2022-23 UEFA Finest

[BayAreaChris]

Releases tomorrow 9/20. No thread that I could find.

Is this the least popular between Merlin, Chrome, and Stadium Club Chrome? It seems they have at least 1 or 2 too many releases honestly.

[YayNJ]

Can't wait for more 2022/23 rookies two months into the 2023/24 season.

https://media.tenor.com/un4UXCaukiQAAAAC/stranger-things-fire.gif

[kingb22]

At least for me I'd probably rank them:
Merlin
Finest
Chrome
Stadium Club

In theory Chrome SHOULD be 1 or at worst 2, but the quality has been a bit dodgy from 20/21 onward. Finest is probably the most consistent in quality among the 4 and I like the 2 Autos per box. The trick w/ Finest is the checklist - with 100 cards they have more narrow margins on rookies and the 21-22 checklist was uninspiring. I hope 22/23 is better but it worries me that today is release day and Topps still hasn't published a checklist.

To be fair I like all 4 and have bought a lot of all of them. I'd have Stadium Club higher if the cards did better in the market - they are beautiful cards.

[mikee1186]

The prized footballer fusions are very nice and this year has dual autos. I have a few singles and a gold Virgil auto that are beautiful. But yeah overall this one is not nearly as popular and despite 2 autos per, is prone to major auto duds. Hopefully it will be priced accordingly, as the last several years have been outrageous. No checklist yet.

I did see from what is a ready in the wild that it looks like a bunch of the hits and autos are serial numbered, such as a base auto /500. I like that from a transparency perspective.

[GrangerCollectr]

Going to be another blood bath for everyone ripping. Only way to make your money back on soccer is hitting reds or supers of Messi, Ronaldo, Haaland, Mbappe (or maybe one of the bigger rookies). Pull a case hit....yeah, that might get you 40% of the box price back.

Soccer boxes must get back to the $99-$119.99 range again for it to make sense. Soccer singles sales are dead right now and box pricing must reflect the new market or we will continue to lose more collectors from our soccer community.

[kingb22]

Soccer boxes must get back to the $99-$119.99 range again for it to make sense. Soccer singles sales are dead right now and box pricing must reflect the new market or we will continue to lose more collectors from our soccer community.

22/23 Finest on Dealernet is selling for ~ $125, so the market largely agrees with your statement

[peterose4hof]

Seems like they are pumping these sets out faster and faster.

[fadster]

If anyone is wondering the 1/1 Messi Auto Super has already been pulled, as has the 1/1 Prized Footballers CR7

[mfw13]

What is the point of releasing a 22-23 set the week the 23-24 Champions League starts?

Half the players are no longer with the teams they are pictured with....and this year's teams have no cards....

[YayNJ]

If anyone is wondering the 1/1 Messi Auto Super has already been pulled, as has the 1/1 Prized Footballers CR7

always on day one

it's a joke

[BRob1]

What is the point of releasing a 22-23 set the week the 23-24 Champions League starts?

Half the players are no longer with the teams they are pictured with....and this year's teams have no cards....


Unfortunately it’s not limited to soccer. Look at football and the most popular sets like prizm and optic will likely come out after the season is over.

In 2020 prizm football came out thanksgiving weekend, since then everything got pushed back by 4-6 months.


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[kingb22]

Looks like the checklist just dropped. Increased to 150 cards. Eyeballing the rookies doesn't seem anything beyond what Merlin offered but I could be wrong. Similar to their other releases this year the Autos seem much more interesting than in the past (dual autos, better names, etc).

[Ianhatcher]

Wouldn't buy it anyway as no rookies I care to chase but I am ok with delays to the KO rounds of the CL timeframe but this is entirely too long. The upside is they can get more rookies that burst on the scene into products so I am ok with somewhat of a delay but this is kinda ridiculous.

[mfw13]

Unfortunately it’s not limited to soccer. Look at football and the most popular sets like prizm and optic will likely come out after the season is over.

Oh, don't worry....I'm well aware.....doesn't mean that I'm a fan of the practice, though.

[mfw13]

22/23 Finest on Dealernet is selling for ~ $125, so the market largely agrees with your statement

That's still overpriced....Finest should be a $80-90 a box product, especially given that you only get 60 cards per master box....

