2022 Topps Chrome Update Sapphire--This Could Be the Product of the Year? (2022/2023)

[RainCityShecks]

Well, that was that. Here are the results -

Box 1:
Pena RD
Alek T RC & RD
Tork RC

Green: CLE rookie combo

Box 2:
no RC/RD worth mention

Green: Alcala
Gold: Silseth RC
Orange: Krizan RC

Box 3:
Bobby W. Jr RC
Royce L RD & RC
George Kirby RD
S. Suzuki RD

Green: Royce L RC, Taylor Walls
Gold: M. Castro

Box 4:
Bryson Stott RC
J. Rod RD

Green: Owen Miller
Purple: Heliot R. RD

Box 5:
CJ Abrams RC

Green: Jake Walsh
Gold: Jace Peterson


Overall super fun rip, fairly happy, no giant hits, and definitely ended w/ a thud.

[NYRE2PECT]

Originally Posted by The Accountant

Thanks! Haha you know me well... I'm on the fence for this product. It's a gamble. There is a decent profit selling straight up and skipping the work in between. I also think its a good hold of a product.



Yes, definitely. The cards that have a significant bow seem to get scuffed up in the production line. Flat cards no issues like this.

Thanks for this...was starting to wonder if it was just me.

[The Accountant]

Originally Posted by NYRE2PECT

Thanks for this...was starting to wonder if it was just me.

Nope. It's hard see unless you have direct lighting honestly. It's not across the full card, just at the highest point of the card bow. Lots of back dimples too.

[TruBlueBrewCrew]

Well, I got 3 colors in the first of my 2 boxes.

Starling Marte Gold

Then a KC Green! Hunter Dozier…

Then lastly a Seattle Orange…




This is the biggest card I’ve ever pulled, so I’m through the roof right now

The only other card of note was a Tork base Rookie

[thenightman]

Originally Posted by TruBlueBrewCrew

Well, I got 3 colors in the first of my 2 boxes.

Starling Marte Gold

Then a KC Green! Hunter Dozier…

Then lastly a Seattle Orange…




This is the biggest card I’ve ever pulled, so I’m through the roof right now

Congrats!!!!

[The Accountant]

Originally Posted by TruBlueBrewCrew

Well, I got 3 colors in the first of my 2 boxes.

Starling Marte Gold

Then a KC Green! Hunter Dozier…

Then lastly a Seattle Orange…




This is the biggest card I’ve ever pulled, so I’m through the roof right now

Sharp looking!!! Grats

[Strofan]

Originally Posted by beens75

I saw Phil Hughes open a box in his 100 box break that had 5 parallels in it. I think if you are shorted, you are SOL. I'm sure you could try and reach out to Topps, but it's unlikely they will do anything.

I completely disagree. BOX ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT SAY "ON AVERAGE" OR "LOOK FOR." These boxes say "2 parallels per box!" No asterisk or disclaimer. It says "Look for autographs" which is completely different. Yes, language is very very specific. Panini got around this years ago with the "on average" terminology.

I'd say buying on secondary market you're hosed, because you need a verifiable receipt from a legit vendor. I occasionally resell boxes like these on platforms but do include original packaging slip (with info redacted) so that a buyer is protect. I know im the minority.
I send claims in a few times a year and I wait till I have several at a time. 2022 BY FAR was worst year since I started collecting again in 2017. I usually wait till I have SEVERAL product claims before I submit via one tracked mail shipment (to minimize my out if pocket). Everything needs to be documented and you maintain a copy before shipment. It's a PITA but with what Topps charges I have no mercy holding them to their inferior product. This year I had so many issues I limited my claims to significant parallels with significant creases... not slight creases..... or significant missing hits.

You will get a replacement. Delays changed from 3-4 weeks till 6-8 months and beginning in 2023 they moved claims center to TX from PA. Apparently I wasn't the only angry customer having quality issues.

Other than time a trouble it takes to submit and wait the biggest cost is the possible depreciation of value for any resell, but if damage is significant its a no brainer. My biggest single card fails this year include Julio Rodriguez RC parallels (yeah multiple) with 2 center feeder creases. Kwan RC SP creases... and an entire box of bowman chrome draft lite with creases on all refractors (including b&w).

