Bustin' Boxes

2025/26 Topps Cosmic Chrome NBA Analysis & Deep Dive As usual, we were put back in that unenviable spot that we're becoming accustomed to…making big decisions with our ass before our head can get involved. Fortunately, we now have odds, right after we all attempted to drop racks on a product we were hoping might be good. This one's coming in hot, so if it's not quite as polished as usual, you'll survive. Here's what we know so far- people are "winning" an EQL. Like a lot of people. Regular people, not just pros & bots. Heck, in a wholly unexpected turn of events, I even scored 5 boxes on this EQL. Which immediately had me worried. Yeah, I know. I can't just take my rare W and move on. I have to question everything. It's my brain. I can't turn it off. So how could this be? This never happens. The way I see it, only one of two outcomes is possible. @Topps either fixed EQL and rooted out bots en masse... or they printed Cosmic to Uranus. Allow me to ease your fears, fellow skeptics. Cosmic is certifiably NOT printed into oblivion. This is a huge release for the fresh Topps Basketball license. But thankfully, it did not receive the Topps Chrome NBA treatment. Sooooo, did Topps FIX THE EQL??!!? I, for one, will remain hopeful until we see otherwise. And if that happens to be the case, I hope they utilize EQL for other major releases like the upcoming Bowman Basketball. Before we get lost in the weeds, let’s take a quick trip back to the last Cosmic Chrome NBA release…that unlicensed beauty from Wemby’s rookie year, 2023/24 Cosmic Chrome. Except it didn’t actually release until December of 2024. Which, last I checked, was not even close to his rookie year. But we’ll save that circus for another day. Most people would rather forget that product. It’s one of the rare releases that dropped in price after release. Weird, right? Wemby rookie autos and all. Panini didn’t even have those. Cosmic did…and still went down. And it’s not like the cards were ugly. They looked good. Very Cosmic. Some legitimately great inserts, which is kind of the whole point of the product. So why bring it up? Because the dynamics are eerily similar to what we’re about to see here, just with a couple added numbered parallels. We’re about to get another real-time reminder, just like we did with Topps Chrome NBA, of how much a license actually matters. And the answer is…a lot. Probably more than it actually should. 2025/26 Cosmic Chrome Total Cards in the Product: 6,355,200 For comparison: 2023/24 Cosmic Basketball- 5,203,400 (+22.1%) Since that basketball version was unlicensed, probably a better comparison is 2025 Cosmic Chrome Baseball- 5,470,560 (+16.2%) Though this represents more production than both prior Cosmic Chrome sets, it's also not an egregious increase. If you remember, NBA Chrome was printed at a clip of 32.7% over the prior baseball version. So this one coming in at only 16% more is very reasonable in my book. Production by format: Hobby 79,440 boxes (9,930 cases) 2023/24 Cosmic Basketball- 65,043 boxes 2025 Cosmic Baseball- 68,235 boxes Lunar Boxes: As is the trend, Lunar Boxes do exist. These typically contain one Lunar parallel /10 per pack. They didn't show up as a separate format on this odds sheet like they did on the baseball odds sheet, so we're left to estimate just a bit. Based on odds, there are a total of 2,080 Lunar Base cards produced. Lunar inserts are not called out on the odds sheet, but could very well exist as we've seen in past Lunar Boxes. If we estimate 20 Lunar Base cards /10 for each Lunar Box, this should get us very close to Lunar Box production. Therefore, we have ~104 Lunar boxes produced. In Cosmic Baseball, this figure was 147 boxes, so they should be considerably tougher to hit in Cosmic NBA. Hit Rates per Box: This is an extra fun category in Cosmic because there so many abnormal facets that make this product tick. Autos- 0.37/box (1 per 2.73 boxes, or ~3 per case). This is almost identical to the auto distribution in Cosmic baseball. Parallels- 4.7/box (Also ~2.4 Insert parallels/box, so total parallels/box comes to ~7) Inserts- 12.9/box Numbered Cards- 2.3/box Total Planetary Pursuits/case- 3 Total Rare Inserts/case- 5.33 Rare inserts have changed