[BayAreaChris]

22/23 Finest on Dealernet is selling for ~ $125, so the market largely agrees with your statement


Can you share what Merlin Hobby, Chrome Hobby, and SCC hobby are? Curious how they compare versus release day pricing.

[kingb22]

Can you share what Merlin Hobby, Chrome Hobby, and SCC hobby are? Curious how they compare versus release day pricing.

Merlin was pretty consistently holding in the $190-$200 range although a few recent transactions were $170. Will be interesting to see if that $170 holds or was an outlier.

Chrome UEFA was pretty similar - it's been around $190 since the start with a couple outliers in either direction.

Stadium Club was different - it was $180-$190 after release but has now settled down to the mid-$150's.

Finest is really the first one that is essentially opening around cost (when you factor in shipping, it might even be slightly be below cost)

[Gin&Juice]

What is the point of releasing a 22-23 set the week the 23-24 Champions League starts?

Half the players are no longer with the teams they are pictured with....and this year's teams have no cards....

My favorite is the Gundogan / Cancelo dual auto for Man City. What a joke.

There is absolutely nothing about this product that warrants waiting until now to release it. It is ugly and redundant. Finest’s appeal used to be that it was first out of the gate so it was the first chance to get some players. Now it is wholly pointless. If you are going to wait (which I hate) at least make it a unique or desirable product.

[YayNJ]

^ this 100%

[BayAreaChris]

Merlin was pretty consistently holding in the $190-$200 range although a few recent transactions were $170. Will be interesting to see if that $170 holds or was an outlier.

Chrome UEFA was pretty similar - it's been around $190 since the start with a couple outliers in either direction.

Stadium Club was different - it was $180-$190 after release but has now settled down to the mid-$150's.

Finest is really the first one that is essentially opening around cost (when you factor in shipping, it might even be slightly be below cost)


Thanks!

[BRob1]

Oh, don't worry....I'm well aware.....doesn't mean that I'm a fan of the practice, though.


Believe it or not I never said you were.


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[rentz]

Going to be another blood bath for everyone ripping. Only way to make your money back on soccer is hitting reds or supers of Messi, Ronaldo, Haaland, Mbappe (or maybe one of the bigger rookies). Pull a case hit....yeah, that might get you 40% of the box price back.

Soccer boxes must get back to the $99-$119.99 range again for it to make sense. Soccer singles sales are dead right now and box pricing must reflect the new market or we will continue to lose more collectors from our soccer community.

everything needs to come down, current boxes in all sports are just grossly overpriced for how over produced they are.

[YayNJ]

over produced and generally look crap too.

barely any originality, vast majority of inserts etc are just rehashes of old Basketaball or Baseball cards. I'm a football fan, I care less about some obscure insert that had Michael Jordan on it thirty years ago.

I'm at the stage where even at this price point, I can rip a box and still end up throwing every card in the bin afterwards.

[kingb22]

In the spirit of science, I opened a case that I got at a good price (~ $1000).

The good:
More new rookies than I expected. No idea if they are good, but at least there are some fresh faces
A lot of rookie autos (10 of 16 autos were rookies)
In general I though the cards were nice - high quality, looked nice
The Man subset was a bit gaudy but pretty cool

The bad:
Way too many base autos (4 colored autos, 1 subset auto, 11 base autos)
150 card set - pretty hard to hit big names
Didn't love the Prized Footballers this year. The fusion in particular was meh
The #'ing on the Extended Europa set made no sense - you ended up with duplicate cards from 101-120 between base and extended


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[KeV1989]

Welp, just got a hobby box and opened it. No wonder i'm starting to move away from them

Parallels:

88/275 Marcus Edwards (Rookie for Sporting)
57/250 Harry Kane (Still in Spurs Kit)
67/199 Gavi
80/99 "The Man" Kyogo Furuhashi (nice design, but don't rly care for the player)
38/50 Federicoi Valverde

Autos:

55/99 Johannesson (Rookie for Copenhagen)
3/5 Timo Werner

I saw the red and was hoping for a great player. Seeing Werner was really deflating