Naming the 2024 Topps Rookie Card All-Star Team!
With two Topps series of rookie cards already released this year, we're naming the best players from the 2024 MLB season!
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This is the FREE version of the “Happy Hobby Sports Cards” Newsletter, with the PAID version coming again next week.
⚾ The 2024 Topps Rookie Card All-Star Team
The middle of the baseball season is a time for everyone to just take a breath, relax, refocus, and get ready for the stretch run. In the case of baseball card collectors, we like to reset and look at the two sets of rookie cards we’ve been working with in 2024. We got 65 rookie cards from 2024 Topps Series 1, and another 70 rookie cards in Series 2 just a few weeks ago.
With all these rookie cards, and the 2024 MLB All-Star and Futures Games upon us, it’s a great time to name our 2024 Rookie Card All-Star Team! (As I mentioned in a recent video about Topps Series 2 cards, we’ll be ranking all these rookie cards, once Topps Update is released, as a whole in comparison to each other, toward the end of the year.)
Also, I wanted to let you know we’ll be continuing our new tradition of opening a box of Topps Pro Debut for the MLB All-Star break. This gives us a chance to really have a better idea of who some of the prospects we want to target might be. The 2023 Topps Pro Debut hobby box comes with three autographs, so stay tuned for that Friday!
2024 Topps Rookie Card All-Star Team
We hand out the midseason hardware to players whose rookie cards came out in 2024 Topps Series 1 or Series 2 – and we’re not including SPs as rookie cards (sorry, Wyatt Langford!).
C: Austin Wells, N.Y. Yankees
Wells is a light-hitting, part-timer, but he’s a Yankee catcher with a mean mustache, so he has that going for him!
1B: Spencer Horwitz, Toronto Blue Jays
This Radford University product has plays second base and bats second for the Blue Jays lineup, but he turns 27 in November. Even so, his .338 batting average is impressive! Angels 1B Nolan Schanuel came up just short.
2B: Cedanne Rafaela, Boston Red Sox
Rafaela has played in several spots for Boston, but we’re using him at second base. He currently leads AL rookies in RBI and runs scored, while he’s second in home runs and steals! His rookie teammate, David Hamilton, has 23 steals so far, which is fourth-best in the majors!
SS: Elly De La Cruz, Cincinnati Reds
This kid has lived up to the hype so far, and with his crazy speed (leads the majors in SBs by a long shot), he should be an exciting player to watch for years to come. He still needs work at the plate, but that’s why we’re even happier about the upside.
3B: Jordan Westburg, Baltimore Orioles
Many people were hoping to see Jackson Holliday on this team more than Westburg, and I went out of my way to poo-poo this rookie’s ability to become collectable on a franchise stocked with star prospects. (Patrick Imhoff was a Westburg fan, though!)
OF: Colton Cowser, Baltimore Orioles
Rookie bats haven’t been amazing this year, but Cowser’s bat has been pretty good! Well, not-so-much for average, but his 12 homers and 34 RBI rank among the best first-year players!
OF: Wilyer Abreu, OF, Boston Red Sox
Abreu finished 2023 strong, and he started well in 2024 before a sprained ankle sidelined him in June. He’s someone worth picking up now, while his rookie cards remain cheap. This young Red Sox lineup is full of potential collector value.
OF: Evan Carter, OF, Texas Rangers
You can bet your bottom base cards that both Wyatt Langford and Jackson Merrill would have beaten out Carter for this spot, but their Series 2 cards are SPs. Carter is struggling in his first full year with the Rangers, hitting just .188, and now he’s dealing with a back injury. If he starts hitting left-handed pitching better, that 2023 postseason luster could return.
DH: Masyn Winn, St, Louis Cardinals
All Masyn does is Winn, Winn, Winn, no matter what! He ranks among the top-25 MLB leaders in batting average (.289), and I had to squeeze him in at DH because of EDLC’s success!
SP: Yoshinobu Yamamoto, L.A. Dodgers
This Japanese import ranks just ahead of his counterpart in Chicago, but Yamamoto has finally put his Game 1 stinker in Korea behind him statistically. He’s 25 years old, pitching for a World Series contender, and he has been one of the best stories for collectors this year. (His rotator cuff injury might be the only thing to scare us away at this point.)
SP: Shota Imanaga, Chicago Cubs
It’s really unfair to give just one starting pitcher the nod, so we chose two. Sue us! Imanaga would have been the best rookie pitcher if this team was named a month ago, but he has given up 5 HR and 16 earned runs in his past three starts.
RP: Clay Holmes, N.Y. Yankees
This fella has pitched in the majors since 2018, with the Pirates and now with the Yankees, but it looks like 2024 was his first Topps rookie card!
Would your 2024 Topps Rookie Card All-Star Team look any different? Let us know in the comments!
Also, while Ben Rice became the first Yankees rookie ever to hit three home runs in a game, he doesn’t have a Topps rookie card yet. But we did find this on eBay!
⚾HOBBY NEWS: DALLAS CARD SHOW HEIST!
A sports card dealer at the Dallas Card Show was the victim of a $2 million robbery by a team of thieves. You can click on the image below to watch it go down.
