2026 Topps Five Star Baseball: The Complete Odds, Parallel, and Print Run Breakdown

2026 Topps Five Star Baseball goes on sale October 28 at 12pm ET through an EQL draw on Topps' site, and Topps posted the checklist and the odds sheet on October 22. The sheet is short: 92 lines in a single Hobby column, odds only, no print runs. Topps' preview cards fill in part of the ladder, and the one-of-one lines on the sheet do the rest. They put about 54,510 cards behind the sheet, or 9,085 boxes, and from there we can check every tier, count the cards Topps gives no run for, and find the lines that don't add up, starting with a base card numbered to 50 that the odds only put about 36 copies of in boxes.

The box

Topps' product page lists six cards in every box: five on-card autographs numbered to 199 or less and one base card numbered to 50 or less. Every case also includes two autograph relics and one color-ink autograph, and Topps says every card in the product is numbered. Topps doesn't list how many boxes make a case, so the figures here stay per box.

The sheet doesn't say whether its odds are per box or per card, but the numbers only work one way. Read per card, the six base set lines (the base card and its five colors) add up to one in every 6.0 cards, which is the one base card in each six-card box. Every other line adds up to about 5.2 of every six cards, the five autographs. So the odds in this piece are per card, and a box is six of them.

Read as printed, the lines add up to about 6.17 cards a box: 1.01 base cards and 5.16 signed cards. That's a little more than Topps' six, and even the most generous reading of the sheet's rounding only brings it down to 6.04, so the counts below are, if anything, a touch high.

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

The Active and Retired Autographs make up about 3.2 of the five signed cards in an average box. The sets under Topps' autograph relic heading (Jumbo Prime, Fabric, Quintuple Relic, Dual Autograph Patch, Rookie Cap and Award Winners) add up to about 0.68 a box, about one every 1.5 boxes.

The checklist

Topps' checklist, still at version 1, runs 750 cards across 23 sets.

The base set is 100 cards, from Shohei Ohtani at #1 to Noah Schultz at #100. It mixes current players with legends like Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle and Walter Johnson. Topps tags 29 as rookies, among them Munetaka Murakami, Tatsuya Imai, Kazuma Okamoto, Konnor Griffin, Kevin McGonigle, Roman Anthony, Samuel Basallo and Travis Bazzana.

The other 650 cards are signed. Not counting the cut signatures, 207 different people sign. Roman Anthony and Nick Kurtz are each in 12 of the 23 sets, counting the base set, and Jac Caglianone is in 11.

Under Topps' autograph relic heading:

• Five Star Autographed Jumbo Prime Cards, 73 players, five of them rookies.
• Five Star Fabric, 37, three of them rookies.
• Five Star Quintuple Relic Autographs, 15, each with five memorabilia pieces, including rookies Roman Anthony and Christian Moore.
• Five Star Dual Autograph Patch Cards, 10 pairs, among them Cal Ripken Jr. and Gunnar Henderson, Ozzie Smith and Masyn Winn, and Bobby Witt Jr. and Jac Caglianone.
• Rookie Cap Patch Autographs, 17 rookies, each in an MLB Logo and a Side Logo version. Topps' checklist lists both under Jackie Robinson Day. Topps' odds sheet lists five cap events for each logo: Jackie Robinson Day, Armed Forces, Independence Day, Play Ball Weekend and Players Weekend. Topps' product page calls these one-of-one cards with MLB Logoman and side-logo patches from in-season hats.
• Award Winners Autograph Relics, six: Aaron Judge, Drake Baldwin, Nick Kurtz, Paul Skenes, Shohei Ohtani and Tarik Skubal, plus an Image Variation of all six.

