A beginners guide to Topps F1 trading cards (Part 1/6): Topps Turbo Attax Formula 1
Not having much previous trading card experience from other major sports like soccer, NFL, NBA or MLB, the entry of Topps into the Formula 1 card market finally proved too much to resist. In fact, I basically overlooked Topps’ 2020 Chrome Formula 1 card edition when it was first released because I didn’t really appreciate trading card collector culture, pricing and its eco-system due to being a long time collector focused on books and diecast models.
Having taken a very short break from diecasts late last year to better understand trading cards, I think you can easily argue that the trading card industry is incredibly sophisticated and provides much better after market support to collectors (e.g. online price discovery, independent grading, marketplaces) than either F1 books or diecast models.
So for the newbies (and while F1 takes its mid-season break), here is a quick beginners guide to Topps F1 cards. For part 1, we’ll start with Turbo Attax cards…
Topps F1 Turbo Attax 2020
At the cheapest entry level is Topps’ Turbo Attax Formula 1 collection. This is a seasonal card collection which first started wth the 2020 season. Turbo Attax is a creation of Topps UK distributed into the European and Asia Pacific markets and follows the Turbo Attax format it uses for its Match Attax (football) and Cricket Attax cards. It isn’t sold on the main Topps US website and is imported by Topps Brazil.
Topps Turbo Attax F1 2020 Starter pack and a Charles Leclerc mini tin
Topps’ 2020 Turbo Attax F1 collection contained a 181 card set made up of 141 base cards, 32 holo foil cards, 8 gold foil cards and 1 gold limited edition card per display box. Like all Topps cards, the card odds are printed on the rear of each pack.
Topps also sells a Turbo Attax starter pack for newcomers which comes with a card collection guide, blank sleeve binder, a A2 size board game sheet, set of introductory cards plus a limited edition card. In the 2020 starter pack this is a Lewis Hamilton limited edition gold card.
Contents of the 2020 starter pack: 1 card folder, checklists and Lewis limited edition gold card + 5 cards
Each 2020 Attax pack contains 6 cards. Topps usually provides card ratios per pack statistics (which collectors often refer to as “pull ratios” or “pull odds”) on rear of their card packs.
For 2020 Attax, there is 1 holo foil card per pack and the chance of a gold foil card every 1.17 packs or gold limited edition card every 31 packs. There are 3 different pack covers too – one has a Lewis, Danny Ric, Checo Perez and Gasly combo, another has Max, Kimi, George and Carlos combo and the other has Charles, Valtieri, Albono and KMag on the pack cover.
Topps Attax cards are easy to recognise as their card layout and presentation focuses on video game style Attack and Defence scores and the nationality of a driver or team. Apart from the card number, there is also another number on an Attax card that I originally thought might be the card’s print population. For instance, each driver card will show both a star rating and a number in million in yellow. The number is actually a budget amount to be used when playing the Attax card game that comes in the Starter pack. You can’t spend more than 100million in the game!
Topps also released mini-tins which is a small hand sized tin card collection box which contains 5 packs and 1 limited edition card with extra cards in a separate clear seal pack. The retail cost of a mini-tin is usually 5 times a single pack, so you are basically getting the gold limited edition card and 5 additional cards for no extra cost. Given the pack odds for a gold limited edition card, it makes sense to buy a mini-tin if one of your favourite drivers is Charles Leclerc. If you bought more than one mini tin, you will accumulate a lot of repeat Charles limited edition cards.
In the 2020 set, there are 5 limited edition cards (Lewis, Max, Charles, Kimi and Daniel). If you get the starter pack and at least 1 mini-tin, that will get you the Lewis and Charles limited edition card. The others are pulled from regular packs, so it may be easier to buy the single cards online.
Inside a 2020 mini-tin are 5 sealed packs and a Charles Leclerc gold LE gold + 5 extra cards
A few things that I observed with the 2020 Attax collection:
The first is that all Alex Albon cards are with Red Bull unlike 2020 Topps Chrome which has rookie cards with Alex in his Toro Rosso kit and Red Bull.
Second, the finishing on the 2020 gold limited edition cards looks very bland to me. You can still find these individual gold cards being sold on ebay.
Third, more importantly are the hologram foil base cards (cards #142-173) – these are epic! The holo foil cards have a hologram background with the F1 logo and cards #154-#173 are the “Superstars” themed holo cards for each driver.
2020 Attax hologram foil cards really pop! Note all the statistic icons and driver ratings – these are used to play the Attax games
The Superstars cards also has the driver’s helmet in the hologram background too which makes it more intricate – it really pops and amazes when you rotate these cards under lights or even better under direct sunlight. There is a real 3D depth effect with the hologram with the zig zag pattern and F1 logos. In my opinion, 2020 Attax holo cards look superior to the gold limited edition cards in the same set and arguably infinitely better than any of the foil cards in the main Topps F1 flagship cards too.
