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.
This release sort of came out of nowhere. After a few years of successful 206 Baseball releases, Topps has expanded this branding to include Star Wars. At a time when the enthusiasm for 206 Baseball seems to be dropping, this wave of Star Wars sold 25,102 packs. That notable in part because the first wave of baseball this year saw roughly half that print run, but also contained twice as many cards in the wave (100 Baseball to 50 Star Wars). It will be interesting to see if that enthusiasm continues with a set that doesn’t seem to have a clear public plan, yet.
This release also sees a major departure from what the original T206 set was. In the original, the main parallels for the set are tobacco advertisements on the backs of the cards, with the fronts not changing. Topps replicated these parallels for Baseball, but has avoided them for Star Wars. Instead, we see the familiar “star field” parallels return once again. Perhaps Disney did not want their property associated with tobacco? There is one parallel with the back changed, to a plain Star Wars logo.
A box advertises ten cards, including two parallels. This box contained:
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.
The second wave of the 206 release follows with a similar format to wave one, with 100 cards. The print run is down a bit from the first wave to 8,532 packs. This wave also introduces a bit of a departure from the normal format relating to the T206s. A new back is included which is identified as All Star Background, featuring a small image of Hollywood on the back.
This wave also contains the chance at a couple of image variations, one of which is from a previous wave, as well as a few autographs. A box still advertises ten cards, including two parallels, but it seems some parallels are being treated as extra cards in these.