[TruBlueBrewCrew]

Second box was also good. None of the following were RD’s

Julio Base US44
Kwan Base
Peña Base
Melendez Base
Scherzer Gold

[cj828282]

Yes, Topps will provide a parallel if you are missing 1 or both. Complete the form but do not be surprised if you receive an Odor or Ruf green parallel.

[JAM061200]

Originally Posted by cj828282

Yes, Topps will provide a parallel if you are missing 1 or both. Complete the form but do not be surprised if you receive an Odor or Ruf green parallel.

I have a few cards I've sent back with print lines, machine lines and just dents all over the cards. I asked support what the timeline was on getting brand new cards in return. Due to lack of staff and being inundated with stuff like this it's 6 to 8 months!

[cj828282]

Originally Posted by JAM061200

I have a few cards I've sent back with print lines, machine lines and just dents all over the cards. I asked support what the timeline was on getting brand new cards in return. Due to lack of staff and being inundated with stuff like this it's 6 to 8 months!

Yeah, by the time you get the card back it has been forgotten. Kind of a nice surprise.

[t6p]

Originally Posted by TruBlueBrewCrew

Second box was also good. None of the following were RD’s

Julio Base US44
Kwan Base
Peña Base
Melendez Base
Scherzer Gold

Doesn't get much better than those two boxes. The orange Julio is beautiful. Congrats to you!

[Merkle14]

People gonna keep ripping this product until Julio Super Auto is pulled

[eastbayak]

Originally Posted by Merkle14

People gonna keep ripping this product until Julio Super Auto is pulled

People are going to keep ripping even after the Julio super auto has been pulled. Still too many other valuable cards that can be hit (Julio included).

[Strofan]

Forgive me if I'm missing something but the stated odds on this product are a COMPLETE joke. Mathematically in the very basic calculations cannot be correct. The key to this release is that there (correct me if I'm wrong) are ONLY sold in 8 pack boxes... with same stated odds.

What am I missing here? Asking for help...

2 numbered Parallels per box of 8 packs but odds for any Parallels are higher than # of packs in one box. I am assuming they count getting an auto as a parallel... since all are numbered as well, but odds are even higher.

Number parallel odds
Green (/75) 1:9
Gold (/50) 1:13
Orange (/25) 1:26
Purple (/10) 1:64
Red (/5) 1:127
Super (/1) 1:1598
To get pack production you should be able to find out how many of each parallel exist and multiply by insertion ratio.
So 330 cards x 75 means: 24,750 Green Parallels exist at a ratio of 1:9 so 222,750 packs had to been produced to fill that ratio.
This also means 330 cards x 1 Super refractors with ratio of 1:1,598 so 537,340 packs had to be produced to fill that ratio.
222,750 or 537,340?
AND at least 1 numbered parallel would have to have a pack ratio of well under 1:8 to have a chance of filling 2:8... the box hit rate. Not even the most common parallel would hit in a box.

What am I missing or has Topps gone way off Chief Wahoo's reservation like a Pedro Cerrano homerun?

[hermanotarjeta]

Originally Posted by Strofan

Forgive me if I'm missing something but the stated odds on this product are a COMPLETE joke. Mathematically in the very basic calculations cannot be correct. The key to this release is that there (correct me if I'm wrong) are ONLY sold in 8 pack boxes... with same stated odds.

What am I missing here? Asking for help...

2 numbered Parallels per box of 8 packs but odds for any Parallels are higher than # of packs in one box. I am assuming they count getting an auto as a parallel... since all are numbered as well, but odds are even higher.

Number parallel odds
Green (/75) 1:9
Gold (/50) 1:13
Orange (/25) 1:26
Purple (/10) 1:64
Red (/5) 1:127
Super (/1) 1:1598
To get pack production you should be able to find out how many of each parallel exist and multiply by insertion ratio.
So 330 cards x 75 means: 24,750 Green Parallels exist at a ratio of 1:9 so 222,750 packs had to been produced to fill that ratio.
This also means 330 cards x 1 Super refractors with ratio of 1:1,598 so 537,340 packs had to be produced to fill that ratio.
222,750 or 537,340?
AND at least 1 numbered parallel would have to have a pack ratio of well under 1:8 to have a chance of filling 2:8... the box hit rate. Not even the most common parallel would hit in a box.