a bit from the Cosmic we are accustomed to. In addition to the typical Planetary Pursuits, we now have the following rare inserts (Print runs on each available further down): StarFractor Re-Entry Geocentric First Light HyperNova Cosmic Dust At the time of writing, I did not see the numbered parallel structure called out on the usual checklist sites. Those are as follows: Aqua Equinox /199 Purple Nebula /150 Blue Moon /99 Green Space Dust /75 Gold Interstellar /50 Orange Galactic /25 Black Eclipse /10 Red Flare /5 Superfractor /1 Value Map- based on pre-order price of $580/box: $/card- $7.25 $/Auto- $1,585.45 $/Insert- $45.06 $/# card- $254.52 Conclusions: This is Cosmic doing Cosmic things. Slightly bigger print, sure…but still limited. We just watched First Day Issue Cosmic sell out nearly $1k over drop price of hobby for a paltry two extra parallels. That should tell you everything you need to know about demand when you slap a real NBA license on this product. Where this product wins is exactly where Cosmic always wins: 1) The visuals go hard 2) The inserts chase is addictive 3) The top-end parallels get nuclear Those Planetary Pursuits of legit stratospheric names? Four figures may be a conservative estimate. Yeah, no auto hurts at this price. We all feel it. But let’s be honest…if they guaranteed autos in this, you're paying $1500+/box secondary. This isn’t Finest, which was actually pretty solid. This isn’t Topps Three (thank God). This is a collector-driven, star-powered, eye-candy monster…and the basketball crowd hasn’t had a proper one yet. And they're hungry. They're getting tired of buying exorbitantly priced Chrome Megas and Value Boxes. Like Mason Miller's new Korn intro...."Are You Ready?!" What Would the Squatch Do? What the Squatch did do is not hesitate. Full transparency, I maxed the 5-box EQL and didn’t blink. If this is your jam, you play. Simple as that. We just had pre-orders. There will be another drop in a month. It's worth a shot to try and get some at MSRP. This clears recent Topps Finest NBA in terms of ceiling, and that stuff is already $925+ a box. Cosmic will surpass that, probably with ease. Boxes are going up. That part feels inevitable. Breaks will be chaos. This is one of those releases where everything just… works. Cosmic doesn’t miss often. And when you finally give it a license and a basketball checklist? Yeah...this one’s going to punch harder than the baseball versions. And those already double in price like clockwork. Hidden Values No One Will Be Talking About 1) White Hole Refractors are unnumbered but limited to ~65 copies ea. 2) If you are a Planetary Pursuit chaser and want the rarest possible, as usual it is Pluto. However, there are only 2 less copies of Neptune printed, and only 5 less Uranus. And typically these are wildly discounted from the crazy Pluto pricing, even though they are almost equally as scarce. 3) Alien Autographs are an awesome new Auto Subset. The print run on the base of these, 40, is lower than the Gold parallels /50. Print runs: Base production- ~24,660 ea Parallels: Base Refractors- ~800 ea Base Nucleus- ~400 ea White Hole Refractors- ~65 ea Inserts: Galaxy Greats (35 card CL)- ~7,570 ea Galaxy Greats Refractor- ~1,260 ea Extraterrestrial Talent (25 card CL)- ~7,950 ea Extraterrestrial Talent Refractor- ~1,270 ea Propulsion (25 card CL)- ~7,950 ea Propulsion Refractor- ~1,270 ea Space Walk (15 card CL)- ~8,150 ea Space Walk Refractor- ~1,280 ea StarFractor (50 card CL)- ~55 ea Re-Entry (40 card CL)- ~50 ea Geocentric (30 card CL)- ~50 ea First Light (30 card CL)- ~50 ea HyperNova (20 card CL)- ~400 ea Cosmic Dust (20 card CL)- ~100 ea Planetary Pursuits (10 card CL for each): Sun- ~1,990 ea Mercury- ~485 ea Venus- ~250 ea Earth- ~125 ea Mars- ~66 ea Jupiter- ~33 ea Saturn- ~20 ea Uranus- ~10 ea Neptune- ~7 ea Pluto- ~5 ea Autos: Cosmic Chrome Auto Variation Refractor (48 card CL)- ~99 ea Singularity Signatures Refractor (46 card CL)- ~105 ea Alien Autos Refractor (32 card CL)- ~40 ea Electro-Static Signatures Refractor (30 card CL)- ~66 ea First Flight Signatures Refractor (29 card CL)- ~80 ea Cosmic Chrome Auto Variation II Refractor (2 card CL)- ~25 ea #thehobby #SlabSquatchAnalytics #2025ToppsCosmicChromeNBA