2026 Topps Chrome Black Baseball: The Complete Odds, Parallel, and Print Run Breakdown

2026 Topps Chrome Black Baseball released April 29. Topps posted the checklist in March and the odds sheet on release day. The sheet is 68 lines in a single Hobby column with no print runs, and its odds work out to be per pack. Five of its Superfractor lines, read as one copy of every card in their sets, agree on about 169,650 packs, or 84,825 boxes. From there we can check every ladder, estimate the cards Topps gives no run for, and find the lines that don't add up, starting with the base parallels: the odds put only about 71 to 72 percent of each tier of the base ladder in packs.

The box

Topps' product page lists two packs of six cards in each box, with one parallel in each pack, plus a 13th card: an encased on-card autograph. That's 13 cards a box, one of them the autograph. The page doesn't list how many boxes make a case, so the figures here stay per pack and per box.

The sheet doesn't say what its odds are per, but only one reading works. Every autograph line on the sheet adds up to about 0.51 a pack, or 1.02 a box of two packs, which is the one encased autograph. Read per box, the sheet would give only half an autograph a box. So the odds are per pack, and a box is two of them.

The parallels are where the sheet and the product page part ways. Every parallel line on the sheet (the base ladder, the Rookie Design Variation colors and the insert parallels) adds up to about 0.82 a pack, or 1.64 a box, against Topps' one in every pack. More on that below.

What a box holds, by set, adding up every version on the sheet:

The main autograph set is about 91 percent of the autographs. An insert of any kind (Damascus, Nocturnal, Depth of Darkness or Home Field) turns up about once every 10 boxes.

The checklist

Topps' checklist, posted in March and marked subject to change, runs 542 cards across 11 sets, not counting parallels.

The base set is 200 cards, from #1 Shohei Ohtani to #200 Kyle Schwarber. Topps tags 53 of them as rookies, among them Roman Anthony, Jac Caglianone, Trey Yesavage, Nolan McLean, Cam Schlittler, Samuel Basallo, Bubba Chandler and Jacob Misiorowski. Thirty of those rookies also get a Rookie Design Variation under the same card number, from #13 Caglianone to #160 Brady House.

The inserts, with rookie counts as Topps' checklist tags them:

• Nocturnal, 40 cards: 15 rookies, then 25 veterans from Manny Machado to Trea Turner.
• Damascus, 30 cards, 14 of them rookies. Topps numbers them DAM-1 to DAM-31 and skips DAM-29.
• Depth of Darkness, 20 cards, 7 of them rookies.
• Home Field, 20 cards, 12 of them rookies, plus Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Bobby Witt Jr., Pete Crow-Armstrong, Bryce Harper, Cal Raleigh, Ken Griffey Jr. and Honus Wagner.

Topps' product page says Depth of Darkness, Pitch Black Dual Pairings and Super Future Autographs return, Damascus and Paint It! Autographs are new, and Home Field makes its Chrome Black debut.

There are 202 autograph cards from 142 signers (rookie counts again as Topps' checklist tags them):

• Chrome Black Autographs, 111 signers (Topps' checklist heads the set simply Autographs). Topps tags 41 as rookies, including Munetaka Murakami, Kazuma Okamoto and Tatsuya Imai, none of whom is in the base set. The retired names include Barry Bonds, Derek Jeter, Albert Pujols, Johnny Bench, Sandy Koufax, Frank Thomas and Mark McGwire.
• Ivory Autographs, 36 signers, 8 of them rookies, with Ohtani, Juan Soto and Ronald Acuña Jr. alongside Bonds, Chipper Jones, George Brett, Ichiro, Koufax, Nolan Ryan, Mike Schmidt and Randy Johnson.
• Super Futures Autographs, 22 signers, 15 of them rookies.
• Paint It! Autographs, 19 signers, 8 of them rookies, with Mike Trout, Jeter, Ichiro, Ryan, Brett and Pujols.
• Pitch Black Pairings Dual Autographs, 14 cards with two signers each: Kristian Campbell and Roman Anthony, Chipper Jones and Acuña, Wade Boggs and Roger Clemens, Griffey and Randy Johnson, Ichiro and Jeter, Hyeseong Kim and Chan Ho Park, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Ohtani, McGwire and Pujols, Bubba Chandler and Paul Skenes, Sammy Sosa and Andre Dawson, Trout and Reggie Jackson, Thomas and Paul Konerko, Vladimir Guerrero and Larry Walker on the Expos, and Jack Wilson and Jacob Wilson.