The autographs:

• Five Star Retired Autographs, 78 cards, the biggest signed set.
• Five Star Active Autographs, 68, 41 of them rookies.
• Leaderboard Legend Autographs, 38, new this year. Topps' preview of Paul Skenes is captioned "2025 ERA Leader".
• Apex Autographs, 34, also new, from Sandy Koufax, George Brett and Mike Schmidt to rookies Konnor Griffin, Roman Anthony and Samuel Basallo.
• Five Tool Phenom Autographs, 34.
• Five Star Golden Graphs, 33, and Five Star Silver Signatures, 31.
• Stars and Stitches Autographs, 26.
• Quotable, 25.
• Baseball Royalty, 17, from Sandy Koufax, Nolan Ryan and Reggie Jackson to Ohtani, Skenes and Elly De La Cruz.
• Five Star Dual Autographs, 16 pairs, including Ken Griffey Jr. and Elly De La Cruz, Vladimir Guerrero and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Shohei Ohtani and Sadaharu Oh.
• Five Star Triple Autographs, 11 trios, including Roger Clemens, Nolan Ryan and Paul Skenes, and Kevin McGonigle, JJ Wetherholt and Konnor Griffin.
• Welcome to the Club Dual Autographs, a single card of Shohei Ohtani and Barry Bonds.

Five Star Cut Signatures, 57 cards, sit under Topps' relic heading. Most are baseball, from Cy Young, Honus Wagner and Ty Cobb to Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and Jackie Robinson, but the list also has three presidents (James Monroe, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy), Arnold Palmer, Jane Goodall, Milton Berle, and Bud Abbott and Lou Costello on separate cards.

The base ladder

Odds per card. Topps prints no runs on the sheet, so the runs below come from Topps' preview cards where there is one and from the odds where there isn't:

Every tier is spread over the same 100 cards, so if the runs are right, each tier's run times its odds should come out about the same. The Amber, Emerald, Onyx, Ruby and FoilFractor all land between 55,000 and 56,000, within 2 percent of each other. A wrong run would stick out: an Onyx at /15 would come to 84,000. The base version doesn't fit. At /50 its 1:15 comes to 75,000, about 35 percent more than the others. More on that below.

The autograph ladders

The autographs use the same colors, with two more on the Active and Retired sets: Amythist (Topps' spelling) and Gold. Topps' previews back up the runs at three tiers: a Fernando Tatis Jr. silver-ink autograph with an Amber frame is numbered 23/25, a Roman Anthony Quintuple Relic Autograph and a Bryce Harper Baseball Royalty are Rubies numbered 1/5, and a Jac Caglianone autograph and a Paul Skenes Leaderboard Legend are FoilFractors numbered 1/1. "Base" below is each set's own version with no color.

Odds per card:

Leaderboard Legend Autographs (38 cards) and Five Tool Phenom Autographs (34) have only a base version and a FoilFractor: 1:33 and 1:1,451, and 1:40 and 1:1,817. The rest are single lines: Dual Autographs 1:361, Quotable 1:443, Award Winners Autograph Relics 1:909, Cut Signatures 1:942, Triple Autographs 1:1,185, the Award Winners Image Variation 1:9,085, Welcome to the Club 1:54,512, and each of the ten Rookie Cap lines 1:3,207.

The same check works set by set. On the Retired Autographs, the Emerald comes to 47 x 15 x 78 cards, or 54,990, the Onyx to 54,600 and the Ruby to 54,600, all within 2 percent of the base ladder. Stars and Stitches (54,990, 55,900 and 55,380) and Apex (56,100, 55,420 and 55,080) line up the same way. On the Active Autographs the three come to 58,140 to 58,480, about 5 percent higher, so about 6 to 7 percent of each of those Active tiers isn't in boxes. Given that, /15, /10 and /5 fit the Emerald, Onyx and Ruby on every one of these sets.

Three sets break the pattern:

• Golden Graphs. Its Amber (1:165) is scarcer than its Emerald (1:158), the reverse of every other set but the Jumbo Prime Cards (below). At /25 the Golden Graphs Amber would come to 136,125, more than twice the base ladder. At the box count worked out below, it's about 10 copies of each card, the same as its Emerald.
• Baseball Royalty. The version with no color, 1:447, is scarcer than the Emerald (1:295) and the Onyx (1:376), and the Emerald works out to about 11 copies of each card, short of a /15.
• The Silver Signatures and Fabric Ambers. They work out to about 16 and 18 copies of each card, well short of a /25.

