Hello and welcome to Talking Cards with Grant Salami and the Juice. I am your host, The Juice, and I am here solo today. I wanted to make sure to get out an episode on the newest TOPS release. We are talking about 2026 Topps Chrome Black Baseball that will release April 29th today. I'm seeing conflicting info on the exact time. I do see on the Twitter posts, the ex post that it says 12 p.m. Eastern, but on the actual tops page it says 1 p.m. Eastern. I would probably go off of the top page, tops page, but it doesn't hurt to check at 12. It's going to be an EQL anyway, according to the Tops page. So I would expect that. Again, the Twitter post does not say EQL though. So a lot of conflicting info on this. Uh, it's gonna be hard to say uh which one to really believe, but yeah. So just in case I would be ready at 12 to go, if you do want to get in on this, I'm gonna assume that EQL on the actual tops pages, right? Over the Twitter post. So it's going to be available at $209.99. So about what you'd expect for this release. Two packs per box, six cards per pack. And then, of course, you have the Chase of the product, which is the one encased autograph. And you can also expect in each pack a parallel each. So two parallels and one encase auto. It's it's definitely a fun product, it's a very quick rip. But let's get right into the checklist. So, what we are looking at for this product is a 200-card checklist. We have a very decent number of parallels, maybe about 20, all the way from the refractors out of 199 down to the super fractors. And yeah, you can expect to find all the big rookies, you know, all the big vets. Of course, you're gonna have Otani, Wit, Judge uh for the rookies. You have you have Schlitler, Roman Anthony, you have Jack Keggs, and then a very nice addition to this product making his tops, making his American tops cards debut for his rookie card, Munateka Morikami. So yeah, he's definitely gonna be a nice chase with all the home runs that he's hitting. I'm excited to be able to see some of his cards out there. He will probably have a hefty price tag for those player breaks. He might be tough to get, but he's definitely a fun player to chase. Along with that, the base cards do have the rookie design variations in the past. This has been highlighted with the large rookie card logo in the background. Really clean, really great looking cards. This is a 30-card checklist of the top rookies, only six different parallels. So, yeah, these are our short printed, not as short printed as um you would think from last year. We'll see how they turn up this year, but yeah, you you can expect to find all the top rookies in this. I see Jack Keggs, Bo Chandler, Mizorowski, Chase Burns, Basillo, uh, let's see, Roman Anthony, Nolan McLean, Cam Schlitler, O Murakami on this checklist, though. So you will not be able to find him for these short printed rookies. All right, let's get into the inserts. So the inserts every year, I feel like they're taking a step up in this product, and this year is no exception. First up, we had the Damascus insert. This is just 31 cards. I believe, no, it is not all vets. Um, the only parallel is a super fractor out of one. But yeah, you're getting the top players out of this. So Tani, Judge, Wit, Soto, PCA, Skeens, Kurtz. There's really not many stinkers until you start getting to some of the rookies that you could do without. I would say at least half of these 31 are very, very quality players that you could be happy to find. And it's a very clean-looking card. The mock-up, I don't think really will do it justice. I think you're really gonna have to see these cards in person. That could be the same said the same of most of the Topps Chrome black cards in general. But I imagine that, yeah, this Damascus metal steel look, I think it's really gonna lend itself well uh to the product as we've seen before. Next up, we have Nocturnal. So these are probably my least favorite of the inserts. Uh, not that it's a bad insert, it's just one of them has to be the least favorite of the four different inserts. This is a slightly larger checklist, 40 cards. Only parallel again is a super fracture out of one. So you're gonna see a trend here. Pretty much not a lot of parallels for the different inserts. You're either gonna get a super, just one of them has red. So I do like it when they do that with inserts, really lets the card stay on its own and doesn't make a crazy, crazy chase for a rainbow or anything like that. Uh, you're gonna find not as good of a checklist as Damascus. It is 40 pliers, of course. You do have a lot of the top rookies here. You have Roman Anthony, you have Kegs, you have Ms. Rowski, Bubba Chandler, Payton Tolley's nice, and then you have, of course, the top bets, uh, Mookie Betts, Atani, Judge, Yamamoto, Bachet's still, a blue jay in this. You got Soto, James Wood is always nice. Paul Skeens, Nick Hurts, you got Trout, Ellie. So, yeah, nice, nice checklist of guys, but just the look of it, it's it's the weakest of the four. And then is my favorite insert of this product, depth of darkness. So if you haven't seen these in person, these look fantastic to me. Really tough grade. So I wouldn't recommend really getting them graded because these are super thick. It's more of like a shadow box kind of thing where you get that depth, hence depth of darkness. And again, the mock-up that they're showing does not really do it justice. Uh, because you're not really gonna get that depth that you had to be able to see. But I was able to hit a nice one last year. Not as nice anymore. It was Luis San Helicunia. Uh, but this checklist is 20 cards. It has red refractors out of five and super refractors out of one. So again, just two parallels. And this is an excellent checklist for the 20 cards. You have Jack Keggs, Roman Anthony, Ba Chandler, Carson Williams, you have Atani, Judge, Harper, Soto, PCA, Skeenge, Trout, Ellie, Witt, Lindor, and yeah, a few other guys there. Uh, so this is just such a fun hit. You can kind of see it when you're watching a break, but if you ever have the opportunity to look at one of these in person, really try to take that card in because that that is such a beautiful card. It's it's really fun PC card to me if I ever hit one of these. I don't think that they sell for as much as they should, except if you do hit it right away. I'm sure you can get that premium if you're one of the first to sell and first to market on those. But yeah, for PC purposes, this is such a fun card for me. I love this insert. And then making its debut with Topps Chrome Black and a really interesting and I think a great addition to this. The home field cards, home field advantage, 20 card checklist, super fractors out of one is the only parallel. And so, of course, we have seen home field cards, we've seen it in flagship products and chrome products. They've always been tough hits. I would expect them to be extremely tough to hit out of this. I'm trying to see, do we have odds for this yet? No, we don't have odds. I would expect this to come out less than one per case, as for any of these, you know, these short printed inserts. Um, maybe we'll get one of these SPs per case, but I would not expect one of each. That that should not be an expectation at all. So these are gonna be super hard to hit. If you're doing a five case or you're like a five case player break or team break, maybe you can see one of these. But the checklist is once again fantastic. You have Jack Heggs, Roman Anthony, Aaron Judge, Otani, Witt, you got Yes Savage, Baba Chan, Lara, Mizorowski, you got Ken Griffey Jr. in here as well. So yeah, I think that these really lend itself really nice to this product. You'll see the difference in you kind of had that tops chrome black patterning, that that pattern in the background of the card. And yeah, I think these are just gonna look really sleek, really sick in this product. So I think that it was a good addition. I'm hoping that this is the only product that it's added to. I don't think we'll see it in any other products, but of course that remains to be seen. Um, but I don't mind them adding it to another another card um product. All right, so let's get into the autographs. So the autos are gonna fall one per box, and these are encased cards. I don't recommend grading these unless somehow you absolutely know it's gonna be a 10. Because these usually go for more if they are still encased. If I said slab, sometimes I do that. I meant to say encase slabbed means graded, of course. So yeah, these usually you get the premium if they're encase. If I see one of these that is not encased and not graded, I assume that someone got a bad grade on it and cracked it. And then I'm definitely not pinning any sort of a premium on that card. I'm probably gonna go below a PSA 9 on any sort of offers that I would want to throw out there to obtain some sort of card like that. So pretty heavy checklist though. 111 cards. So yeah, you're gonna see a lot of stuff here. We got about 10 to 15 different parallels all the way from refractor out of 199 to the superfractors. You're gonna see all the big rookies, and then of course, you're gonna see some fun vets. Barry Bonds is in this, Judge has autos. Uh, you got Trout Autos, no Otani in the base autos. Will Clark I always like to see. I know that he's pretty much a mainstay of a lot of these products. Akuna. And then, of course, your rookies, you have Roman Anthony and the big rookie that I'm very excited to see. I mentioned before, Munatekamurakami. Munatekamurakami. So he has been living up to what you would expect from him, and I think he's exceeded a lot of expectations. Everyone knew he was gonna be a big home run hinder, but they just did not know how that was gonna translate, and it has translated. He has just been mashing the ball. He's had his Munateka, his Mooney Moon shots, and yeah, it's just been a lot of fun to see. He's gonna be such a fun chase because you haven't been able to get him in any tops American products until now. He has made some appearances in past like top Nippon products. He was in the samurai Japan World Baseball Classic. I actually have that card right here. Um, and so I've been looking at him for a while. He's definitely someone that if the price is right, I could see targeting. I think that his cards in this will go for a premium. He has an international market, of course. And again, these are right now the only new cards that you can get of his. So definitely a fun, fun player to chase. You have, of course, other big rookies. No, no Jack Hags on the auto checklist for the base autos. You got Jacob Mizarowski. I mentioned Roman Anthony, you have Nolan McLean. Let's see, you have Chase Burns. Jack Hags is on this. I was incorrect. Um, they went by his last name in the checklist. So disregard what I said before. Albert Puhol's on the vet side, Cal Rayleigh. Um, you got Jeter. A lot of fun names. But those names, remember, not all things are created equal. You do not have a one in 111 chance of hitting a Derrick Jeter auto. I would assume it's more like a one in 500 chance for any of these big guys that they're probably just very, very short printed. Maybe they just have parallels, who knows? Or maybe they just have limited parallels. Um, you know, maybe they just have the main true color ones. Like they'll have red refactors, but they won't have the red mini diamonds, or they'll have the gold refactor, but not the gold mini diamonds. So I always like to just keep up that buyer, but wear. And let's move on to our next set of autographs in the checklist. We have the ivory autographs. These are beautiful cards. I feel like they never get the premium they deserve. This is just a 36 card checklist. All these cards are printed out of 50 or fewer, and just three parallels. You have the orange trim refractor, the red trim, and the superfractor. And this is a very solid checklist, but again, very hard to hit. Barry Bonds, Bubba Chandler, Chase Burns. You got Derek Jeter, you got Big Poppy, Tatis Jr., Ichiro, you got Jack Keggs, Soto, you got Miguel Cabrera, Nolan Ryan, Akuna Jr., Roman Anthony, Randy Johnson, Standy Kopaks, and then you do have the name that you always want to see showing up, Shohei Otani coming out in this. So, yes, Otani autographs are a chase in this product. Definitely something to keep your eye on. Uh, Tops is really gonna just try to get into as many products as possible because he is a selling point. He is always a chase and the chase for any product. So, very, very solid checklist for the ivory autographs. Of course, a number of players I did not mention, but no real total stinkers out of this. No matter what you hit out of this, it should be a really fun hit. And these cards, if they're anything like last year, they are beautiful, they stand out really, really nicely. Let's go to our next set of autos: the pitch black pairings, dual autographs, 14 cards, just four parallels, orange, rose gold, red, and super fractor. These are on card. These autographs for this product are always on card, which I love and I especially love for dual autos. A dual auto is not on card, it's just it's even worse than a single one. I know it's harder to get the two players to sign one card. Obviously, it's twice the work, but when they're both on card, it's just it's just so nice to see. Yeah, some fun ones here. Chipper Jones, Rional Decunia, Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, which is awesome. Ichiro Jeter. That is a Yankees card all the way, by the way. That's what it's telling me on this checklist. So beware if you have mariners and you think you have a chance at this. Ichiro Dual Auto, you do not. And it looks like all these cards are team specific. So that that's really that's really good for breaks and team breaks specifically. Yeah, Yamamoto, Tani. That's another good one. Bubba Chandler, Paul Skeens, Ike Trout, Reggie Jackson. I think Thomas Paul Kanerko. That's a fun one. I don't mind that. But yeah, a lot of a lot of good stuff on this uh dual auto checklist. And a lot of players, you know, they're all on the same team. So they they all make sense, at least from that perspective. Next up is the next most common auto from the regular base autos, is the super future autographs. This is 22 cards, five different parallels. We have gold, orange, rose gold, red, and super factor. This checklist is okay. You have some young guys, some rookies, and yeah, just super futures, you know, guys that have a big future ahead of them, or at least that's what we're assuming, and Tops is assuming. I don't like the look of these really, to be honest. I'd rather have their but base auto for the most part. All these cards are also numbered to 99 or less, according to the parallels. But you have Nick Kurtz, Nolan McLean, you got Roki Sasaki, Chase Burns, Jack Kicks, and yeah, then there's just some mid-guys. You have Christian Campbell, Kyle Teal. I have a cat by my feet. You got Brooksley, Alex Freeland. So it's it's an okay checklist. Obviously, you got some big names in there and some not so big, but honestly, I'd rather have their base rookie card. I think they looked a lot nicer. Last up on the checklist, we have a new autograph. It is called the Painted Autographs. And this is 19 rookies, vets, and legends. They all sign in white paint over black, tops from black. So these are really gonna stand