The Ins & Outs of the Lids-Exclusive Topps/New Era Promotion

As you may have heard, Lids recently launched a promotion on June 3 in conjunction with Topps and New Era where customers that purchase a New Era MLB headwear item will receive a pack of four Topps trading cards featuring the 2016 design. This promotion is exclusive to Lids and is only available in 800 stores (online purchases do not qualify).

The base set includes nine cards, featuring one card of each of the following nine New Era MLB ambassadors:

Bryce Harper – Washington Nationals
Jacob DeGrom – New York Mets
Andrew McCutchen – Pittsburgh Pirates
Joc Pederson – Los Angeles Dodgers
Buster Posey – San Francisco Giants
Kyle Schwarber – Chicago Cubs
Marcus Stroman – Toronto Blue Jays
Dellin Betances – New York Yankees
Josh Donaldson – Toronto Blue Jays

Click here to see the eBay listings for this set.

The base set also has three different parallel sets (which from what I have seen, was previously unannounced to the public). The parallels are Blue (numbered to 99), Green (numbered to 25), and Red (numbered to 1).

**As of this writing, no parallels have been listed on eBay.**

What Topps product would be complete without relic and autograph cards? This set does also include these two staples in our hobby but they’re not easy to come by. Each of the nine ambassadors has a player-worn New Era MLB Cap relic card numbered to 99 and an autographed relic card numbered to 1. There are apparently also logo patch cap relic cards (numbered to 1) that were unannounced. I have learned from a source that 440,000 packs were produced for this promotion and the amount of packs distributed to the 800 participating stores is not equal. One store I visited received four boxes of 100 packs and another store received only one box of 100. So, some stores may run out sooner than others.

Here are the unconfirmed odds of pulling each parallel or insert listed above:

Blue (numbered to 99) – 1:494 packs
Green (numbered to 25) – 1:1956 packs
Red (numbered to 1) – 1:48,889 packs
Relics (numbered to 99) – 1:494 packs
Autograph Relics (numbered to 1) – 1:48,889 packs
Logo Patch Relics (numbered to 1) – 1:48,889 packs

Personally, I have purchased quite a few hats to get these packs and I was lucky enough to pull a Jacob DeGrom cap relic card numbered to 99. However, I have not yet pulled any of the parallels or other inserts. I’ve also been following the eBay listings for these cards in hopes of finding a Bryce Harper relic card for sale and ZERO parallels and only TWO relic cards of any players have been posted as of yet.

Keep in mind that many of these packs will be handed out to customers who don’t collect cards (I know from experience as I was once a Lids Store Manager) and most likely discarded. These cards will not be easy to come by and for that very reason should make the inserts and parallels somewhat pricey on the secondary market.

At the moment, the Harper #1 is selling for $15-20, Posey and Schwarber are selling for $8-15 each, and the others are roughly $5 each.

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If anyone out there happens to have any of the Bryce Harper parallels, relics, or autographs from this set for sale or trade please contact me!