Box Break: 2024 Topps Pro Debut
After several delays 2024 Topps Pro Debut has arrived! The perennial Minor League release from Topps showcases the best of MiLB in the 2024 flagship design. As with the past several years Pro Debut boasts a 200 card base set and a 200 card Chrome companion set. For more details about 2024 Topps Pro Debut you can check out our previous article: click here.
A hobby box of Pro Debut contains 24 packs with 8 cards per pack. Each box guarantees 4 autographs. Over the past several years, relics or memorabilia cards have been absent from this release. This year they are back, but only as an autograph relic in Fabrics of the Future.
Here is the overview of my box:
Inserts
There are 50 insert cards across four insert sets in this release. Complex League Rising Stars (20 cards), MiLB Legends (10 cards), Heroes of the Diamond (10 cards) and Road to the Show (10 cards).
Complex League Rising Stars focuses on those players who were recently drafted or just made it state-side and are currently in the Complex Leagues in either Florida or Arizona.
MiLB Legends rehashes (once again) the tired 1987 design. This set focuses on ten popular Major Leaguers before they were stars.
Heroes of the Diamond takes a comic book-like approach to the design of the insert. This could have been a great tie-in with the MiLB promotion Defenders of the Diamond, but presumably Topps was not able to get the licensing for the various logos.
Road to the Show illustrates the distance between a prospect's current park and their parent club’s home park. This is an interesting take on the previous Road to the Show from Topps Heritage Minor League in the mid-2010s.
Unlike 2023 with the Echoes SSP 4-card insert set, there are no case hit inserts.
Parallels
There are quite a few parallels available in pro Debut. They range from base chrome parallels to 1/1 Foilfractors. In this box I pulled a total of 13 parallels. There were 10 base chrome in the box. As promised there was one X-Fractor in the box. This box had Houston Astros No. 1 prospect Jacob Melton. There other two are color parallels.
The first color parallel I pulled was an Orange Mini-Diamond Chrome of Wyatt Langford #15/25. He is one of the Rangers better rookies after being drafted in the first round in 2023.
The last parallel I got in this box was an Aqua Foil of Dillon Head #27/75. The 2023 First Round Pick is featured on the Lake Elsinore Storm, but has since been traded to the Marlins organization as a part of the Luis Arraez trade. Head is currently the No. 8 Prospect for the Miami Marlins.
Autographs
As advertised, I pulled 4 autographs in this box. In the very first pack I pulled an Arjun Nimalla Sparkle auto #082/199. Nimalla was the 2023 First Round pick of the Toronto Blue Jays.
My second auto was of the New York Yankees third ranked top prospect George Lombard Jr. He was the First Round Pick of the Yankees in 2023.
My third auto was a rare hit! I was lucky enough to pull a Jacob Wilson Fabrics of the Future Gold Parallel #05/50. Unlike most of the the Pro Debut autographs, this auto is on-card. Wilson was the 2023 1st round pick for the Oakland Athletics. The base Fabric of the Future autos tends to fall one in every 221 packs. There are no updated odds for the parallel versions at the time of this writing.
My final auto of the box was the 65th overall pick in the 2023 Draft, Cole Carrigg. He was a Competitive Balance Round-B pick by the Colorado Rockies.
Image Variation
There was one additional hit in my hobby box. In one of the last three packs of the box I pulled an Ethan Salas foil card. At first I thought it was a Green Foil parallel that they forgot to number. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a Foil Image Variation. These variations are rare as they fall 1 in 1,197 packs or approximately 1 in 4 cases.
This is by far one of the best hobby boxes I’ve opened in quite a while. Pro Debut continues to be a fun rip!
