Beckett Sports Card Hot / Cold – July 23, 2022

Welcome to another edition of Beckett Sports Card Hot/Cold where we take a fun and quick look at what’s hot and what’s not in the worlds of sports cards and sports. Baseball’s back after the All-Star break, NFL training camps are about to start and the hobby is about to descend on Atlantic City for the 2022 National Sports Collectors Convention.

No shocker here, but 2021-22 Panini Prizm Basketball continues to be the big recent release. The initial wave of excitement may have past but this one has legs, even with its delayed offseason arrival. Although the official release day for 2021 Donruss Optic Football, 1st Off the Line boxes had been surfacing before that, enough so to show that collectors are still okay chasing the 2021 rookie class. Like Prizm, this one should be popular for a while.

Julio Rodriguez might not have won the Home Run Derby, but the rookie’s electric showing in the early rounds combined with his hot play entering the All-Star Break has made him the buzziest player in baseball cards. At least it did. The young Mariners superstar has missed the first couple of games since the All-Star Game due to a sore wrist. It sounds like it’ll be more of an extend rest but it still might be enough to temper the hobby buzz for a bit.

It’s getting harder to overlook Yordan Alvarez. The slugger continues to mash the ball and is up to 28 homers on the season. He’s also batting a very respectable .310.