What am I missing or has Topps gone way off Chief Wahoo's reservation like a Pedro Cerrano homerun?

As mentioned before, not all cards have a superfractor version because they already have one in topps chrome update. Those cards have a papadapolous 1/1 instead.

[Strofan]

I ordered 3 boxes and opened one so far. I got 1 green parallel, 1 gold parallel and 1 orange auto.
I might stop there because statistically it should feel like I found the cure to cancer.

[Strofan]

Originally Posted by hermanotarjeta

As mentioned before, not all cards have a superfractor version because they already have one in topps chrome update. Those cards have a papadapolous 1/1 instead.

Oh thanks I thought it had to be something... but that still doesn't explain how 2 numbered Parallels are in each box. That claim IS guaranteed hit rate. Not on average... and even if it had been on average it appears to be an impossibility on average.

[LittleJimmies]

Originally Posted by Strofan

Oh thanks I thought it had to be something... but that still doesn't explain how 2 numbered Parallels are in each box. That claim IS guaranteed hit rate. Not on average... and even if it had been on average it appears to be an impossibility on average.

Odds are additive, doesn't matter if no parallel is 1:8 or less. Think of it this way, if there were 4 different parallels that all had 1:16 pack odds and were seeded perfectly, you would get all 4 if you bought 2 boxes.

The actual math for this is just (8/9)+(8/13)+.....(8/1598) for how many parallels per box.

[TruBlueBrewCrew]

The super point: I do not believe that everyone in this product has a super. if they have already had one, they only have a papa.

To your point about 1:8. If they had the Green at 1:8, theoretically there would be more than 2 parallels per box on average because you'd average 2 greens alone, and then also have the odds of the other colors, pushing the parallel average well above 2 per box.

There is already likely to be more than 2 parallels per box on average, 2.xx from what we've seen of rips, and the 1:13 contributes pretty significantly.

On 100 boxes (800 packs)
You'd expect to get
~89 greens
~61.5 Golds
~31 oranges
~12.5 Purples
~6.3 reds
~.5 Supers
~.77 Padpas
1 Orange Auto
~.4 Purple Auto
~.2 Red Autos
~.04 Super Autos

100 Boxes should have
~201 non-auto parallels
& 1.64 auto parallels

Pretty consistent with the 2 parallels per box

[zworykin]

Originally Posted by Strofan

Forgive me if I'm missing something but the stated odds on this product are a COMPLETE joke. Mathematically in the very basic calculations cannot be correct. The key to this release is that there (correct me if I'm wrong) are ONLY sold in 8 pack boxes... with same stated odds.

What am I missing here? Asking for help...

2 numbered Parallels per box of 8 packs but odds for any Parallels are higher than # of packs in one box. I am assuming they count getting an auto as a parallel... since all are numbered as well, but odds are even higher.

Number parallel odds
Green (/75) 1:9
Gold (/50) 1:13
Orange (/25) 1:26
Purple (/10) 1:64
Red (/5) 1:127
Super (/1) 1:1598
To get pack production you should be able to find out how many of each parallel exist and multiply by insertion ratio.
So 330 cards x 75 means: 24,750 Green Parallels exist at a ratio of 1:9 so 222,750 packs had to been produced to fill that ratio.
This also means 330 cards x 1 Super refractors with ratio of 1:1,598 so 537,340 packs had to be produced to fill that ratio.
222,750 or 537,340?
AND at least 1 numbered parallel would have to have a pack ratio of well under 1:8 to have a chance of filling 2:8... the box hit rate. Not even the most common parallel would hit in a box.

What am I missing or has Topps gone way off Chief Wahoo's reservation like a Pedro Cerrano homerun?

Originally Posted by hermanotarjeta

As mentioned before, not all cards have a superfractor version because they already have one in topps chrome update. Those cards have a papadapolous 1/1 instead.

