The first fully-licensed Topps football card set in a decade hit store shelves Wednesday. It’s a set that’s been years in the making, dating back to 2021, when Topps soon-to-be parent company Fanatics scooped up exclusive trading card licenses for the NBA and NFL from rival manufacturer Panini America. After years of waiting, Fanatics’ NFL deal officially began on April 1.
The first product under Fanatics’ new deal, 2025 Topps Chrome Football, is already being treated as one of the most significant sets of the ultra-modern era by collectors and dealers alike as prices began to climb before it was even released. It’s a sentiment that isn’t lost on Clay Luraschi, Fanatics Collectibles’ senior vice president of global product development.
“A ton of people have worked on this. It’s something that we put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into,” Luraschi told The Athletic. “We knew it would have some natural impact. We made sure that this had all the components that it needs to be a successful launch — better than successful, the best launch.”
After relaunching its licensed NBA portfolio with a lower-cost 2025-26 Topps Basketball set built on mostly paper stock cards for entry-level collectors, 2025 Topps Chrome Football arrives with sturdier and shiner chromium stock for a louder entrance. Topps Chrome has become one of the manufacturer’s most popular and versatile sets, making it ideal for a relaunch that needed to pack a significant amount of content into a limited release window.
With the 2026 NFL Draft happening later this month, Topps’ abbreviated 2025 cycle of football releases, which includes rookie cards for Cam Ward, Travis Hunter, Ashton Jeanty and Jaxson Dart, among others, will be limited to six sets: Topps Chrome, Topps Finest, Topps Signature Class, Topps Chrome Cosmic, Topps Chrome Black and Topps Resurgence. For comparison, Panini America released more than a dozen football products for the 2025 cycle while Topps has plans to release at least 23 basketball sets for the 2025-26 rookie class.
If relaunching an entire licensed category wasn’t enough, the first set also needed to introduce the first Topps Rookie PREM1ERE Patch Autograph cards and the first NFL Honors Gold Shield Patch Autograph cards, which are the NFL versions of the debut patches worn during an athlete’s first game and the gold Logoman patches, which have been worn by award winners in the NBA and MLB.
“I’m not concerned about overdelivering. Not concerned about that at all. What we’ve done is we made a great product that I think we’re very proud of,” Luraschi said.
“We are the producer of NFL trading cards and we need to give the NFL collector and the NFL fan at every level something, whether you’re entry level or whether you’re a high-end collector. Chrome is one of those brands, and this is another reason why we picked it, is it hits every different distribution channel (from retail stores such as Target and Walmart to local hobby shops and online stores), so you have lots of different types of collectors buying this product.”
Though trading cards are “in a completely different space than they were 10 years ago,” according to Luraschi, Topps Chrome’s original foundation has allowed the Fanatics Collectibles team to build out new programs and content as needed. The debut patch program originally launched as part of 2023 Topps Chrome Update Baseball and easily transitioned to a new version of Topps Chrome Football through a deeper relationship with the NFL. The set will also benefit from an expanded MVP Buyback Program, which allows collectors to trade in cards of the league’s reigning Most Valuable Player to participating local card shops and select retailers for store credit. For this season, cards of Matthew Stafford from 2025 Topps Chrome Football are redeemable for between $20 and $200 each.
Among the other key chases are the all-new Tecmo inserts, with designs inspired by the 1991 Tecmo Super Bowl video game, and the Kaiju set that draws inspiration from the Japanese film genre to depict star players as “monsters” on the field (both exclusive to Hobby configurations, meaning they can only be found online and in hobby shops rather than retailers such as Target or Walmart). Alongside its push to include more game-used memorabilia in key card sets, Topps has also made an effort to utilize more original artwork. The new Kaiju cards’ “monster” theme is carried throughout the set, though each player depicted is surrounded with local details, including Washington D.C. monuments for Jayden Daniels and a Philly cheesesteak for Jalen Hurts.
“We’ve been leveraging the incredible world of sports art for a long time, specifically a few years back with the Project series,” Luraschi said. “The other thing is what you’re seeing just in pop culture, whether that be anime or popping colors. We’re just speaking to that time that we’re living in. Sports art is a big piece of it.”
The hours after release will be key for Luraschi, who says work on building next year’s Topps Chrome Football will begin soon. Early feedback from collectors could help shape other products, including the possible use of popular chases in sets they weren’t originally planning for.
“Kaiju right now is not planned for any other sports, but everything I’m hearing and seeing so far is that people are going to want to see Kaiju in other sports … I’m going to learn so much in the first 48 hours on this product.”
Jalen Hurts’ Kaiju insert from 2025 Topps Chrome Football. (Image courtesy of Topps)
If secondary-market pricing is any indication, early interest from collectors for 2025 Topps Chrome Football reiterates that it could be one of the most coveted products of the last decade. Pre-orders for Hobby boxes (80 cards, including one autograph) and Jumbo boxes (132 cards, including two autographs) originally sold out on April 3 for $349.99 and $649.99 each. Confirmed pre-orders for those boxes have since flipped for as much as $999 and $1,799.99, respectively, on eBay. As of Tuesday, retailer Dave and Adam’s Card World was offering to pay $1,225 for Jumbo boxes, which it will later sell at a markup. Demand for Hobby boxes had been so high before release that the retailer sold pre-orders for $850 per box with a limit of one per household per day. That limited allocation had sold out by the time The Athletic had viewed them on Tuesday afternoon.
Hobby shop chain CardVault by Tom Brady and eBay are also among the major brands leveraging Topps Chrome Football hype. Brady is offering a personal FaceTime call to any customer who pulls an autograph of the seven-time Super Bowl champion from the release at one of the chain’s 14 locations during release week. Other major Topps Chrome Football bounties include a $20,000 reward to any owner of an NFL Honors Gold Shield Autograph pulled on eBay Live until May 12. The platform will also add an extra box to any break where select Kaiju and Rookie Helix cards are hit until April 28.
Luraschi is less worried about secondary-market success than collectors’ emotions when 2025 Topps Chrome Football finally drops.
“Not to sound too generic, but I want people to have the same excitement,” Luraschi said when asked what he considered a successful release. “I want people to have the same energy in their comments and how they’re feeling that this thing is back. That they feel that it’s a celebratory moment the same way (Topps) will on Wednesday. I want them to feel the same way.”
The Athletic maintains full editorial independence in all our coverage. When you click or make purchases through our links, we may earn a commission.
