What's New This Year For 2025 Topps Series 1

Pokemon and WWE Card Resurgence Explained In A Way Sports Card Collectors Can Understand

Feb 10, 2025

If you’re a baseball card collector, this is the week of the year you’ve been waiting for.

It’s the release of 2025 Topps Series 1 and we’ll be doing a box break for sure to see what we end up hitting.

But in the meantime, here’s what we know that’s new to the set this year. First, what do you think of these all-new Player Number Variations, which are limited to each player’s jersey number (ie. Paul Skenes limited to 30, Gunnar Henderson with just 2 copies.) There are 25 cards in this set!

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The 2025 Topps Series 1 will also feature “No Name” variations, paying homage to the famous 1990 Frank Thomas No Name rookie card, which in high grades go for a big chunk of money (affiliate link). The “No Name” cards for all 100 subjects might not fetch that much but they are limited to exactly 35 copies.

Remember how Kevin Hart appeared on SP Philadelphia Phillies cards in 2024 Topps Series 2 (affiliate link)? Well, guess who has an autograph card in this year’s set also connected to the City of Philadelphia?

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Ok, we teased this in last week’s newsletter, but here’s the marathon episode we did with our hobby friends Will and Roy to talk about Pokemon and WWE cards.

Now we talked for 1.5 hours in a way that sports card collectors can relate to. In particular with Pokemon cards seeing a huge resurgence, if you collected sports cards during the COVID hype, you’ll definitely see some similarities.

Is it a bubble? Are there any lessons you can learn from the sports card hype of 2021 to make your profit and know when to liquidate?

We also talked some WWE with wrestling also seeing a resurgence. Here’s a clip from that episode discussing how prospecting in WWE cards might be possible.

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If you’ve been listening to our pod for the last few months, you’ll know that we’ve had some joint podcasts with Paul Hickey of the Sports Card Strategy Show.

Take a listen to our latest episode where Clark and Paul talk about choosing a rarity of a card over the grade of a card, when is generally a good time to buy QB cards in the off-season, plus the element of gambling in the hobby with young collectors involved (in the context of the Paul Skenes 1/1 MLB Debut Patch Card recently pulled.)

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Here are this week’s quick hits below!

Ever since the Backyard Breaks controversy, the Whatnot streaming platform has been under a lot of criticism for how they responded to the situation. Now there’s another controversy involving another Whatnot breaker opening a re-sealed pack. Wonder how Whatnot will respond to this?
Can you spot the error in this Panini Downtown card? Was this AI generated? (HINT: Look at the lines on the field!)

This is a pretty cool accomplishment! One collector completed the nameplate for Nick Castellanos.

Just a reminder to check out our Daily Auctions listings below featured this week (or you can bookmark our Daily Auctions page which is updated, well, daily!)

WEEKLY AUCTIONS ENDING SOON

(We may earn a small commission from eBay/Fanatics Collect if you buy through our affiliate links below.)

We highlight sports card auctions on our Daily Auctions page updated each day with bids closing the same day we post pictures of the card on our fivecardguys Instagram page.

Here are a few we like best this coming week!

MORE HOBBY HEADLINES

Here’s what’s making the news in the hobby:

I Might Start Tearing Open Packs Of Baseball Cards Until I Get A Larry David Autograph (outkick.com)
Burbank Sports Cards Business Burglary (onscene.tv)
WWE Royal Rumble Topps Now Cards (Sports Illustrated)
The Controversy of Sports Card Cleaning (fivecardguys)

Looking for last minute auctions? Check out our Daily Auctions paged updated, you guessed it, daily!

Cards To The Moon

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