2020 Attax has 6 driver gold cards in its base set
Although a starter pack isn’t essential to start collecting, I do think it’s a must have. Both the card sleeve binder and the card checklist (which you can insert in the binder) are incredibly handy when trying to manage a card series collection. For the more expensive Topps Chrome F1 cards, you have to download the checklist from Topps’ website and get your own card sleeves. As the 2020 base set is smaller, you can store one card in each page sleeve but for the larger 2021 and 2022 sets, you need to store cards back to back in each sleeve (i.e. pages become double sided).
The Starter pack provides a card sleeve binder for storing Attax cards and checklists for reference
The Attax game mat that comes with the Starter pack is double sided that offers 2 game variations, one is Circuit Race and the other is Race to the Finish. The games are meant to be 2 player but you could play against yourself.
Circuit Race uses the power stat icons on the driver cards – each driver has 3 defence icon ratings for experience, braking and skill and 3 attack icons for overtaking, top speed and acceleration. The only 2 rules are you cannot use more than 3 cards of the same driver, 1 limited edition card per team and the maximum team budget is $100m. During each stage of the circuit map, the player with the higher rating for the selected power stat wins and the winner is first to get to the flag. To make things interesting you can activate strategy cards to increase or boost power stats ratings at certain sections of the circuit.
2020 Attax game mat includes 2 games – the first is Race Circuit
Reverse side of the game mat has Race to the Finish
Race to the Finish is a much simpler game and relies each player selecting 6 driver cards and flipping to see which player has the higher score. It’s purely a race to finish line.
Topps F1 Turbo Attax 2021
Topps Attax F1 2021 collection has a 254 card set. Although I haven’t included the 2021 set for cards in this post, which I skipped collecting. The 2021 Attax cards do look comparable and one nice feature is the dual cards where each team’s car graphic is split over 2 cards.
For some reason, it seems sealed 2021 starter packs (which included a limited edition Fernando Alonso gold card as he returned back to F1 in 2020) and mini-tins for Turbo Attax 2021 collection are harder to find these days compared to unsealed 2020 Attax start packs and tins.
If I ever get around to getting the 2021 starter pack and some cards, I’ll update this post with additional review comments.
Topps F1 Turbo Attax 2022
The Topps Turbo Attax F1 2022 series has an expanded 389 card set which consists of:
- 265 regular base cards
- 64 mirror foil cards (2 per pack)
- 32 rainbow foil cards (1 every 3.4 packs)
- 28 limited edition cards (1 per 20 packs)
The 2022 Turbo Attax series also introduced driver cards with digitised autographs which are new to the Turbo Attax collection.
Each 2022 sealed pack contains 10 cards.. You can find 2022 Turbo Attax cards at hobby stores but also big label toy stores and the retail pack price $2/£2/€2. The 2022 set has 3 different pack covers with Red Bull, Mercedes and McLaren race cars as the centre car on each pack cover.
2022 Attax pack rear which states 389 cards in the set (265 base cards, 64 mirror foils, 32 rainbow foils and 28 limited edition cards). Attax cards are printed made in Italy too.
The mini-tins for 2022 contains 36 cards and the mega-tin version with 64 cards. For bulk collectors or retailers, booster boxes containing 24 Turbo Attax packs are available (so the unit cost per pack is much lower).
The 2022 starter park bundle comes with 20 cards, collector guide, sleeve binder and 2 limited edition cards – Lando Norris diamond and Seb Vettel gold card.
Topps’ own website has several limited edition Turbo Attax boxes too, depending on which Topps country region you are ordering from. Topps India probably has the most variations including a Champions Pack which includes all limited edition diamond cards. A lot of online reviews have been posted on Topps India Turbo Attax cards and while their appearance (lighter shade, paper weight and texture) is reasonably comparative to Topps UK Attax cards, the Indian market cards appear on slimmer paper stock and have less intricate background detailing.
To give you a rough idea of a 2022 Turbo Attax pack, breaking the seal on a sample pack – out of the 10 cards inside – I managed to score:
- 1 rainbow foil (KMag)
- 2 mirror foils (Max and Lewis Stat Attax cards)
- the rest were regular base cards (1 Track Master card – Max Verstappen Mexico City GP, 2 Live Actions cards – Yuki @ 2021 Azerbaijian GP & Seb Vettel @ 2021 Belgian GP, F2 Hero card – Cem Bolukbasi, Off the Track card – Carlos Sainz, 1 epic moment card – Fernando @ Qatar GP and 1 Live Action card – Nicholas Latifi @ Italian GP).
The rear of every Turbo Attax card is the same, other than the team logo in the white box
Card size: Turbo Attax card length and width are marginally shorter than Topps F1 or Topps Chrome cards.
