Wave 5 of Topps 206 arrives in mid December, and completes the 500 card base set for the year. This wave features Hindu and Honus Wagner backs, along with many of the others included throughout the series. Once again, there are some short prints as well as autographs possible as part of the release. This wave has a print run of 9433 packs.
Each box contains at least ten cards, including eight base, and a couple of parallels. Some of the special cards are included as extra cards in the box. Each wave this year features one hundred base cards, so you need quite a few of these to complete a set.
The Topps Heritage High Number release adds an update to the original Heritage release from earlier in the year. The base set continues on after the first 500 cards from the first series, with cards 501-700, plus 701-725 as SPs. A number of the insert sets from earlier in the year also have the numbering continue with the High Number release.
This release mirrors the first release of the year, with 24 packs of 9 cards per pack. Each box guarantees either one autograph or relic. The hits are not really the focus of this product, however. It is more geared toward set collecting, so the boxes are generally not being driven up in price by breaker culture.
Once again, a normal summer release finds itself coming out well after the season has ended. There isn’t really much difference year to year in this product. Even the base design is very similar, due to the nature of it all being based on the original set from the late 1800s.
The base set features 300 cards, with an additional 50 SPs, although they’re not particularly rare compared to other releases. There is one full size parallel, but the bulk of the parallels come in tobacco sized cards, with differing fronts or backs. A box contains 24 packs of 8 cards, featuring three advertised hits.
This box contained:
125 Base (41.7% of 300 card set) 12 Base SP (24% of 50 card SP set) 10 Base Mini Parallels 5 Base Mini Allen & Ginter Back Parallels 2 Base Mini Black Border Parallels 11 Banner Season 2 Famous Rivals 2 Get That Bread 3 It’s Your Special Day 4 Pitching a Gem 2 What’s Cookin’? 1 Baseball Lexicon 1 Inside the Park 1 Mini Ducks 1 2006 A&G Rookie Design Variation 1 Time Out! 1 What a Steal! 1 Cabinet Boxloader Francisco Lindor 1 Full Sized Relics A Jarren Duran 1 Full Sized Relics B Gerrit Cole 1 Rip Card Eloy Jimenez
Wave 4 for Topps 206 hits during the baseball postseason. This wave represents the lowest print run this year, with a total of 8162 boxes produced. One more wave is coming to finish up this run. At 100 cards per wave, these are twice the size of previous years.
The general format remains the same, but this series includes a handful of night game variations, as well as other image variations. It also sees the Cycle card back make an appearance. Each box contains one pack. This pack is now advertised as eight base cards and at least two parallels.
Wave 3 of 2022 Topps 206 hits with the League Championship Series wrapping up and the World Series about to start. This wave does away with the All Star Background parallels, and replaces Carolina Brights with Drum. There is also a small short print subset this time, featuring players from the Cubs and Reds in throw back uniforms for the Field of Dreams event. The print run for this wave is just barely down from wave two, with 8530 packs released.
The rest of the release is fairly basic. There are once again a few possible autographs, but these seem exceedingly rare. The wave features 100 base cards. Each box contains one pack featuring ten cards, including two parallels. Sometimes special cards show up as extra cards in the packs.
