2024 In Review - Topps

2024 was Topps' fourth year of doing NPB cards and they ended up publishing four sets.  Eventually.  

Topps had been steadily adding a set a year for their first three years.  They published "NPB" and "NPB Chrome" in 2021, added "NPB Bowman" in 2022 and added "NPB 206" in 2023.  This year, however, they replaced "NPB Bowman" with the "NPB Stadium Club" set.

The timing of their sets remains very odd.  They released their "flagship" "NPB" set in May but the other three sets - "NPB Chrome", "NPB Stadium Club" and "NPB 206" - were not released until mid-December.  Like last year, the Chrome set was not just an ugly parallel version of the flagship set - it had a different checklist and different photos.

Topps really expanded their on-line, on-demand cards this past year.  Like they've done in both of the previous years, they issued Topps Now cards for the Samurai Japan teams, both the one that played a couple friendlies against a European All Star team in March and the one that played in the Premier 12 in November.  There were eight singles and a 30 card team set available for the March team and 22 singles for the Premier 12 team.  I expect that there will be a 30 card team set available for the Premier 12 squad in early January.  I think there may have also been six singles available for the warm up games against Australia prior to the Premier 12 but, if so, they weren't available for anywhere near the length of time that the others were (which was roughly a month).

Topps also added Topps Now cards for NPB to their line up.  Unlike their MLB counterparts which are only on sale for one day, these are on sale for a week.  They were initially 1,243 yen each (a little less than $8) but the price went up to 1,342 ($8.50-ish) after the first 13 cards.  Bizarrely, it appears that Topps is charging 550 yen for shipping these inside Japan (and will not ship these overseas at all).  They issued 207 of these cards in all and only eight of the twelve NPB teams were represented - the Dragons, Eagles, Fighters, Giants, Hawks, Lions, Swallows and Tigers.  I am somewhat bewildered at Topps' attempt to challenge Epoch at these sorts of cards when the Epoch One cards cost less than what Topps is charging for shipping but I've been struggling for four years to understand the appeal of most of Topps' NPB output to people and failing so maybe there's just something I'm missing.

Topps also issued an on demand 17 card team set celebrating the Hanshin Tigers Nippon Series Championship in 2023.  The set was on sale for 8800 yen (about $56) for less than a week and, like the NPB Topps Now cards, it was not possible to buy it from overseas.