Rookies And Rare Inserts Highlight Upcoming Topps Finest Release
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One of the most popular baseball product releases of the year is just around the corner. Topps Finest highlights vets and rookies with abstract designs that is reminiscent of early 90s culture. It's a product that has been around for more than 20 years and featured the first refractors with basketball.
Bright colors and crazy designs give players like Paul Skenes and Aaron Judge a pop on cardboard, and they feature four tiers after adding the super-rare to the common, uncommon, and rare, from known to baseball card enthusiasts.
Rookies, rookies, and more rookies!
While there is a plethora of rookies to chase in the new, upcoming Finest release, this will be the first set where some collectors will have an easy chance of pulling cards of JJ Wetherholt, Kevin McGonigle, Carson Benge, and Justin Crawford.
While those four had rookie cards in the recently released Series 2 flagship, they were incredibly short-printed and hard to pull. The four rookies each have a card in the common, uncommon, and rare tiers. Both Wetherholt and McGonigle also have a card in the new super-rare tier.
Autos of Legends and Future Hall of Famers
Topps Finest always has great autos, and this year is no different. Vets and rookies are plentiful, but it's the names that really stand out. One name, especially, is Sandy Koufax. Koufax, the southpaw from Brooklyn who called the Dodgers his team his entire career, is one of the most recognizable names in MLB history, and not just when it comes to pitchers.
The Topps Finest insert set Finest Ink includes 23 other players after Koufax. All players included in this set are retired All-Stars, MVPs, or Hall of Famers.
Also, a hot pull from the upcoming release will be the dual Rookie Cup autographed cards. One of the bigger ones of the set features two players with multiple MVP awards, Aaron Judge and Mike Trout. The set commemorates their rookie year, featuring the players on either side of the card with their signatures right in the middle. The card, as the title states, also features the Topps Rookie Cup icon with the year the players were rookies in the league.
This set includes not only a mixture of current and former players, but also players in old uniforms. For example, the checklists show a dual autograph of Juan Soto and Ronald Acuna Jr. However, Soto is not in his Mets uniform; he's featured in his Washington Nationals uniform, the jersey he wore for the first five seasons of his career.
Overall, there are 20 dual-autographed cards in the set, and collectors can pull three different parallels: black numbered to 10, red numbered to 5, and the superfractor 1-of-1.
New Tier and New Format for 2026 Finest
Topps also unveiled a new set of cards to the product, a super-rare level to join the uncommon, common, and rare tiers featured in Finest. Unlike the other levels, this card will feature two images of the player, one of his bust and one in-game action. The cards will also all be numbered to just 10.
Topps is also offering collectors a new format to buy: the mega box. Similar to the Bowman mega box, it's bigger than a blaster, but not as large as a hobby box. It also doesn't come with any guaranteed autographs. It does, however, feature exclusive mini diamond parallels, which will be a huge chase for big names like Wetherholt and McGonigle.
According to the Topps website, the product is scheduled to be released Wednesday, July 8.
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After graduating from the University of North Dakota in 2008, Cole worked as an advertising copywriter until shifting to print journalism a few years later. Managing three weekly newspapers in the Dakotas, Cole won numerous awards from the North Dakota Newspaper Association including Best of the Dakotas and, their top award, General Excellence. He returned to collecting in 2021 and has since combined his passion for writing with his love of cards. Cole also writes for the Sports Cards Nonsense newsletter and has made guest appearances on multiple sports card collecting podcasts including Sports Cards Nonsense, and the Eephus Baseball Cards Podcast. IG: coleryan411 X: @colebenz