The Jumbo Prime Cards have a ladder of their own, odds per card:

Its colors run out of order too: the Amber is scarcer than the Emerald and the Onyx, and none of the three comes close to a /25 or a /15. Until serial numbers turn up, treat the Jumbo Prime runs as unknown. If each FoilFractor patch is a one-of-one, the four lines cover 48 to 71 of the 73 players, so not every player has every patch.

How many boxes the sheet covers

The one-of-ones settle it. Topps' FoilFractor previews are numbered 1/1, and Topps' product page calls the Rookie Cap cards one-of-ones. Multiply a one-of-one line's odds by its number of cards and you get the number of cards behind the sheet:

The last two lines fit as one-of-ones too: six Image Variations at 1:9,085 is one of each, and the single Ohtani and Bonds card at 1:54,512 is one copy.

The sheet rounds to the nearest whole card. 54,512 divided by 17 is 3,206.6 and prints as 1:3,207, and divided by 26 it's 2,096.6, printed 1:2,097. Allowing for that, every line in the table but the Active FoilFractor fits 54,512 cards, and the Active line is within 0.1 percent of it.

So the sheet covers about 54,510 cards, or 9,085 boxes. At six cards a box, 9,085 boxes is 54,510 cards, two short of 54,512, as close as whole boxes get. The Award Winners Image Variation line gives the box count on its face: six one-of-ones at one per 9,085 cards is 54,510 cards, and at six cards a box that's 9,085 boxes. That's 9,085 base set cards, one a box, and at five a box about 45,400 signed cards. (The sheet's own lines add up to about 46,900, 3 percent more, the same over-count as in the box section.) Because the sheet rounds to the nearest card, the counts in this piece are central estimates, good to about half a step of the odds either way.

Four lines point to a smaller run. Cut Signatures (57 cards at 1:942, 53,694), the Apex FoilFractor (34 at 1:1,579, 53,686) and the Retired FoilFractor (78 at 1:688, 53,664) only come out to whole cards at about 53,670 to 53,700 cards, roughly 8,950 boxes, 1.5 percent fewer. The Leaderboard Legend FoilFractor fits there as well, at 37 of its 38 cards (37 x 1,451 is 53,687). At 9,085 boxes those lines would put 57.9 cut signatures, 34.5 Apex FoilFractors and 79.2 Retired FoilFractors in boxes, more than the 57, 34 and 78 cards on Topps' checklist. A slightly smaller run fits those three lines exactly. An extra card in each set doesn't: 58, 35 and 79 cards at 9,085 boxes would print as 1:940, 1:1,557 and 1:690, not the sheet's 1:942, 1:1,579 and 1:688, and it wouldn't explain the Leaderboard Legend line, which comes up short of its 38 cards rather than over. Everything here uses 9,085 boxes. If the smaller figure is right, take about 1.5 percent off any count.

Not every numbered card is in a box

At 9,085 boxes, here's how much of each tier the odds put in boxes, using the base set's runs:

Across these sets the odds put about 96 percent of the Ruby /5s, 95 percent of the Onyx /10s, 93 percent of the Emerald /15s and 84 percent of the Amber /25s in boxes, along with about 505 of the 521 FoilFractors. Topps' note at the top of the sheet says a player on the checklist isn't guaranteed to appear in every parallel, which would cover a few percent. It doesn't cover the Golden Graphs Amber (40 percent of a /25), the Silver Signatures Amber (65 percent) or the Fabric Amber (74 percent). Either those runs are shorter than /25, or a good part of each set skips the tier.

Four FoilFractor lines print the same number. The Fabric, Golden Graphs, Silver Signatures and Five Tool Phenom FoilFractors are all 1:1,817, exactly 30 cards each, though the sets have 37, 33, 31 and 34 cards. Thirty one-of-ones in each of four sets is possible, but it could also be one figure repeated down the sheet.

