2024-25 Topps Chrome UEFA Club Competitions is being released over two months earlier in the year than 2023-24 Topps Chrome UEFA. This is the earliest Topps Chrome UEFA has been release since the inaugural set which was release in April 2018. That is the good news and Topps should be commended for that. Hopefully they get released even earlier so that we have more product released while more Champions League teams are still alive. That would help the market. The bad news is that Lamine Yamal is no longer a rookie, although Topps managed to get some of his rookie cards in this 2024-25 set. More on that in the review below. This is the first major hobby set that is being released that Yamal carried this year but won’t this year so it will be interesting to see how it does. Read the review below to get all the details of this year.
There are the unnumbered print runs beneath the review. If you don’t see one that means the print run is likely too high to matter. If you think I missed a low print run let me know and I will calculate it. Don’t ask me about auto print runs as they aren’t distributed equally so there is no way of knowing.
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2024-25 Topps Chrome UEFA Club Competitions Breakdown
Checklist – HERE
Print Run – ~10000 Hobby cases (~120,000 boxes) (Search On Ebay)
~3500 Jumbo Cases (~28,000 boxes) **Odds are weird on Jumbos as I think Topps screwed up the odds page. This feels about right based on where most of the odds are.
~13775 Breaker’s Delight Boxes (Search On Ebay)
Retail boxes (Blasters and Hangers) can’t be broken down individually but there’s a lot. If there are 150,000 blaster boxes there are about 60,000 hangers. If there are 100,000 blaster boxes there would be about 180,000 hangers just to give you an idea. If I had to guess the 150 and 60 seems right. (Search On Ebay)
Rookie Breakdown – Check out the 2024-25 Topps Soccer Rookie Card Breakdown for an in depth break down of the rookies.
SoccerCardsHQ Review – Let’s get the biggest problem with 2024-25 Topps Chrome UEFA out of the way early. Despite knowing they don’t have a Lamine Yamal type prospect in here currently they increased the print runs. They didn’t just increase them a little bit either. They increased the Hobby box print run by about 3000 cases, Breaker’s Delight by 1200 boxes, Jumbo boxes by 5000 boxes and even added hangers because just having blaster boxes apparently wasn’t enough. I fully understand that Topps well Fanatics is here to make as much money as possible. I just wish they would show a little more restraint in such an important product. It’s not like there is a shortage of boxes from last year when we did happen to have a generational type rookie.
Speaking of rookies let’s get into that problem as well. Two of the biggest rookies, Endrick and Ethan Nwaneri, in 2024-25 Topps Chrome UEFA aren’t true rookies. They are WOOKIES! For those that aren’t familiar with my work a Wookie is a player that has cards from the previous year but Topps and Panini put a RC on their version from a year(s) later. That said in this money hungry hobby the manufacturers get away with slapping a RC on anything because people treat them like they are. If everyone stopped doing that we would all be better off, but I realize I am shouting into a deep dark abyss. As for the rookies that are actual rookies you can check out the breakdown above because there are some interesting prospects. A couple that true prospectors will probably buy up now and wait a few years to profit. Just know that you’re way more likely to make money buying rookies that everyone else isn’t currently buying/hyping than you are following the crowd.
TIFO, Shadow Etch and White Noise come back as case hits with the additions of Helix, Munich at Night and Radiating Rookies. Helix and Radiating Rookies are popular in other sports. For TIFO, Shadow Etch and White Noise I think it’s best to look at what last year’s are selling for to get a gauge on what this year’s should be going for. There are less TIFOs and more White Noise but you will be able to get a rough idea. I think the print runs on the Helix should make them a chase but the print runs on the Radiating Rookies may be a bit too high outside the Superfractor of course. Munich At Night looks like the Berlin At Night cards from 2024 Topps Chrome Euro but Topps decided not to keep the super short print run for Munich At Night unfortunately. As a collector who is a big fan of the Berlin At Night cards (Search On Ebay), I wonder if this print run explosion will help or hurt those prices. If people didn’t appreciate them with a print run of 20 what will they do when there are 125. Not that 125 is too many. It’s much less than other case hits like Kaboom that get hobby love, but nobody has screamed loud enough in a break for a Berlin At Night yet to get people’s attention, I guess. At least Topps didn’t use any of the same players in both checklists. They also managed not to get a single player that made the Champions League Finals in the Munich At Night checklist. After the success in auction of last year’s UCL Trophy Superfractor, Topps not only decided to do another one but also add the Europa and Conference League Trophy Superfractors this year. Soccer Cards United had a good idea of putting the team that won the previous year on these cards to make them more collectible. If they just keep making them general, I think it just dilutes all previous ones. Not that they really care about that. One other insert that is interesting, but not a case hit, are the Bowman UEFA Youth League cards (Search On Ebay). If this is the precursor for a standalone soccer 1st Bowman set I am all for it. 1st Bowman hasn’t really taken off in soccer yet like it has in baseball but there are some players in here that are interesting. Final Destination seems to have taken the place of London Calling. I suspect there will be Hidden Gems but as always little info on those. Soccer Brush is a blaster case hit. They have a solid checklist but not sure they will be rare enough to hold value. Maybe that will help with the color parallels or maybe the none case hit inserts will keep getting treated like farting in the wind.
