This is something I wrote for my free Substack newsletter last week, and I thought it would be a fun discussion here,

Obviously, Connor Bedard is a huge talent, but the scarcity of his Young Guns rookie card makes for an exciting chase! That got me to wondering how the baseball card hobby would be much different if Topps chose to have a Young Guns-type insert in their flagship sets to serve as a player’s true rookie card?

Panini does something similar already with silver holo cards, but those are a little more rare than Young Guns because it’s not an insert set based solely around rookies. Plus, you can get the standard base rookie without the silver variation, which would be like Upper Deck offering a non-Young Guns base card, too.

Baseball churns out an amazing amount of rookies every year (I’m guessing more than other sports?), so their version of Young Guns would have to be quite extensive.

Imagine tracking down Wyatt Langford’s Young Guns insert in 2024 Topps Series 2. How valuable would Juan Soto’s 2018 Young Guns be? The 2011 Topps Update Young Gun cards of Mike Trout would break the bank!

Kudos to Upper Deck for creating scarcity in a product, while not cannibalizing themselves. They could have made Young Guns into a numbered parallel only, making it close to impossible for a Wal-Mart shopper to have a chance at it.
Upper Deck’s hockey product gives customers a chance at a valuable card, despite its retail wrapping.

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