Trading card news: Topps pre-sale offers preview of Topps Chrome F1 2023

Happy New Year to all readers! For card collectors eagerly waiting for Topps 2023 Chrome Formula 1 collection, Topps’ US site a few days ago opened a pre-sale for 2023 Chrome hobby boxes and hobby box cases for shipping before the official January 31, 2024 release date. Unsurprisingly, the pre-sale window has already sold out!

The Topps web pages have some preview images of the 2023 Chrome cards and the 2023 checklist and card odds.

New inserts for 2023 – this one is a Camber theme

First up, the preview images includes sample photos of a gold checkered refractor (with Max sample card), a new “Camber” insert theme (with Carlos sample card), new Art Du Grand Prix race circuit artworks (with a Miami GP sample) and a gold refractor autograph card for Oscar Piastri.

As you can see from the hobby box artwork, 2023 Topps Chrome F1 packs feature Max, Lewis, Charles and Oscar (Lando swapped out for 2023!) on the pack wrappers. The layout of 2023 base cards appear to be more angular outlines in the bottom section of the cards – you can see the bottom left and right corners have a white triangular background cutout with a star.

Based on the pre-sale, it looks like Topps have gone back to the future (i.e. 2020) and there won’t be any flagship collection or Lite boxes with special relic fabric cards (which might actually be good news for 2021 and 2022 driver relic card values).

2023 Chrome will feature Oscar rookie card + autograph. This is the sample of the gold wave version on the Topps website.

Topps have priced the 2023 hobby box presale at $US234.99 – this is cheaper sticker price compared to the prices for the 2022 Chrome hobby box at $US300 and 2021 Chrome hobby box at $US499.99. So the upside, is that Chrome hobby boxes (not necessarily packs) should be cheaper than recent years and there should be more opportunities to grab an autograph card. According to the Topps website, the 2023 hobby box holds 20 packs (4 cards per pack) rather than 18 packs that came in previous year’s hobby boxes. If that’s the case, then 2023 hobby boxes will thankfully represent more bang for buck compared to past years.

The real insights for 2023 Chrome F1 though are in Topps’ checklist and odds documents published on the Topps website.

Consistent with previous seasons, the base card collection is 200 cards but there looks to be a significant expansion of the number of different themed insert cards for 2023.

Here are some of my quick observations based on Topps’ published 2023 Chrome checklist and card odds:

1. Liam Lawson didn’t make the 2023 Chrome manufacturing deadline which must have been before the Dutch GP, so he unfortunately won’t appear in 2023 Chrome card set. This is somewhat of a surprise omission (especially for Liam fans).
2. The order of the 2023 driver base cards appears different from past years and doesn’t follow teammate groupings. Some drivers will have 4 base cards (Max, Charles, Checo, George, Carlos, Lando, Fernando and Valtieri) while the rest will only have 3 base cards (including popular drivers like Oscar and Alex) and Daniel Ricciardo has only 1 base card (#69).
3. Like past seasons, there will be 10 base card image variations including for Max, George, Carlos, Lewis, KMag, Zhou, Albono, Logan, Senna and Michael Schumacher. The odds of these are 1 in every 469 packs.
4. Max cards will number heavily in the 2023 set, mainly due to Grand Prix winners cards (cards #144-#165).
5. Official F1 Topps rookie “RC” cards for Nyck de Vries (#193), Logan Sargeant (#194) and Oscar Piastri (#195).
6. Similar to 2023 Topps Turbo Attax F1 set, the 2023 Chrome F1 set will include F1 Legends cards (#196-#200) including Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell, Michael Schumacher and David Coulthard (ok, the inclusion of DC as a non-champion, looks out of place…). Let’s hope these cards look better than the photoshopped blank non-tobacco driver overalls in the Turbo Attax set.
7. Mick Schumacher (#176) and Seb Vettel (#183, #184 & #187) will have Grand Prix Driver of the Day cards.
8. F1 and F2 team logo cards will return in 2023 as ‘Constructor Crest’ inserts.
9. Lots of new inserts for 2023 – including themes for “F1 Celebrations”, “F2 Celebrations”, ‘Constructors Crest’, ‘Speed Demons’, ‘Camber’, ‘Art du Prix’ (Miami, Mexico, Italian & British GPs), ‘Hidden Gems’, ‘Futuro’, ‘Autos of 1977’, ‘F1 Armor’ and ‘Turn up the Lights’. The odds for many of these new inserts are very low, so these will be hard to find. For example, the base cards for the new F1 Armor (#/50, 1 every 1,404 packs), Turn up the Lights (1 every 1,351 packs) and Constructor Crests (#/199, 1 every 336 packs) inserts are tough and the parallel versions are even harder, so these will be sought after. The Camber (1 every 3 packs) and Speed Demon (1 every 6 packs) inserts will be more common. Collectors will already be familiar with Speed Demons inserts which feature in 2022 Topps Chrome F1 set.
10. There will be 61 autograph cards including F1, F2 drivers and team principals. The surprise autograph cards inclusions for 2023 are Alain Prost, Mick Schumacher and Nigel Mansell. The Prost and Mansell autograph cards should be worth collecting.
11. The new Futuro inserts (10 cards) will also offer autograph versions. These cards are mainly promising F1 & F2 drivers, so the cards to look for will be Logan, Oscar, Theo Pourchaire and Jack Doohan cards.
12. There are only 10 Turn up the Lights insert cards (Charles, Fernando, KMag, Lewis, Lando, Logan, Max, Pierre, Yuki and Zhou). The odds of the superfractor cards (/#1) are 1 every 134,214 packs which is harder than the superfractor autograph cards odds at 1 every 22,369 packs – so “Turn up the Lights” inserts will be ones to look out for in 2023 cards.