Bubba Chandler is in all 11 sets, and he and Kristian Campbell sign in all five autograph sets. Roman Anthony and Jac Caglianone are in 10 sets each.

The base ladder

The base ladder has 19 numbered parallels. From Purple down to Red, each color comes in three finishes, Refractor, Mini-Diamond Refractor and Wave Refractor, each with its own line on the sheet at the same odds, so each is its own run. Odds per pack:

The sheet fixes the spacing between tiers on its own. Against the Superfractor at 1:1,179, the Red falls 5.02 times as often, the Rose Gold 9.99 times, the Orange 25.1, the Gold 49.1, the Purple 73.7, the Green 98.3, the Blue 147.4 and the Refractor 196.5. Topps' preview of the Yesavage Blue Refractor at the top of this piece is numbered 001/150, which sets the scale: a /150 Blue and a 1/1 Superfractor (150 divided by 147.4 is 1.02). Every other tier then lands on a standard run. The Green could be /99 or /100 and the Refractor /199 or /200, since 1:12 and 1:6 are short lines that can't tell them apart.

So a full base ladder is 944 numbered cards for each base card: 199, 150 and 99, three each of 75, 50, 25, 10 and 5, and the Superfractor. Per box, the sheet gives about 1.6 numbered base parallels, one numbered /25 or less about every five boxes, and a base Superfractor about once every 590 boxes.

What the last column shows is the problem. If every tier were full on all 200 cards, each line would give odds x run x 200 = the number of packs, and they all come to about 235,000 to 240,000. The sheet covers about 169,650. That gap is the biggest finding on this sheet, and it gets its own section below.

The Rookie Design Variations

The 30 Rookie Design Variations have a shorter ladder of their own, one finish per color:

The spacing is the base ladder's again (against the Superfractor, the Purple falls 74.1 times as often, the Gold 49.6, the Orange 24.9, the Rose Gold 9.95 and the Red 4.96), so these are the same runs. Every line comes to about 175,500 to 177,750, or about 29 cards' worth at 169,650 packs (169,650 divided by 5,850 is exactly 29). So every tier is about 96 percent in packs, as if one of the 30 rookies has no colors, or 4 percent of each run stays out.

A Rookie Design Variation of any kind falls about once every seven boxes, and the version with no color once every 12. At 1:24, that's about 7,070 in packs, about 236 of each card.

The inserts

Odds per pack:

Topps bills Home Field as the famous short print, and it's the scarcest insert here, about one every 88 boxes. Its only parallel is a Black Refractor at the same 1:8,482 as the Depth of Darkness Superfractor. That line isn't one of the five that set the pack count, and at 169,650 packs it comes to 20 cards, one for each card in the set, so it behaves as a one-of-one. The Depth of Darkness Red Refractor falls 4.80 times as often as its Superfractor, which fits a /5 with 96 of the 100 in packs.

The base versions come to about 87 copies of each Nocturnal (3,462 in packs), 77 of each Damascus (2,324), 70 of each Depth of Darkness (1,402) and 48 of each Home Field (964).

The autographs

The main set has the longest ladder in the product. Odds per pack, with what the odds put in packs at 169,650:

The top of this ladder holds. The Superfractor line puts 108 one-of-ones in packs (169,650 divided by 1,571 is 108.0), so 108 of the 111 signers appear to have one. Against those 108, the Red falls 5.0 times as often (a /5), the Rose Gold 9.8 times (a /10) and the Orange 23.8 (a /25). Across all 111 signers, that puts about 98 percent of the Red in packs, 96 percent of the Rose Gold and 93 percent of the Orange. Topps' preview of Murakami's Gold Refractor is numbered 01/50.

