Hobby News

Predicting the 2024 Topps Update Rookies!

By Patrick Imhoff

Posted on September 19, 2024

2024 Topps Update Series Rookies 900x350

Earlier this week, Topps made 2024 Update Series baseball boxes available on its website for preorder. Topps does this with all their major product releases, including Topps Series 1 and Topps Series 2 baseball. They haven’t shared the checklist yet, so we’re predicting what the list of 2024 Topps Update rookies will be!

For collectors, there are pros and cons to jumping in on the preorder and there is a level of uncertainty in how long the preorder will remain available before selling out or being removed from the website.

Some of the pros to preordering a product include the following:

Early Access: Most collectors will get their boxes delivered either on release date or the day prior. For anyone looking to sell singles pulled, this will inflate prices while the supply is still low and the demand is high and you may make a little bit more money on your sale.
Better Price: Typically, the preorder price for a box is the lowest it will ever be, at least in the short term. The release day price may be the same, but is typically a little bit higher, and purchasing on a secondary market will always have inflated prices as sellers look to make a profit.

Some of the cons to preordering a product include the following:

Hit Distribution: Until we see several types of boxes opened (jumbo, hobby, blaster) we never really know what the best value is. While there are guarantees of an auto in the jumbo box, there is never really insight into how many parallels and numbered cards you will receive until data is available.
Checklist Availability: Over the past several years, one of the major risks of preordering is that you need to commit to your purchase before Topps releases the checklist of who will be in the product. This is a big deal for several reasons and the main topic of this article. Who will be among the 2024 Topps Update rookies!?!

Why Do 2024 Topps Update Rookies Matter?

Why do we care so much about the 2024 Topps Update Rookies checklist anyway? Well, most collectors buy cards to get the best rookies and to get players from their favorite teams. Knowing the answer to which rookies and players are in the set helps us make an informed decision on which product to buy.

If my favorite team has very few players available, maybe I just buy a blaster or two and pick up some singles. If the rookie crop is absolutely loaded, maybe I will splurge for that Jumbo box with the guaranteed auto and two relics, possibly of some 2024 Topps Update rookies. These are crucial decisions that should be considered, especially when collecting on a budget.

How To Predict the 2024 Topps Update Rookies Checklist! (or Come Pretty Close!)

Is there anything we can do to predict which 2024 Topps Update Rookies will be in each series? We can make a fairly accurate guess at which rookie cards will be available and here is how.

There are three main tools (and assumptions) I use to make my predictions on who will be in each of the main sets of Topps baseball (Series 1, Series 2, and Update):

Topps Now Cards
Other Topps Releases
Rookie Debut Dates

Topps Now Cards: In case you never noticed, when Topps Now releases a card for a player in their rookie season, it will have one of two logos on it: The “RC” rookie logo or the “Call Up” logo.

This is a pretty good indicator for which players will be included among the 2024 Topps Update Rookies list. Any Topps Now player with the “RC” logo should be expected to be in Update. Any player with the “Call Up” logo should be expected to be in either Series 1 of Series 2 the following year.

Other Topps Releases: After Topps Series 1 and Series 2 release, Topps will release at least 3 other products that provide clues for us. They will release Topps Museum, Topps Pristine, and Topps Chrome. If you see a rookie card in one of these sets and that player has not had a rookie card in either Series 1 of Series 2, you can expect them to have a rookie card in Update Series.

Rookie Debut Dates: One of the greatest websites for statistical information on baseball players is. BaseballReference.com.

One of the searches you can do on this site is to look for all the players who have debuted in a specific season, and then filter the players by debut date. You can cut and paste the data from the website into a spreadsheet so you can play with it a little bit more if desired (yes, feel free to geek out!).

Where this gets interesting is trying to figure out what cutoff dates Topps is going to use to fill in rookies in each set.

Assumptions for Which Rookie Cards Go Into Which Series!

When filtering the data by debut date, we can assume that:

A player who makes their debut between Opening Day and June 1 will be in Update Series.
A player who debuts after June 1 and before August 15 will be in Series 1 the following year.
A player who debuts after August 15 will be in Series 2 the following year.

You can use this tool and look at past releases to see where the cutoffs were to come up with my starting point dates, keeping in mind they are somewhat flexible.

A deeper look at what Topps has done since 2022 shows us the following breakdown of rookie cards per release:

2022 Topps Series 1: 48 rookie cards out of 330 cards
2022 Topps Series 2: 57 rookie cards out of 330 cards
2022 Update Series: 61 rookie cards out of 330 cards
2023 Topps Series 1: 56 rookie cards out of 330 cards
2023 Topps Series 2: 70 rookie cards out of 330 cards
2023 Update Series: 90 rookie cards out of 330 cards
2024 Topps Series 1: 65 rookie cards out of 350 cards
2024 Topps Series 2: 67 rookie cards out of 350 cards
2024 Update Series: ??? rookie cards out of 350 cards

[Editor’s Note: In case you are wondering if you should buy Topps Update, just know that MLB Network named their Top 100 Baseball Players coming into the 2024 MLB season, and the rookie cards for most of that 100 came from Topps Update Series in the past!]

As Topps figures out specifically which players rookie cards will go in which set, let’s look at it from their perspective. First off, Topps’ “top” priority is to make money. To do that they need each product to sell at the highest level possible, so they need rookies to be spread out fairly evenly, and the numbers above show that (notice the set size increased in 2024).

Aside from an even distribution, Topps needs the quality distribution to be even as well. They cannot afford to have all the best rookies in just one series, so they can flex the rookie debuts dates listed above to get that distribution, as long as they can meet manufacturing deadlines.

Another thing to consider is the use of Short Prints (SPs). While a lot of us loathe SP rookie cards being used like they did in 2024 Series 2 this year with the Jackson trio (Holliday, Merrill and Chourio), it is good business for Topps. Specifically, this year, they get to highlight those three rookies in two different sets and that is good for making money.

The last thing to consider is that a player must have played in a major league game before they can have a rookie card released per the Topps’ website. Hence, rookie cards for Shota Imanaga and Yoshinobu Yamamoto came in Topps Series 2 and not Series 1, despite being signed in the baseball offseason.

Based on all my research and assumptions, here are the 96 players whose rookie cards should be listed among the 2024 Topps Update rookies: