Inside the Pack: 2022 Topps Chrome Update Mega Box Review
I don’t open much modern product anymore outside of Topps Series 1. I pick up some blaster boxes here and there but beyond that, my collecting is mostly vintage-focused nowadays. But despite all that, for several years now, I am an absolute sucker for Topps Chrome Update Series. Maybe my affinity for the product stems from when I bought it in 2020 as one of the few products I could get my hands on during the pandemic. In any event, I make it a point to buy a few mega boxes every year.
This year, Topps released a hobby box version of the product for the first time ever. But, I stuck with my tried-and-true mega box, ordered as usual through the Target website. Sure, mega boxes are twice the price that they were when I first started buying the product, but there are also more cards per box. Each mega box comes with 10 packs of 4 cards, and each pack contains one purple refractor, which is not numbered.
When I say there are more cards, that’s true not only of the number of cards in a box but also the number of cards in the total production run. Odds of pulling something as simple as a Refractor out of this product are pretty difficult: at 1:150 packs, you’d have to open 15 boxes on average just to pull a regular refractor!
Much easier to obtain than a refractor, oddly enough, is a Chrome autograph. At 1:60 packs, they fall one in every six boxes, on average, and the last pack in my second box had an Ozzie Albies autograph.
For all intents and purposes, there are three types of inserts: Diamond Greats Die-Cuts, Generation Now, All-Star Game. The latter follows the design of the base cards, but has a refractor finish and pictures members of the All Star team in their special uniforms from the game. Generation Now is a fairly standard insert set. It’s the first of the bunch that is without about the weirdest, as the cards are not actually die-cut. They are the chrome version of the same set from the flagship Topps release, which were die-cut. You’d think they’d change the name of the set.
Opening Topps Chrome Update is never a get-rich-quick scheme. In fact, it’s hardly even a make-your-money-back scheme. But it’s a fun rip every year, will a purple refractor in every pack and easier odds to pull an autograph than a refractor.