Below that the ladder thins out. If the Gold, Purple, Green, Blue and Refractor carry the base ladder's runs (/50, /75, /99, /150 and /199) for all 111 signers, the odds put 85 percent of the Gold in packs, 82 percent of the Purple, 77 percent of the Green, 60 percent of the Blue and 51 percent of the Refractor. Put the other way, the Refractor line is about 57 signers' worth of /199s and the Blue about 67 signers' worth of /150s. A good share of the signers may skip the lower colors, those colors may be numbered lower on the autographs than on the base cards, or more of each lower run may stay out of packs. Until serial numbers turn up, the autograph Refractor, Blue, Green and Purple runs are unconfirmed.

The four smaller autograph sets, odds per pack:

Super Futures is the cleanest ladder in the product. Against its Superfractor, the Gold falls 49.1 times as often, the Orange 24.6, the Rose Gold 9.8 and the Red 4.96: a /50, /25, /10 and /5, each about 98 to 99 percent in packs. The Reds on the other three sets fit /5s too: 178 of the 180 Ivory Red Trims, 69 of the 70 Pitch Black Pairings Reds and 86 of the 95 Paint It! Reds. The Pitch Black Pairings Rose Gold fits a /10 at 95 percent.

Two Orange lines come up short of a /25, the run of every other Orange in the product. The Ivory Orange Trim works out to about 22 per signer (782 in packs, 87 percent of a /25 on all 36), and the Pitch Black Pairings Orange to about 18 per card (257, 73 percent of a /25 on all 14).

Topps' preview of Trout's Paint It! Superfractor, below, carries an inscription: "3x AL MVP 14, 16, 19."

How many packs the sheet covers

Five Superfractor lines settle it. Topps' previews of an Ivory and a Paint It! Superfractor are both numbered 1/1, each of these five is the only one-of-one line in its set, and if every card in the set has one, cards times odds is the pack count:

Allowing for each line's rounding, all five only fit together between 169,645 and 169,650 packs. The Home Field Black Refractor, the only parallel in its set, comes to the same 169,640 (20 cards at 1:8,482), so it fits one copy of each Home Field card. Two more lines fit the same count if their sets are one card short: 39 Nocturnal Superfractors at 1:4,350 and 29 Rookie Design Variation Superfractors at 1:5,850 both come to exactly 169,650. So the sheet covers about 169,650 packs, or 84,825 boxes (at most two boxes fewer). At six cards a pack plus the encased autograph, that's about 1.02 million cards from packs and about 84,825 autographs, about 1.1 million cards.

The sheet rounds to the nearest whole number, not up. 169,650 divided by 22 is 7,711.4, and the Super Futures Superfractor prints as 1:7,711; rounded up it would read 1:7,712. So the counts in this piece are central figures, good to about half a step of the odds either way. On the short lines that matters: 1:6 covers anything from 1:5.5 to 1:6.5, about 8 percent either way.

The autograph lines check out against one a box. Read as printed, they add up to about 86,280 autographs, about 1.7 percent more than 84,825 boxes. The 1:7 base line alone covers the gap: if it's really 1:7.45, which still prints as 1:7, the total is exactly one a box.

Not every numbered card is in a pack

The base ladder fills only about 71 to 72 percent. At 169,650 packs, every base tier comes to the same share of its run on 200 cards:

A share that flat across every tier isn't chance. The lines behave as if about 144 of the 200 base cards had parallels, or as if they were set for about 235,800 packs (1,179 x 200) rather than 169,650. Topps' note at the top of the sheet says a player on the checklist isn't guaranteed to appear in every parallel, so some base cards may have none. Or about 28 percent of each run stays out of packs.

Topps' own pack description doesn't settle it either. A full ladder is 188,800 numbered base parallels, more than 169,650 packs can hold at one parallel a pack. Even if every pack has exactly one, as Topps' product page says, the Rookie Design Variation and insert colors take about 4,970 of those slots, which leaves about 164,700 base parallels, 87 percent of a full ladder. Read as printed, the sheet puts about 134,100 in packs, 71 percent. Either way, the base ladder isn't all in packs.

Everywhere else the ladders run much closer to full. The Rookie Design Variations sit at about 96 percent of every tier. The Super Futures, Ivory Red Trim and Pitch Black Pairings Red lines are 98 to 99 percent full, the Depth of Darkness Red 96 percent and the main autograph Red 98 percent. The softest numbered lines outside the base ladder are the lower autograph colors covered above.

