The 2025 Topps Baseball Series 1 collection has been released.
Topps has been in the baseball card business since 1951, with its first release in 1952. In January 2022, Fanatics acquired the company for $500 million, which included Topps’ collectibles arm, both physical and digital. With pitchers and catchers now reporting for Spring Training, Topps has released the flagship Series 1 set for 2025.
With a 74-year product life, this year’s Series 1 design is new yet feels familiar. According to Topps senior designer Phil Imbriano, the design concept came from observing a red and silver metal badge riveted on the inside metal wall of the subway car as he commuted the work. The swoosh element from this badge became the runs through the top and left side of the Series 1 card.
“I took a photo of [the badge] and ended up using it as a starting point — an inspiration for me to go to my notebook and then develop the content further, which, in turn, eventually became the Series 1 base card design that you see in the product release,” said Imbriano.
Some have seen parallels to the 1982 Series 1 design, but according to Imbriano, it was just a coincidence. He said he loves the homage to the past, but it is purely coincidental that the design came out that way. “There’s virtually nothing truly original in graphic design,” he said.
This year’s offering sees several new inserts, including All-Topps Team, Training Grounds, and Call to the Hall. There are also 1990 Topps Baseball, celebrating the 35th anniversary of the memorable design (with players from yesterday and today). And then, should one luck out, autographed relic cards, including City Connect Swatch Collection and Heavy Lumber Autograph relics.
The cost for the 2025 Topps Series 1 hobby box is $89.99.
As to how the overall release with inserts and specialty cards comes about, the process starts with the base design for the Series 1.
“What we’ll do is there will be some carryover year over year,” said Clay Luraschi, Global Senior VP of product development Fanatics Collectibles. “So there are some legacy inserts. You have your flagship product, that base set, and then you’ll have substance within there, some carry-over, and some are new. And then. But in this particular case where we were talking about the flagship, that gets that started on first because that design will inform the rest of the product.”
Luraschi, who’s been with Topps for 25 years, also added that oftentimes, the product team will hold onto elements from past, unsuccessful designs that didn’t make the final cut, saving them for future offerings. In the 2025 Series 1 card, that happened: an element from a 2024 submission – a baseball graphic with the player’s field position – was added to Imbriano’s full design.
Collectables Becomes Big Business For Fanatics
As noted, Fanatics acquired Topps in 2022, and since then sales have skyrocketed. In 2020, the last full year disclosed before Fanatics bought the business, Topps trading card and entertainment division had sales of $368 million. Since then, sales have more than quadrupled to $1.6 billion last year and seen an EBITDA of greater than 20%. For 2024, the division saw a +40% increase from 2023. That has placed the Topps trading and collectibles as the highest-margin business — across all three business entities — commerce, collectibles, and betting/gaming — at Fanatics.
In terms of the volume of products, Fanatics Collectibles had 277 product launches in 2024, not including e-commerce or Topps NOW offerings. The company boasted that the Series 1 Fanatics Collectibles hit 100 percent on-time delivery for all flagship products in 2024 (Series 1, Series 2, and Chrome Update).
As for interest in trading cards, there continues to be those in and out of the game that see it as a right of passage. A recent short of Mike Trout opening a box of 2009 Bowman Draft baseball cards with his son shows the elation of him pulling his own card. And he’s not the only collector.
“Something we’re seeing a lot of recently is just a lot of ball players getting into trading cards,” said Luraschi. “One of the rights of passage is when a baseball player opens a pack and gets their own trading card. But now, more than ever, we’re seeing people collect, the likes of Mike Trout, and Bobby Witt. And with social media, you can watch everyone posting videos of their collection, of them breaking open packs… It’s awesome to see. It’s really great.”
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