Best Rookies from 2023 Topps Series 1

Ryan Barone (@ballcardgenius, Card Expert) is a lifelong member of the hobby. He has been quoted in PSA Magazine, and his content has regularly been mentioned in “Quick Rips” (the Topps RIPPED Newsletter) and across other hobby publications. hello@ballcardgenius.com; Last Time Ago LLC dba Ballcard Genius.

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Somebody made this comment on one of my TikTok videos, and I tend to agree—this 2023 Topps Series 1 release brought us back to the good old days of baseball cards (albeit the junk wax era) in the sense that a release had all of the hottest rookies, and that was it.

There wasn’t really any wondering about who was going to be released in Series 1 or Series 2, or who had to wait their turn until Update came around.

Of course, there are exceptions. Ken Griffey Jr. wasn’t in the base set releases of 1989 Topps or 1989 Score, but was a big part of 1989 Upper Deck, Fleer, and Donruss.

Anyway, the point is, it’s great to see so many big-name rookies in this release. In fact, many of the most valuable cards from 2023 Topps Series 1 are of the rookie variety (and same can be said for the best series 2 rookies from 2023).

So, to help you keep tabs, I wanted to put this together, complete with a sortable table of all the rookies (and even this quick TikTok video if you wanted a quick rundown):

@ballcardgenius

♬ Baseball Hat – Official Sound Studio

In terms of the biggest name rookies in 2023 Topps Series 1, you have:

• Michael Harris II, Atlanta Braves
• Vaughn Grissom, Atlanta Braves
• Adley Rutschman, Baltimore Orioles
• Gunnar Henderson, Baltimore Orioles
• Christopher Morel, Chicago Cubs
• Brayan Bello, Boston Red Sox
• Triston Casas, Boston Red Sox
• Nolan Jones, Cleveland Guardians
• Riley Greene, Detroit Tigers
• Nick Pratto, Kansas City Royals
• Vinnie Pasquatino, Kansas City Royals
• Miguel Vargas, Los Angeles Dodgers
• JJ Bleday, Miami Marlins
• Brett Baty, New York Mets
• Shea Langeliers, Oakland A’s
• Liover Paguero, Pittsburgh Pirates
• Nolan Gorman, St. Louis Cardinals
• Matthew Liberatore, St. Louis Cardinals
• Gabriel Moreno, Toronto Blue Jays

My advice is that if you pull anything from any of these players, examine it to make sure it’s not anything more than a base card before you go doing anything with it!

The SSPs are easier to spot this year in my opinion, but there are still other sneaky parallels and other random baseball cards you’ll want to keep an eye out for.

One of the trickiest tend to be Vintage Stock parallels, which will feature a different Topps logo on the front of the card, a non-glossy finish that’s different than regular base stock, and a stamped /99 on the back.

Another one you might miss is the Advanced Stat parallel, which besides a different back of stats and a stamped /300, looks identical to a regular base card: