What's Up With Topps?

I've been operating under the assumption that Topps would be issuing both an NPB Chrome set and an NPB Bowman set this year.  They've done the Chrome set each of the three previous years that they've had an NPB license and a Bowman set each of the last two years.  Both sets were released in November last year and were announced by early September.

This year?  There's been no announcement of either set yet and the end of the year is rapidly approaching.  BBM and Epoch have both announced several sets to be released in November but Topps has been silent.  There's nothing on their website, nothing on their Twitter feed and nothing from them on either Jambalaya's or Card Fanatic's schedule of upcoming releases.  They are still publishing their Topps Now cards for NPB so they still have a license but it's weird that they have not made any announcements about any more sets since their "flagship" set came out back in May.

I've been pretty clear about my feelings towards Topps' NPB offerings so I wouldn't describe my feeling about this as "disappointed" but rather "surprised".  Both the Chrome and Bowman sets have been somewhat inexplicably (at least to me) popular so I fully expected Topps to do them again this year.  It IS possible that the sets could be getting delayed into the new year - Topps delayed the 2021 edition of Chrome until early 2022.  Of course, they had just gotten the NPB license in early October of 2021 so it wasn't a surprise the set wasn't out by the end of the year.  Topps has not impressed me with their ability to publish their NPB sets in a timely manner (as I have ranted about on occasion) so it wouldn't surprise me too much if the sets are just delayed.  But it is odd there's been no announcements.

The one thing that I've liked that Topps has done in Japan the past few years are the Topps Now cards for Samurai Japan.  They've done single cards and team sets for the squads for the Australia friendlies in November of 2022, the Asian Professional Baseball Championship tournament in November of 2023 and the Global Games last March.  I'm expecting/hoping that they'll be doing the same for the Premier 12 Samurai Japan team next month but that remains to be seen.