two base holiday parallels

plus one of the new polka dot parallels. 

unnecessary, but again, production numbers have to be off the charts so more parallels are needed.

being retail, there were stars of mlb cards

plus the new titans of the game inserts

the stars of mlb cards are interesting. they are very matte when looked at from one angle and then shiny from another. technology!

well, that's it. another year and another series 1 box run through. i think the next post like this i do will be a step back in time with 2025 topps stadium club which isn't even out yet. stay tuned!