Thickness: Turbo Attax cards appear to have the same thickness as Topps F1 card but Turbo Attax cards can easily bend or flex more.
Texture: The photos of the drivers and cars on Turbo Attax cards have a nice gloss finish and the card rear is also gloss.
Finishing/Detail: Turbo Attax base cards are very basic and some base cards have damaged or frayed edges when freshly pulled from a sealed pack. The 2022 mirror foils have a speckled sliver background with slightly higher quality and thicker paper stock than base cards.
Collector Value: single limited edition Attax cards aren’t as valuable as Chrome cards but they are still worth a few dollars – again, it’s really the limited edition cards of the most popular drivers like Lewis, Max, Charles, George and Lando that can fetch $5+ online.
2022 Turbo Attax mirror foils
In 2022 Attax set, 2 of the 10 cards in each pack are foil cards.
Rainbow foil compare: 2022 Turbo Attax foil (left) vs 2022 Topps F1 flagship (right)
Topps includes 2 foil cards per Attax pack. In the Topps F1 series, rainbow foils can only be pulled from flagship booster boxes.
Attax holo compare: 2020 (left) vs 2022 (right)
The hologram cards in the 2020 Attax set have a much brighter colours and lenticular effect. The background images of the F1 logo and diagonal stripes look identical but the 2022 Attax holo cards have a much more muted subtle shade.
2022 Attax “ultra rare” cards which are actually not as rare as the Attax driver signature style cards!
The starter pack checklists clearly identify the rare cards in each set. In 2020 Attax, the limited edition cards are a small set of 5 gold cards (Lewis, Max, Charles, Daniel & Kimi) and it is similar in the 2021 Attax series (although for 2021 set, the 5 limited edition oversize cards appear to be more sought after). In the 2022 Attax series, although Topps identifies 3 ultra rare cards (Max Dutch Orange, Lewis Union Flag and Charles Ferrari Red) the more sought after cards are the oversize cards, Alex Albon, Lance Stroll, Mick Schumacher and Danny Ric marketing exclusive cards and the driver signature style cards.
2022 Attax signature style cards
Topps haven’t published the pull odds of the 2022 Attax Signature style cards but they appear to be rare to pull from packs. The other alternative is the special collector boxes sold by Topps India which include some of these cards (the finishing and paper of Topps India cards are lower than Topps UK produced cards though).
2022 Attax Starter pack contents
Like previous seasons, the 2022 Starter pack contains everything a beginner card collector needs to get started and a bonus XL driver card too!
Topps F1 Turbo Attax 2023
The new 2023 F1 Turbo Attax collection has an even more expanded base set of close to 400 cards.
The 2023 starter pack has the familiar feel of an included binder, tall XL card (this time its Checo Perez), game mat, checklists, card guide and 20 cards including limited edition cards of Charles Leclerc and George Russell.
Unlike 2022, this year’s starter pack doesn’t automatically include the strategy cards (cards #1-9) needed to play the Turbo Attax game.
Aside from a bigger base set, the other major differences with 2023 Turbo Attax is the inclusion of:
- F3 teams and drivers
- F1 Legends cards including Senna, Prost, Mansell and Schumacher
- rookie cards for Oscar Piastri, Logan Sargeant and Nyck DeVries (the swaps with Danny Ric and Liam Lawson were too late to be included – these will no doubt be in 2023 Chrome collection).
- More parallel cards of the mirror foil, rainbow foil and signature style cards – the parallel colours are pink (un-numbered), cyan (serial numbered) and gold (#1/1).
- More Limited Edition cards including Ultra-rare Max, Lewis and Senna cards.
Green Mega Tin has Vegas Nightlife driver cards and 6 limited edition cards
Although its nice to see the inclusion of cards for past F1 champions like Senna, Mansell and Prost – their images in their driver overalls have been airbrushed to remove all their historic sponsor logos (mainly tobacco) – so these cards lose some of their authenticity and appeal because of this.
Topps have also focused on mega tins with 3 different driver card themes (Cool Countryside, City Life, Vegas Nightlife) exclusive to 3 different coloured Mega Tin (orange, purple and green). Mega Tins have 66 cards compared to the usual 10 cards in the standard pack. In my green mega tin, there were at least 8 repeat cards (particularly F2 and F3 driver cards) which is just over 12% – so I suspect accumulating repeat cards is going to be a much more common issue for collectors for 2023 Turbo Attax collection.
If you’re after the ultra-rare limited edition Lewis GOAT or Max Verstappen Oracle Red Bull Racing cards, these can only be pulled from Mega Multipacks (containing 4 packs + 2 LE cards)
Topps have also released other bulk box configurations like multi-packs which exclusively contain the Max and Lewis limited edition cards and there are other limited edition cards that can only be ordered from Topps directly – for example, Carlos and Yuki limited edition cards and 9 giant driver cards.