I believe this has now become big enough news that card shows are going to start changing their security. Cases and cards of this value might need to be kept in a secure room, or something of that nature. At the very least, keeping a case with $2 million worth of cards shouldn’t be kept under a table on the edge of the booth.
At any rate, that $70,000 reward could buy you a sweet grail card you never thought you’d own!
⚾ 🏀 🏈🏒GEMRATE SHARES PSA’s TOP 10 MOST-GRADED PLAYERS IN JUNE
Gemrate.com continues to inform the industry with great, in-depth stats, data-mining the major sports card grading services. Here are the 10 most-graded athletes at PSA in the month of June 2024:
🏀Victor Wembanyama – View his cards on eBay!
🏀Michael Jordan – View his cards on eBay!
🏈 C.J. Stroud – View his cards on eBay!
🏀Anthony Edwards – View his cards on eBay!
⚾Shohei Ohtani – View his cards on eBay!
🏈 Anthony Richardson – View his cards on eBay!
🏀LeBron James – View his cards on eBay!
⚾Elly De La Cruz – View his cards on eBay!
🏒Connor Bedard – View his cards on eBay!
🏀Kobe Bryant – View his cards on eBay!
It’s a great thing for hockey card collectors to see Bedard break into the top 10, but look at the football world, with just a pair of players in the top 10 – both quarterbacks from last year’s NFL Draft. Notice that baseball and basketball have players on this list from multiple generations (Ken Griffey Jr. came in 12th). I can’t imagine buying expensive football wax boxes hoping to land an auto from such a small group of possible hobby stars. Just take that wax money and buy singles of those autos instead.
With that said, the 2024 NFL Draft class is exploding with quarterback talent, which will make 2024 hobby product much more collectable (and expensive). Caleb Williams (Bears), Jayden Daniels (Commanders), Drake Maye (Patriots), J.J. McCarthy (Vikings), Bo Nix (Broncos) and Michael Penix Jr. (Falcons) will be nice draws, not to mention WRs Marvin Harrison Jr. (Cardinals) and Malik Nabers (Giants).
Even so, if I want to spend big, I’m doing it on singles. If I want to have fun and shoot for random parallels, I’ll buy retail.
⚾HAPPY HOBBY UNIVERSE UPDATES
This is where we share some of the interesting things that have happened with our Happy Hobby universe in the past couple weeks, from our YouTube channel to the podcast, from the website to the newsletter, and from all our social channels!
DavidGonos.com: I just posted an article sharing the Best Topps Chrome Rookie Cards for baseball from every year since that set’s inception back in 1996!
YouTube: We will once again be doing our annual rip of a Topps Pro Debut box over the MLB All-Star break, so keep your eye on YouTube for that! And you can check out my recent PSA submission results here — got some 10s!
Here’s an email I got this week, that I thought I’d share with everyone, to see if there are some ideas on how to help this fellow out!
Mike O. writes: “Hi, I have a 1984 Darryl Strawberry error card that I can’t find… anywhere. It’s completely off center -- almost sideways -- with another player’s info on it, as well as his. [It’s] not in great condition, but is it worth anything?”
Good morning, Mike! Unfortunately, that card in excellent condition still is worth just about $30-$50, which is still great! This doesn't sound like an error card, though, as much as it is a severely miscut card. The fact it has Strawberry on it and that it's a rookie card makes it much more attractive than other severely miscut cards, but I don't think it would really increase the value very much. However, if you can track down a Darryl Strawberry collector, or a Super Mets fan, they would likely be interested in it more than anyone else.
Any Super Mets fans among our readers? Anyone interested in buying this card from Mike? Anyone have different advice than what I shared? Let’s hear it in the comments!
⚾INTRODUCING THE “HAPPY HOBBY ZOO”
Happy Hobbyist Nando di Fino gave me the idea of using Artificial Intelligence to recreate some classic baseball cards! I decided to turn all of them into animals, so we could create our very own little Happy Hobby Zoo, where great rookie cards are pet and fed daily!
Let me know which iconic cards I should do in the future (and which animals they should become) in the comments!
Consider becoming a paid subscriber for $6 per month, or $60 per year (20% discount from monthly!). Get into the “Paid Sub” group early and get to know the other subscribers in the chat! As a group, we’ll work to help you improve your collection on a limited budget!
Let us know if you have any ideas for the podcast and/or the newsletter!
Have a Happy Hobby!
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Podcast Music: "I dunno" by grapes - 2008 - Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (3.0)
Another great newsletter, love the all star team. Really makes me anticipate Topps Update Series this year, there should be some great rookie cards in that set, I may even have to get a jumbo box for the first time. Thanks for including Westburg, he is just a player. Always an after thought in that prospect heavy organization, and he probably is playing the best of them all (Cowser, Kjerstad, Holliday).
Very nice write up on the all rookie card team. Man that Dallas thing is crazy. As much as I’d like to think I’d be more aware of what was going on if that was my table, I also agree that there should indeed be more security in general than there is at some of these shows. By the way, I’m curious what the Happy Hobby Zoo would do with a ‘60’s floating head rookie! Great newsletter, thanks, David!