In 2021, Shohei Ohtani was the card that Topps just couldn’t print enough new limited edition cards of in Topps Now and other editions. Whether that was a demand issue or whether it was a need by the company to cash in while it could is something we will leave up to you to decide. Topps has decided that in 2022 it is just going to put a major focus on Wander Franco. There may be as many as 750,000 of his 2022 Topps Series 1 cards, and that’s before getting into parallels and variation cards elsewhere. It seems that Fanatics has decided to keep printing these new cards until the public objects by no longer chasing the print runs higher and higher.

We have just seen that Topps has released 3 variations of its “Game Within The Game” series, featuring (duh!) — Wander Franco!

The three variations were fine art prints, a 1/1 print that is 10″X14″ and another similar looking 10″X14″ numbered to /99. The unique 1/1 cost was $499.99 and it sold out, and the /99 run was priced at $49.99 and also sold out (see Topps images below). The base version of The Game Within The Game is card #3 of the set and with over 20 days to go the price is $7.99 per card. Discounts for this base card are available and 20 cards comes to about $3.75 per card.

Topps has said in its release that this card will ship in 7 to 10 business days after countdown clock expires and the print runs will be announced after the order period ends. The company also noted that limited inserts “lucky rainbow foil parallels numbered to 99” will be randomly inserted into orders as bonus cards.

It seems very unlikely that any of these new cards will challenge the most expensive Wander Franco cards out there, but we will save that judgment for the future.

Collectors should be keeping track of print runs and of graded populations. It seems that the Topps printing machines are running on overdrive to get these products out for Wander Franco in 2022. Here are the other very recent editions they have printed in 2021 and some others from 2022, and we would warn that the list is not complete:

• Topps MLB Living Set® Card #495 Wander Franco (2022) — print run 68,228
• Topps Throwback Thursday Wander Franco (included in mini-set) and still has 5 days to expire
• 2022 Topps Series 1 already has 42 base Wander Franco #215 graded, 31 of which are PSA 10.

Here are the graded examples for the parallel and limited cards from the Topps Series 1 — black 4 graded; clear 2 graded, gold 2 graded, gold foil 5 graded, green foilboard 2 graded, rainbow foil 3 graded, SP 4 graded, SSP 6 graded.

As for the 2021 Topps Now (#402) debut of Wander Franco’s first hit on June 22, 2021 it at least happened to be of a home run, but that print run was shown to be 61,305 cards printed in Topps’ on-demand series. There were then 6 different autograph variations of that image used for autograph relic releases (limited editions to /99, /49, /25, /10, /5 and finally 1-of-1) for $399 for the /99 all the way up to $1,149.99 for the /5 and to $3,999.99 for the /1 release. The second card in the Topps Now was card #589 and the third was shown with a print run of 2,216 cards. Unfortunately, at least for large populations, there were 12 more Topps Now releases thereafter with print runs of about 1,428 on the lowest run and 4,877 on the highest print runs.