Collectors that are chasing the limited edition cards, will need to buy the 3 mega tins and a few multipacks. So, more spend is going to be needed if you’re planning to have a decent set of 2023 Attax cards.
Again, there are driver signature cards available in the 2023 Turbo Attax set but from online comments so far, these card odds appear to be quite difficult and quite rare. Like the 2022 series, some of the higher priced collector box sets sold on the Topps India site guarantee some of these cards but the card quality may not be the same as the Topps Attax European cards.
There are visible differences between the Topps Attax UK and Topps Attax India cards, so make sure you know which is which particularly if you’re buying or bidding for higher priced cards being offered online. The card stock is different but visually the background card pattern is also not the same (see pics).
Spot (literally!) the difference…Topps India 2023 Turbo Attax Piastri signature style card has spotted square background pattern
By comparison, the 2023 Topps Attax UK Piastri Signature Style has solid square and diagonal triangle background pattern
If you are more of a serious collector rather than a casual hobby collector, Topps UK cards have more collector value than the Topps India cards. If you have a choice between these two, don’t overpay for the Topps India version cards.
The rare numbered cards in the 2023 Turbo Attax set are surprisingly good quality with a Chrome gloss like feel, that is very distinct from the thinner paper stock of the regular Attax card.
While Topps produce great quality cards, the cynic in me thinks that they are milking junior collectors a bit with the new 2023 Topps Attax collection which really is supposed to be an affordable entry level card collection.
Comments & Tips:
- In-expensive starter pack (and included limited edition cards): Turbo Attax is a cheap and easy way to experience F1 card collecting.
Attax starter pack includes printed checklists…no need to look up websites
The Starter Pack for Attax is excellent value and provides a beginner collector with everything needed to get started – a plastic folder card binder that can hold the full card set (no need to buy separate individual card sleeves), a detailed collection guide and easy to read checklist.
2022 Attax starter pack guide
Also, you can often see 2020 Limited Edition Lewis gold card or 2022 Limited edition Lando Diamond cards individually listed for sale online when its cheaper to find an unsold starter pack which also includes these cards inside the pack.
- Non-F1 driver cards: Let’s face it, the drivers and the cars are the main focus for F1 fan collectors. When it comes to Topps Chrome F1, the cards for team personnel and F2 drivers (except for the genuine potential F1 graduates) are cards that are pushed aside or less desirable. While the 2020 Attax set has 20 strategy cards for the game, it only has 11 F2 cards for each of one of the F2 teams. If you’ve been collecting flagship or chrome cards, the high number of repeat F2 cards (drivers and cars) can be irritating. The 2022 Attax set only has 9 strategy cards (which are included in the starter pack cards) but does have individual F2 car and driver cards.
- Limited edition cards not available in Flagship or Chrome sets: This probably applies more to the 2020 Attax set as the hologram cards are real eye candy and less expensive to collect than Chrome limited edition cards. Unfortunately, Topps have introduced multiple colour parallel cards to 2022 Attax (like Chrome F1 2022) which increases the number of unnecessary repeat card variations. One unique card that the 2022 Attax set does have over the 2022 flagship/Chrome set is the 2022 Attax Oscar Piastri official F2 world champion driver portrait card (The 2022 Chrome set card #199 is a F2 award winner card with Oscar on the podium and the 2021 Chrome set has Oscar’s standard F2 driver portrait card #59).
- Wait if you’re not in a hurry: Topps’ generally releases new season F1 Attax cards around July and F1 Chrome/Sapphire follows in January, so you can always wait to see what others say about Attax cards and as retailers try to move old stock, previous season’s Attax mini-tins and boxes that are unsold are usually on sale around this time. Also by July/August, you will start seeing complete sets and bulk card lots start to pop up on online auction sites as collectors start to offload their excess repeat cards. Also waiting for seasonal discounting during the year like Black Friday, etc. can often get you an extra 30%+ discount if you hunt around online.
- Mini-tins: Mini-tins used to be priced at a slight discount to the individual pack price for the number of packs in the tin. With the 2022 series and expansion of limited edition cards, mini tins are now compulsory buying if you’re after certain cards like the Master and Apprentice themed cards that are only available in the mini tins. This trend unfortunately continues with 2023 series and most probably later years.
2022 Turbo Attax blue mini tin contents
- Value: Serious trading card collectors don’t place much value on Attax cards – their resale value is very low relative to the initial card pack cost. Single limited edition cards for some of the popular drivers will have some value but generally these will drop away when Topps releases their new season Attax collection.
- Fun: Last but not least, collecting Attax cards is fun due to its lower price point, especially for junior collectors. As Topps develops the Attax series every F1 season, it will be questionable whether they can keep Attax’s core ingredients of attractive presentation and low collection costs.
The next part of this series will be taking a closer look at Topps Formula 1 flagship cards.
To view other instalments in this guide, click below:
