Topps Chrome Update Basketball Alter Ego Inserts Are Worth the Chase

Alter Ego Inserts are coming to basketball in the Topps Chrome Update. Here's what can be expected.

Oct 26, 2025; Dallas, Texas, USA; Dallas Mavericks forward Cooper Flagg (32) celebrates during the game between the Mavericks and the Raptors at the American Airlines Center. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

2025-26 Topps Chrome Update Basketball will be coming to The Hobby very shortly. There is a lot to be excited about this product: Debut Patches, Fanatical, Helix, and Image Variation Inserts. One of the chase cards that collectors should be extremely excited about is the Alter Ego Insert. The Alter Ego from Topps was introduced in 2025 in Topps Chrome Update Baseball. These cards depict athletes as superheroes or mythological creatures combined with their sport, and as super short-print card, they are very valuable in The Hobby.

The Alter Ego Insert comes as a base card or a superfractor. The base baseball Alter Ego had odds of one in 4,000 hobby packs, which will probably be close to the same with basketball. The top sale was the Shohei Ohtani Superfractor, which sold for $105,000, and his base, graded a nine by PSA, sold for $20,000. Aaron Judge's base raw Alter Ego is selling for roughly $5,000 in today's market. The baseball checklist consists of ten cards.

Here's a look and description of some of the basketball cards that will be pulled this year.

The ten-card checklist includes two rookies and eight NBA superstars. Unlike most cards, where there are many different refractors with print runs, there will be the base and Superfractor. The two rookies are Kon Knueppel and Cooper Flagg, and the eight superstars are LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Victor Wembanyama, Nikola Jokic, Kevin Durant, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Ja Morant, and James Harden.

Some of the artwork shows Durant as the Grim Reaper, Kon flying with hornets, and LeBron sitting on a throne as a king. It's rare for someone born and raised in Maine to be the number one pick in the NBA and win rookie of the year. The Alter Ego artwork is spot on with Flagg's card; instead of artwork relevant to his NBA team, the Dallas Mavericks, they went with a Maine-themed card. Flagg is larger than life and "The Maine Event" while standing on the coast with a lighthouse in the background. The lighthouse seems to depict the Portland Head Light in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

Ja Morant is shown jumping through a flaming hoop and dunking over people. SGA is in a dark tunnel with samurai swords. The value of these cards is still to be determined, but they could be close to or more than baseball. People could argue that LeBron James has a market like Shohei Ohtani, but Ohtani's career is not over yet, and he has an international fanbase.

Topps announced it will sell unwrapped mega boxes of Topps Chrome Update Basketball to steer away scalpers. Hopefully, a lucky collector can pull some of these Alter Ego cards in those mega boxes.