Topps reveals 2024 Chrome F1 collection

This week Topps’ website this week opened its pre-sale orders for the new 2024 Chrome F1 trading card collection which will officially be available from November 22 and offers a preview as to 2024 card designs and what to expect.

2024 hobby boxes will contain 12 packs and packs now have 8 cards compared to 2023 hobby box which had 20 packs with 4 cards. There will also be cheaper qualifying boxes (kind of like the old hobby lite boxes) that will have 16 packs with the traditional 4 cards per pack. Rarer odds parallel cards like superfractors, printing plates, red, black refractors and autographs can only be pulled from hobby box packs. 

Looking at the 2024 checklist, here are some observations:

• Base set is still 200 cards
• Cards #1-20 are now back to all 20 drivers portrait cards.
• F3 driver portrait cards are now included.
• Parallel variations that were featured in 2023 Chrome are included. B&W Ray wave refractors (like in 2021 Chrome collection) are back and other raywave parallel cards are exclusive to packs from Qualifying lap boxes.
• No Ollie Bearman, Liam Lawson or Franco Colapinto F1 rookie base cards (Ollie and Franco have their F2 base cards and Liam has an autograph card)
• More of the same F1 Legends base cards – for 2024, cards #187-#200 are set aside for F1 Legends and they involve repeat drivers from 2023 (Schumacher, Senna, Prost and Mansell)
• Inserts – several of the insert themes like Camber, Speed Demons, F1 Armour, Futuro, Hidden Gems from 2023 Chrome continue in the 2024 set but others like Art Du Grand Prix and the popular Constructor’s Crest themes have been dropped. New insert themes include The Grid, Ultrasonics and Circuit Masters Signatures autograph cards. 

Now for some gripes…

Topps usually releases its new F1 Chrome season set around late January or February in the following year. For example 2023 Topps Chrome F1 collection was release only in February this year. For some reason Topps have brought forward the new 2024 collection to late November in the same year. Not sure if this is a resetting of the Topps Chrome release date for future seasons or just for 2024.

The consequence is that the cutoff date for finalising the 2024 season Chrome cards was likely around May or June and this year the driver market has undergone a lot of midseason changes. Even in past years, it’s not unusual for teams to make a driver change for Spa or Monza – Topps really should allow for a cutoff date later in the season to include substitute drivers into the season card list. Liam Lawson didn’t make the cutoff for 2023 Topps Chrome and it seems he’s missing from the base card set for 2024 – so his official Topps F1 rookie card will likely only appear in the 2025 Topps Chrome collection (alongside Ollie, Franco, Kimi & Jack), which is weird. Ollie Bearman stepped in for Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari in Saudi GP Jeddah to finish P7 earlier this year in March -so it seems strange, not to include him in at least one of the Driver of the Day base cards.

The introduction of F1 Legends cards in 2023 Chrome was welcome but 2024 looks to be a re-rinse of the same drivers. Yes, David Coulthard was an accomplished GP winning driver but how he is included as an F1 Legend card alongside world champions Senna, Schumacher, Prost and Mansell seems an odd mis-match. You would think his McLaren teammate double world champ Mika Hakkinen would be more appropriate. 

Mario Andretti does have Circuit Masters Signature card in the new 2024 Chrome collection but there are so many other past F1 champions that are still around e.g. Damon Hill, Jacques Villeneuve, Jody Scheckter, Sir Jackie Stewart, etc. 

Topps’ licensing team should make a better effort to include other past champions and race winners into future Chrome F1 sets otherwise a blandness is going to quickly set into future Chrome seasons.