Right. 200 cards from the checklist were in Topps Chrome Update, with the same image, and got a superfractor there. Doing a superfractor for those cards in this set would result in 2 identical superfractors, which is a mistake Topps has made in the past and is trying to avoid making again. Hence, those 200 cards get padparadscha 1/1s.

The remaining 130 cards, which were not in Topps Chrome Update and thus never had a superfractor, get a superfractor instead of a padparadscha, presumably because Topps just wants all the cards to have a superfractor if possible since that's a design/style with more history.

As confirmation of the above explanation, note the ratio of the size of those two lists of cards - 200:130. 200/130 = 1.538. This exactly matches the ratio of the pack odds for the two styles, 1:1598 and 1:1039 - 1598/1039 = 1.538.


Now, unpacking your post further. Yes, there should be 24,750 greens. But no, you can't just say "therefore there must be 222,750 packs." (Similarly, even if you used the correct number, you can't say "130 superfractors at 1:1598, therefore 207,740 packs.") It just isn't that simple, mainly because the odds for the more common cards are rounded - as you might imagine, given that they are able to give odds to 4 specific digits on the 1/1s, the actual odds for the green are not EXACTLY one in nine. They're going to be one in eight-point-something or nine-point-something. If you do the calculation for every parallel you'll get numbers from as low as 207,740 to as high as 222,750. So, somewhere in that range, sure.

What you CAN do, in theory, is take the total number of color parallels, 54,780, and divide that by 2 (the stated number per box) to get an expected box count. That would be 27,390. However, as we've seen, it turns out that "2 per box" is not an accurate statement. Some boxes have more; some have fewer. No idea what the average is across the print run, obviously, though the impression I've gotten from people posting breaks is that it seems to be a bit above 2. Maybe 2.1 or 2.2? At those levels the box count would be 26,085 or 24,900, respectively.

The reason I bring up box count is because while the pack odds for the colors DO make sense, the pack odds for the autos do NOT make sense in relation to them.

Internally, the auto odds do make sense - for example, the orange /25 and purple /10 pack odds SHOULD be a ratio of 2.5:1, since that's the ratio of how many actual orange autos and purple autos exist. And it turns out, that is in fact the ratio - 1:2043 for purples, 1:817 for oranges. Similarly, red should be twice as hard to pull as purple, since there are half as many. And indeed, red is 1:4085.

But when you do the math for pack count and thus box count based on the autos, you get a box count between 35,000 and 35,750. Recall that the color base parallels implied a MUCH smaller box count. In order for there to be 35,000 boxes, the color base parallels would have to average only ~1.57 per box. That's possible, but a pretty drastic reduction from the stated 2 (and not apparently consistent with the anecdotal results so far observed).


Finally - as if anyone read all that - I note that I'm not including the autos in the "2 per box" because the explicit language on the product page (for what that's worth) is "Every box contains 2 base card parallels numbered to 99 or less." The auto cards are not parallels of any of the base cards, they are numbered separately and have unique images.

[ObanMontecristo]

This is why I try to avoid math altogether

[RaceDog]

I debated over the last several days if I wanted to rip my 4 boxes that I got from the Topps public release. I had been having terrible luck with box rips the last year or 2 but it is part of the hobby that I enjoy.

I am a Tigers PC guy, so I was hoping for a nice Torkelson parallel.

I thought the Tork Orange was going to be my highlight and it was in the 1st box I opened. Last pack was the Purple Gore auto!!

I also got the Tork RC and RD (2 of them, but 1 was way OC).

Other RC: Lewis and Lodolo
Other RD: Kwan, Cruz, Greene, Miranda, Pena and Thomas.

[slogue2]

Well done!

[The Accountant]

So first two cases yesterday had really only two good cards… Witt /10 and a Gore orange auto /25….


Todays two cases didn’t have a Witt /10 but holy cow I got lucky for no auto:

Peña Orange Non-RD /25 (first box)
Kwan Orange Non-RD /25 (last box)
O’Neil Cruz Green /75
Spencer Torkelson RD Green /75
Pujols #300 Green /75 (last box)
Ohtani 100 HR Red /5
Nick Whitgren Superfractor /1

NFS!!! Thanks for the look