2026 Topps Series 1 Baseball hit shelves on February 11. Within 48 hours, someone pulled a Shohei Ohtani City Connect 1/1 Patch card. That pull set the tone for the entire release. Topps is celebrating 75 years of baseball cards this year, and Ohtani is treating the anniversary like a personal showcase.
The City Connect patch is the headliner but it's not the only monster. A diecut Ohtani autograph numbered to /15 sold on eBay for $6,500. An All Kings insert went for $6,200. A 1991 Topps design auto closed at $5,800. Four of the top five reported sales from the set have his name on them.
The fifth? Roman Anthony.
The Rookie Class
Boston's Roman Anthony is the other name collectors are chasing. His base rookie card is moving at 2-3x box cost on parallels, and his All Kings insert already cracked the top-five sales list. Red Sox fans are loud about this kid. They should be.
But this isn't a two-horse race. A Jacob Misiorowski FoilFractor 1/1 Rookie Auto got pulled by a father and son on release day. Misiorowski is a 23-year-old flamethrower in the Brewers system with the kind of arm that makes prospect chasers lose sleep. Early raw comps on the 1/1 project between $3,000 and $5,000. A Bobby Witt Jr. 1991 design 1/1 also surfaced. Colson Montgomery pulled a red /5 patch in White Sox colors. The rookie crop is deep.
Still. Ohtani.
The Charizard of Sports Cards
There's no other way to say it. Ohtani occupies the same space in sports cards that Charizard holds in Pokemon. He is the chase. Every product, every set, every release. If his name is on the checklist, that's where the money flows.
And his real-life resume keeps feeding it. Back-to-back unanimous NL MVPs. Back-to-back 50-homer seasons, something only five other players in history have done. The first player ever to log 50 home runs and 50 strikeouts as a pitcher in the same year. Two World Series rings with the Dodgers. He's heading to the World Baseball Classic with Team Japan right now, and the Dodgers expect him back in the rotation for Opening Day.
He's 31 and somehow still adding chapters. His 2018 Topps Update rookie card (US1) is the blue-chip comp in modern baseball. A PSA 10 trades around $300-$400. His 2018 Bowman Chrome auto in gem mint has cleared six figures at auction. The floor is established. The ceiling keeps moving.
75 Years of Topps
This isn't just another Series 1. Topps started making baseball cards in 1951. That first set was a commercial disaster. Now they're a multi-billion-dollar brand under Fanatics ownership and this release leans into the history hard.
The hobby box cover features Hank Aaron, Ken Griffey Jr., Aaron Judge, and Ohtani. A panel of executives, journalists, and collectors selected the 75 greatest Topps cards ever made, and corresponding redemption cards are seeded into packs. The grand prize is an original 1952 Mickey Mantle #311. Not a reprint. The actual card.
Other inserts include the 1991 Topps design throwbacks with colored parallels and autograph versions, Heavy Lumber cards printed on wood-grain stock with game-used bat swatches, and a set of Golden Mirror Legend Variations featuring 51 legends not on the base checklist. Shoeless Joe Jackson is in there.
The Market Right Now
Hobby boxes are running $100-$110 pre-order. Jumbos around $200. That's accessible compared to recent Topps Chrome Basketball boxes pushing $400. The entry point matters because it means more people are ripping, which means more secondary market supply, which means the 1/1s and low-numbered parallels carry even more weight as the true scarce hits.
Sports cards are in a weird spot in early 2026. The speculator wave from 2020-2021 is long gone. Prices on most mid-tier cards have settled or declined. But the top end keeps climbing. A PSA 10 Alpha Black Lotus just sold for $3 million. An Illustrator Pikachu went for $16.49 million. Trophy assets are in a different stratosphere. Ohtani 1/1s are becoming that kind of asset.
Fanatics takes over all three major sports card licenses later this year. That transition is the elephant in every hobby shop. Nobody knows exactly what happens next. But right now, in February 2026, someone is holding a one-of-one Ohtani City Connect patch from the 75th anniversary Topps set. That card is not going down in value.
The diecut auto /15 sold for $6,500 seventeen days ago. It would sell for more today.