out nicely. These look like they could end up being really beautiful cards. The only parallels for this is the red out of five and a super out of five, and all the base ones are numbered to 10. These are going to be stupidly hard to hit. So just some quick math. 19 cards out of 10, 190 plus 85. We're looking at 260, uh, 275 plus the super. So we're looking at just under 300 cards total in this set across all parallels and names. So these are gonna be really, really hard to hit. But the good news is a majority of the names are really awesome, and any of the cards are gonna look beautiful. You got Poohs, Bubba Chandler, Chase Burns, CC Sabathia, Derek Jeter, Ichiro, Jack Kaggs, Kodai Senga, who by the time this episode releases, I don't even know if he's gonna be pitching in the majors anymore. He might be sent down triple A's. So I hope you don't get him. You got Mike Trout, Nick Hurts, Nolan Ryan, Roman Anthony, Yamamoto, and I left out a few names. But yeah, these cards are going to look really awesome. And also looks like uh, at least on Trout's Super Fractor, it shows that he did a an inscription on it. So I don't know if that's just gonna be unique to him, unique to the superfractor, or if that's gonna be across all the cards. Honestly, the player's only signing 16 of these, so I wouldn't be surprised if you have an inscription on each one. If so, then yeah, these cards just went up another notch. No matter what, though, these are beautiful, beautiful, sick, sick cards. Other thing to note is when you are looking at the checklist, at least if you're looking at Beckett, maybe you're looking at the cheap the team set, a lot of the time you'll see the different autos listed as chrome black autographs, ivory autographs. Remember, paint it does not have an insert or anything. It's just listed as painted, not painted autos. So if you're looking at the team auto checklist and you're looking at the different players that are on it, if you see a player in a painted, that means he does have autos. But again, don't expect that card. Each player only has 16 of those cards total. But just something worth taking note of because when I was first looking at the team sets, I saw these players with painted cards. I did not realize at first that they were actually painted autographs. All right. So that brings us to some final thoughts on this. First, I will talk about rip it, flip it, or break it. This this is tough for me because I really love these cards. I don't think 210 is a terrible price, but I would not be able to bring myself to rip these cards. The issue lies in the fact you're not gonna get $210 worth of value, and there's so many bad autos. There's so many good autos, don't get me wrong, but there's so many bad. Uh it's it's really more of a breaking product to me. Try to save your money, hope that you can get a good hit. Uh, the breaking prices aren't too bad right now either. And I don't get the satisfaction that I should with just one in case cards and two packs. It's just such a quick rip for over $200. There's just so many more fun things, I think, out there to be able to rip for that price. I'd rather use that $210 to enter a break and get some of my favorite teams, or maybe enter a pyre break or something like that. So I would not rip it. And just so you know, full disclosure, I did rip it last year, and of course I did well. I hid in a Cunha Chipper Jones dual auto, which was very nice. Uh that was the one box that I got. But that that was again, that's anecdotal. And who knows, I might cave in and rip it again just because I love the product so much, but just I I can't recommend it for others. So do as I say, not as I do in this case. Flip it. You should be able to get a decent return on this if you can get it at at the retail price. Um, but I wouldn't go head over, I wouldn't go crazy trying to try to find some sort of decent value on a flip. There's other things that you can spend your time and effort on really getting a good flip out of. So yeah, I'm in the break it category for this. I think this is a super fun break there with the encase cards. Let's see, I believe it is 12 boxes per case. Yep. So you're gonna expect 12 autos per case and then another 24 parallels, so 36 cards, all things being equal, as we know they're not, you'd expect at least one hit per team. But you know, not terrible odds. And just from a breaking perspective, you have a chance to see some really cool stuff. You can start seeing those case hits pop out, which is very difficult to hit if you're just breaking a couple boxes. So yeah, I'm definitely in the break acamp for this. I think it's a super fun break. There's no fluff, which is great. And then there is enough meat on the bone where a break isn't gonna last just two seconds. It lasts probably about as long as a breakers of light box does, but it's twice as many boxes. So yeah, you you do have some meat on the bone there to be able to get a decent length break if you are entertained by the breaks themselves. And let's get into my grades. So, visual, I'm going to give these cards an eight out of 10. I might bump it up to a nine