Its always been amazing to me how much collectors love Chrome, not just for the cards but for the history of the brand. I am one of those people through and through, and though we are going to get two doses of it for baseball this week, there is one part that doesnt look over-saturated. Its crazy that Topps is awkwardly positioning Bowman Chrome’s release two days after Topps Chrome, but it doesnt seem to have affected the potential on the Yasiel Puig cards in both sets.

Puig has had a Chrome mini in 2013 Bowman, but a regular old Bowman Chrome or Topps Chrome card has not yet been available. For each rookie, these chrome examples fuel the market, and his lack of inclusion has been creating insane prices for the rare ones on eBay. He has cooled off at the plate, but is playoff bound, and collectors are still willing to pay through the nose for the first Chrome examples of his cards. His base cards from the new releases sell for amounts only akin to Harper and Strasburg, some pretty nice company to be included with.

2013 Topps Chrome Yasiel Puig Auto RC Base – Looks to be extremely SSP on the base.

2013 Topps Chrome Yasiel Puig Auto Red Refractor /25

2013 Topps Chrome Yasiel Puig Auto Sepia Refractor /75

His autographs are all redemptions for what looks like both sets, but from pictures on Topps’ facebook and twitter page, it is clear that some of the cards seem to be completed for the first batch. That’s a good thing, but its unclear how close we will come to the saturation point while the redemptions come in. It would be one thing if Topps Chrome and Bowman Chrome were released months apart, and collectors were able to piece out their need. The Bowman Chrome autos and rookies will be the top Puig cards available, more so than the Topps Chrome versions, but both look extremely short printed.

Thanks to oddly great timing, the Superfractor version of his Chrome mini is up on eBay right now, and it only begs to see how much the Superfractors will go for from the other releases on the calendar. In seeing how much the other bigger supers from 2013 Chrome are listed for, it could be record amounts when they surface. As mentioned above, we have seen that Puig is not a cybernetic machine sent from the future to play baseball in our time, and that he may not be worthy of the hype from before. Personally, if I were someone with that kind of available cash, it would scare me a bit to spend the price of a Hyundai on these cards.

Without a doubt, this planning was a huge mistake for all players but Puig. This is ONLY the case because he has had so few cards prior to this point. Outside of that situation, Topps has easily kneecapped value on guys who will appear in both sets – likely as redemptions. Not good.