Topps 'bringing you closer to the player' with Series 2 release

Shota Imanaga and Yoshinobu Yamamoto have taken the Major Leagues by storm in their rookie campaigns. Beginning Wednesday, the two pitchers will make their impact felt on the card-collecting world, too.

They’re two members of the rookie class in Topps Series 2, which hit retail stores and hobby shops on Wednesday. The 350-card set continues the same stylistic elements as Series 1, including the neon border in team colors, a black smoke gradient and team names.

Other rookies including Jackson Holliday, Wyatt Langford and Jackson Chourio won’t have their official rookie cards released until Topps Update Series comes out later this year, but those three are among the first-year players with short-print cards in Series 2.

“One of the great things about Topps is that it's an entry into collecting,” said Clay Luraschi, Topps’ senior vice president of product. “It's got the most distribution, you can go into Target, Walmart, hobby shops and grocery stores and you can find this product. We want to tell the consumer, ‘There are lots of different paths, lots of different journeys you can go on.’”

In addition to its standard array of autographed cards, Topps Series 2 features a number of new and notable insert sets, including “Women in Baseball,” which highlights some of the women making their mark on the game such as Giants assistant coach Alyssa Nakken, D-backs Double-A bench coach Ronnie Gajownik, MLB Girls Baseball Ambassador and U.S. Women’s National Baseball Team manager Veronica Alvarez and ESPN broadcaster Jessica Mendoza.

“We have featured a number of female coaches and execs, but this is the first time where it's come together as part of a subset within a product,” Luraschi said. “There has always been some presence in the front office, but you're just seeing it more on the field, and not just at the Major League level. Women are playing a bigger part in this game, so it made so much sense and is probably long overdue.”

The set also includes the return of the Heavy Lumber inserts, which feature 20 of the Majors' best hitters on wood-grained cards, Golden Mirror short prints, and insert sets Homefield Advantage, Legendary Homefield Advantage, City to City, Around the Horn, Fantasy Favorites, 1989 Topps All-Star Baseball and Significant Statistics. Another new insert set, the City Connect Swatch Collection, features game-used relics from City Connect jerseys.

Series 2 also brings back the First Pitch insert, with notable names such as Victor Wembanyama, George W. Bush, Mallory Swanson, Myke Towers and Daddy Yankee.

“You have the 162 games and you have the postseason and all the things that happen between the lines,” Luraschi said. “But there's all this really cool, interesting content happening either connected to it or outside of it.”

Daddy Yankee is actually featured on two cards, as Topps is introducing “Signature Tunes,” which are dual-autograph cards featuring players and the artists who perform their walk-up songs. The first two cards in this set? Daddy Yankee/Juan Soto, and Travis Scott/Kyle Tucker.

“Whenever we put non-baseball playing subjects in the products, it drives interest from outside of our collecting world,” Luraschi said. “Travis fans are going to see this and say, ‘Oh, that's super interesting. I would love to pull a trading card and an autograph of Travis Scott to add to my collection,’ even if you might not be a trading card collector.”

One of the biggest Series 2 chases for young collectors is the Social Media Follow Back Redemption cards, which entitle lucky collectors to have some of their favorite players follow them on social media. This year’s crop of Follow Back players includes Bobby Witt Jr., Pete Alonso, Austin Riley, Colton Cowser and Blake Snell.

“What's the most powerful playground currency in the world? It's who's following who, right?” Luraschi said. “If you go back to the 1950s and you look at the Mickey Mantle rookie card, if you were sitting in middle America and all you have is the newspaper and all you know of Mickey is a black-and-white photograph, then Topps brought Mickey to life. We're still doing that to this day.

“Whether you put a relic on a card or you put an autograph on a card, we're bringing you closer to the player. Being able to do a follow back and working with the players to activate that, that's just allowing the consumer to be that much closer to their hero. That's what it's all about. The trading cards are about connecting the fan with their hero.”