once I can actually see the physical cards. I'm assuming that they're gonna be just as nice as next year, but if they're in any way nicer than last year or previous years, then I can bump them up. Some people are very much against the look and the style of these cards, which I get it, it's not for everyone. But for me, I love Topps Chrome Black. I love the look of it. I love how sleek it looks. I just love what they do with the cards, and I especially love the inserts and the case hits. Uh, those are just super fun to see. The death of darkness. There's not another card in the market that really holds a candle to it. Maybe the planetarium cards out of Topps um Cosmic Chrome, but that would really be it. And I still prefer the Death of Darkness over it. Again, a card that if you can see in person, you can really see visually how much why I'm placing such an emphasis on how beautiful those cards look. Short-term value. I'm gonna give this a seven out of 10. It might bump up if people really go into the uh Mutake of Morakami Mania. You know, people are really trying to chase his cards and he just keeps mashing these home runs until we see another product with him in it, which is not far away, I believe. Bowman, which comes out in a couple weeks, is gonna have his stuff in it. But those are gonna be much harder to hit in Bowman than out of this. Yeah, so short term, I don't think that it's anything crazy. I think that if you were to flip these cards, you can definitely flip them for a decent amount when they're first coming out. Especially those Murakamis, but once Bowman comes out, you might see that taking a hit. Long-term value, I'm also gonna give this a seven out of 10. This just does not, for whatever reason, end up going crazy long term. It's all gonna depend on that rookie class. And I think it's gonna take a hit as we see more Murakami cards start coming out and other places to chase those big, big rookies. It is, of course, still a strong rookie class from what we've seen. I just I just don't see this based off of previous Chrome Black cards, you know, really skyrocketing. It's gonna, it's gonna go up. It's gonna hold at like a steady amount, but it's it's not gonna go crazy. Breaking, I'm going to give this an eight out of 10. I think you can find some really nice teams here, really solid value. Of course, you're gonna see more misses than hits on average per box, but that's why you want to break it. You want to kind of spread those odds out and really try to capitalize on the fact that breaking when you're doing a case or multiple cases, that you can start seeing those case hits come out. Self-breaking, I am all over this for. I'm very excited to watch some breaks, participate in some breaks. And yeah, that that's really the format I would that's really the format I would recommend for this product. Lastly, checklist. I'm gonna give this an eight out of 10. It's about what we what we expect from Topps Chrome Black. You know, it's 200 cards based checklist. Um, yeah, it's just pretty much in line with past year. It's the auto checklist. Of course, they mixed in those legends, which is those legends, which is always nice to see. You have all the big rookies that have been released so far being represented. Of course, we still don't have some of the other names that we would like to see. We don't have JJ Weatherholt or Kevin McGonagall, but they don't have any tops cards yet. Maybe series two. I believe that checklist should be out soon because I think those are going out for pre-order soon. Maybe we'll see them in update at the latest. Bazana also is making his debut this week. So another guy to keep your eye on if you are big into those rookies former number one overall pick. But back to this, this checklist is is solid. It's it's what you'd expect. A lot of fun players, a lot of fun names. And I do like that they put a healthy amount of vets and legends in here. Because although rare, you do see them show up. You're watching, you're watching breaks, and it's not a crazy rarity to see a name like Heater show up or you know, somewhat equal to that. Barry Bonds, something like that. It's it's always gonna be fun to see, but it's it's not gonna be crazy, crazy, crazy rare. So I I do like this checklist over. And yeah, so those are my final thoughts on Top Chrome Black. This week, we have some episodes into next week coming up. We recorded three episodes with Max Artiburn of Prospects Live, and he's gonna be talking, breaking down division by division in the American League of the different Bowman prospects and what you can expect. So, those, if you are into prospecting, if you're gonna be getting into Bowman and buying any Bowman at all, those are gonna be must-listen because he's gonna give you the scoop on which players to chase, which players to skip, who might be a sleeper, who to hold. And yeah, he gives us a lot of good stuff. So, yeah, looking forward to releasing those. Thank you so much for listening today. Uh, this is the juice on the Talking Cards podcast. Grant Salmi will be back with us for this next episode. And everyone, have a great day. Thank you.