The one-of-ones tell the same story set by set. If every card in the product had a Superfractor (or Home Field's Black Refractor), there would be 542. The odds put about 478 in packs: all of them in the five Superfractor sets that set the pack count (that's the assumption the count rests on) and in Home Field, 108 of 111 main autographs, 39 of 40 Nocturnal, 29 of 30 Rookie Design Variations, about 27 of 30 Damascus, and about 144 of the 200 base cards.

The cards with no print run

Topps gives no run for the base set or for the base version of any insert or autograph set, and its previews of a base card, a Damascus and a Depth of Darkness show no serial number. At 169,650 packs, here's about how many of each card are in packs:

The base set's only line on the sheet is Base Cards at 1:1, which doesn't say how many base cards a pack holds, so its count is what's left of each six-card pack after every other line on the sheet. Every parallel, variation and insert line adds up to about 0.91 a pack, which leaves about 5.09 base cards: 169,650 times 5.09, divided by 200, is about 4,320 copies of each base card. If every pack has exactly one parallel, as Topps' product page says, it's 6 minus 1 minus about 0.09 for the variations and inserts, or about 4.91 base cards a pack and about 4,170 copies of each. Either way that's about 830,000 to 865,000 base cards in all. The autographs don't count against the six, since each box's autograph is its own 13th card.

The base autograph range runs from the sheet as printed (1:7, about 24,200 in all, 218 per signer) down to the figure that makes exactly one autograph a box (about 22,800, 205 per signer). That makes the base version the most common autograph in the product, a little more than a quarter of all of them.

Topps doesn't say whether the base versions of the smaller autograph sets are numbered, and for two of them the odds leave room for it. The Paint It! base, at about 9.4 per signer, would fit a /10 with about 94 percent in packs, and the Super Futures base, at about 96 per signer, a /99 with about 97 percent in packs, close to the 98 to 99 percent of that set's numbered colors. Numbered or not, some base versions are scarcer than numbered cards in their own set. The Paint It! base sits between that set's Red /5 (about 4.5 per signer in packs) and a /10. The Pitch Black Pairings base, at about 25 per card, is close to a /25 and more common than that set's Orange (about 18). Home Field, at about 48 per card, is the scarcest insert base, about as scarce as a /50.

The rarest pulls

The toughest line on the sheet is the Pitch Black Pairings Dual Autographs Superfractor at 1:12,118 packs, about one in 6,060 boxes. There are 14, one for each pair, among them Ichiro and Jeter and Yamamoto and Ohtani, and the pack count rests on all 14 being in packs.

Next come the Paint It! Superfractors at 1:8,929 (19 cards, about one in 4,460 boxes), then the Home Field Black Refractors and the Depth of Darkness Superfractors at 1:8,482 each (20 cards apiece, about one in 4,240 boxes), the Super Futures Superfractors at 1:7,711 (about one in 3,860 boxes) and the Damascus Superfractors at 1:6,284 (about one in 3,140 boxes).

At the other end, a base Superfractor is the easiest one-of-one to find, at 1:1,179 packs, about one in 590 boxes, followed by the main autograph Superfractor at 1:1,571, about one in 790 boxes. Counting every one-of-one line, the odds put about 478 in packs, about one every 178 boxes.

What to watch

The things we're watching: serial numbers on the base Refractor and Green (to settle /199 or /200 and /99 or /100); whether the base parallels cover all 200 base cards, since the odds only account for about 71 to 72 percent of each tier; whether the Home Field Black Refractor is numbered 1/1; serial numbers on the autograph Refractor, Blue, Green and Purple, and on the Ivory Orange Trim and Pitch Black Pairings Orange; whether any base version of an insert or autograph set is numbered; and whether DAM-29 turns up, since Topps' checklist skips it and is still marked subject to change. We'll update this piece if any of that changes.

The full checklist and every parallel with its odds are on the 2026 Topps Chrome Black Baseball release page, and you can track what you pull in HobbyMonitor Collections.

---

This is not financial advice. These are cards. The data and analysis are here to inform. You make your own calls.

This article was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed before publishing. Always verify latest market data, stats, or news.

Published: April 2026