The base card is the biggest gap. Topps' Willie Mays preview is numbered 24/50, and Topps' page says the base card in each box is numbered to 50 or less. At 9,085 boxes the 1:15 line puts about 3,630 base versions in boxes, about 36 of each card, or 73 percent of a /50. Working it the other way gives the same answer: every box has one base set card, 9,085 in all, the five colors take about 5,510 of them, and that leaves about 3,570 base versions, about 36 per card. Either way, if every base card is a /50 like the Mays, about 1,400 of the 5,000 aren't accounted for on the sheet.

The cards with no print run

Apart from the Five Tool Phenom preview below, Topps gives no run for the base version of any signed set, or for the Amythist, Gold and Jumbo Prime colors. At 9,085 boxes, here's about how many of each card are in boxes (boxes x 6, divided by the odds, divided by the cards in the set):

The Jumbo Prime colors are in the table above: about 4 to 7.5 copies of each card.

Several of these land near a standard serial. Quotable comes to about 5 per card, Award Winners to 10, the two dual sets and the Quintuple Relic base to about 9 (a /10 with a few missing) and Stars and Stitches to about 24. Topps says the five signed cards in a box are numbered to 199 or less, and nothing here comes near that: the most common signed card in the product, a Retired Autographs base version, works out to about 78 copies of each card. The short lines leave the most room. A 1:9 line could be anything from 1:8.5 to 1:9.5, so the Retired base could run about 74 to 82 per card, and the Active base, at 1:12, about 64 to 70.

The Five Tool Phenom doesn't fit its preview. Topps' Mookie Betts Five Tool Phenom, a base version with no color, is numbered 01/25. At 1:40 the odds put about 40 of each of the 34 cards in boxes, about 1,360 in all, more than a /25 on every card could make (850). Either the Five Tool Phenom base versions aren't all /25, or the 1:40 line is off.

The rarest pulls

The toughest line on the sheet is the Welcome to the Club Dual Autograph, Shohei Ohtani and Barry Bonds on one card, at 1:54,512 cards: one copy in all 9,085 boxes.

Next are the six Award Winners Image Variations (Judge, Baldwin, Kurtz, Skenes, Ohtani and Skubal), one of each, about one in every 1,514 boxes. Then the FoilFractors of the small sets: the 10 Dual Autograph Patch Cards come about once every 909 boxes, the 15 Quintuple Relic Autographs about once every 606 and the 17 Baseball Royalty about once every 534.

The Rookie Cap cards are one-of-ones by Topps' description, and the odds agree: each of the ten lines, MLB Logo and Side Logo in each of the five cap events, works out to 17 cards, one for each rookie. That's 10 for each of the 17 rookies and 170 in all, about one every 53 boxes. Any one line, the Jackie Robinson Day MLB Logo say, is about one every 534 boxes.

The 57 Cut Signatures work out to about one copy of each card, about one every 157 boxes.

Across the product, every FoilFractor, Jumbo Prime FoilFractor patch, Rookie Cap card, Award Winners Image Variation, cut signature and the Welcome to the Club card add up to about 980 cards in boxes, about one every 9.3 boxes. A base set FoilFractor alone, about 98 of the 100 in boxes, is about one every 93 boxes.

What to watch

The things we're watching: the first serial numbers on the Emerald and Onyx tiers (Topps' only Onyx preview, a Derek Jeter Five Star Fabric, shows no serial number on the front), on the Amythist and Gold and on the Jumbo Prime colors; the base versions of the signed sets, which Topps says are numbered but gives no runs for; whether the Five Tool Phenom base really is /25; whether the Golden Graphs and Baseball Royalty ladders carry the same runs as the rest; which cards are the case hits Topps describes, since the sheet doesn't mark them; and a second version of Topps' checklist or odds sheet, which could settle the Cut Signatures, Apex and Retired Autographs lines that point to a smaller run. We'll update this piece if any of that changes.

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

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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: October 2026