Right now, Topps Chrome rules the football market. The high end chase cards for Football remain the top cards of the year, much like Bowman does for Baseball. When you consider the place of a set like Topps Chrome Baseball, its a bit different. Its just not the same, mainly because many of the rookie players in the set have had cards for many years.

Retail 2015 Chrome has already starting hitting, here are some of the cards:

2015 Topps Chrome Joc Pederson Purple Refractor RC Auto

2015 Topps Chrome Edwin Escobar Gold Refractor Auto RC

2015 Topps Chrome Kris Bryant RC

2015 Topps Chrome Yasmany Tomas Sepia Refractor RC

Dont get me wrong, Topps Chrome still has value. Not only does it have value, but the Superfractors still carry a ton of weight. The issue is that everything that isnt a low numbered autograph, really doesnt matter as much as it used to. When I was growing up, Topps Chrome and Topps Finest were the high end products you saved your allowance for. I still remember trying to get cards of all my favorite players.

These days, players like Pederson, Bryant and Buxton all have had cards in Topps products for literally years, and its crazy to believe that their TC rookie cards dont carry the same weight in the hobby anymore. Because a player cant appear in Topps Chrome until they hit the 25 man roster, it limits the ability Topps has to make the set relevant as a rookie release with Bowman using them well before.

The only time when Chrome means something, is when a player storms onto the scene during the course of one year. Yasiel Puig was a great example of this, as was Jose Abreu. They both had Bowman Chrome and Topps Chrome autos in the same year, thus negating the situation we are encountering with Bryant and Buxton.

There are also large gaps on the rookie checklist this year, likely due to timing of call ups for some, but others like Correa and Sano are a bit of a mystery. Both were called up generally around the same time as Buxton, and somehow, they didnt even make it into the set as a base card from what it looks like.

It creates a hole in the checklist that might limit the success of the product, even more so when guys like Matz, Conforto and Schwarber are doing so well since hitting the bigs.

I still have a soft spot in my heart for Chrome, and I always will. Curious to see how it goes this year with Bryant cooling off at the plate and the checklist only reflecting a portion of the major rookie crop that might be one of the best of this generation.