Hero Variations are back again this year. But like last year there will be plenty to go around, and most won’t be worth too much after the initial pump dies down. There isn’t a lot of info on the Club and Country variations (Search On Ebay) but they are going to be pretty rare so look out for them. We also get Hongbao (Search On Ebay). Hongbao are the red envelopes associated with Chinese New Year. As of right now I am not sure what the deal with these is.
Lionel Messi gets 2 more The Grail (Search On Ebay) cards in here and like the rest the print run on them is 50. Messi doesn’t have a base card and only has The Grails, Helix and Soccer brush for non-auto cards. As for his auto cards let’s hope the previews Topps used in promo aren’t the actual cards because there could be some PSA authentication issues. Cristiano Ronaldo doesn’t have any cards in the set. I don’t think it can be underestimated how much Topps UEFA soccer products have suffered since Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo no longer have many cards and if they do they aren’t playing days. It sucks a lot of excitement and more importantly value out of the sets.
There is some excitement surrounding the auto checklists this year. That is because Topps has done a decent job with the combo cards in both design and pairings. Topps added quad autos and booklets this year in addition to the duals and triples that we have seen before. For almost all the cards the pairings are from the same club team. That should make them much more collectible than some of the mashups we have seen in the past. There is even a quad of the CBS UCL Today pundits. Arsenal fans will really enjoy the auto checklist as Bukayo Saka gets his first Topps autos, Myles Lewis-Skelly gets a true rookie auto and Ethan Nwaneri gets his first autos. There are good rookie autos as well so that should help. There are also Lamine Yamal autos with a RC (Search On Ebay) on them as well. Yep that’s right Topps is putting 2023-24 Marks Of Excellence cards in 2024-25 products. I alluded to this a while back on one of my Walkin With HQ IG Lives since I noticed that there were a few missing numbers on Yamal Marks Of Excellence cards from last year. I’d like to think people will reject these as rookie autos, but I know better than that as referenced in the Wookie rant above. I would expect we will keep seeing Lamine Yamal Marks Of Excellence RC autos in future products. Maybe if we are really lucky Topps will save some for 2025-26 products. If you care EX-LY1, EX-LY2 and EX-LY6 are the ones that actually came out during his rookie year. There is also the debut of Sir Alex Ferguson Topps autos (Search On Ebay) in both Marks Of Excellence on-card and regular base sticker autos. While these will be highly desired by United collectors, beware we have already seen pics of him signing for other sets so I see no need to FOMO into these. The same can likely be said for George Weah autos. If we have learned anything in the past few years it’s that these highly anticipated legends autos fall as the market gets flooded. Oh and also the base auto checklist increased from 85 to 175 players.
In the end there is just going to be entirely too much of 2024-25 Topps Chrome UEFA Club Competitions. Even with last year’s much lower print runs and the explosion of Lamine Yamal rookie cards, you can still buy boxes for what they released for. Yes, hobby boxes are $20 cheaper this year but in my opinion that isn’t nearly enough to make up for the value lost as it currently stands. If I was a breaker I would just load up on cases of 2023-24 Chrome for essentially the same price and run “Are you guys sick of 2024-25 yet and want to hit Lamine RCs” breaks all day. In a hobby case on average, you are only going to hit one true color (non Lava) base Gold /50 or lower per case. If you are looking to hit true Orange /25 or lower it’s roughly 1 in every 3 cases and a base Super 1 in roughly every 107 hobby cases. Speaking of Lavas shoutout Topps for numbering them this year and making them the same print run as the base color. Saved me some work but also may help the Lava values. Ultimately, at least in the near term, people trying to sell this product to you are really going to have to hype up 2nd year Lamine Yamal cards. Topps did them a slight favor and put the Rookie Cup on them. You will be much better off in the long run spending whatever you planned on a Yamal 2nd year and get a rookie that costs the same. Maybe the ultra-rare stuff stands the test of time but are you really going to want a 2nd year Pink Lava 5 years from now?
All that being said I do think there are some rookies in here that in the future could make this a good product if they pan out. If this was an end of the year product like say Merlin and it had these rookies, I would be ecstatic. Unfortunately, if they are getting a rookie card this early in the release calendar there are likely many more to come. Keep an eye to see the ones that don’t. I would say that my rookie breakdown is as important as this review. I really am intrigued to see how this release goes after the initial euphoria wears off. Hey at least it won’t be as bad as 2024-25 Panini Prizm EPL and this has way more long term potential. There are some really cool cards in here but the overall value of ripping just isn’t there at the current price point. That said I don’t think the box prices will drop all that much because breakers will keep breaking. Good luck to everyone getting involved. Be wise and know that it’s OK to buy older year’s products or go after some rookies that everyone isn’t hyping.
Circle Of Power High Voltage ~1000
Circle Of Power Shockwave ~300 (Search On Ebay)
Helix ~95 (Search On Ebay)
Hero Variation – Can’t get an accurate PR but feels like 300
Munich At Night ~125 (Search On Ebay)
Radiating Rookies ~500 (Search On Ebay)
Soccer Brush – Can’t get an accurate PR but I feel safe saying at least 300 and more likely 375
Shadow Etch ~800
TIFO ~350
White Noise ~175 (Search On Ebay)
Youthquake ~500
If you have any questions reach out via social media @SoccerCardsHQ on Twitter, IG and FB. Want to read more about Erling Haaland Rookie Auto Cards?