Topps launched its 2021 Holiday Baseball card set in November 2021, featuring special designs and inserts focused around the Christmas and holiday season. For over 70 years, Topps has been producing special sets around the winter holidays to celebrate baseball and the festive time of year.
The 2021 Holiday set continues this tradition, containing 252 base cards making up rosters for all 30 Major League Baseball teams at the time of production. For collectors of complete team sets, this provides a nice winter offering with all current players. As with most Topps Holiday releases, the designs on the base cards feature a wintry, Christmas-themed template rather than standard baseball imagery. Player photos are encased in colored snowflake borders with holly leaf edges.
Beyond the base cards, Topps packed this set with a fun assortment of specialized inserts meant to convey the holiday spirit. One of the most popular is the “Presents Under the Tree” parallel, featuring players dressed as Santa Claus holding boxes wrapped in their team colors. Only inserted 1 per pack on average, these Santa parallels fetch a premium on the secondary market. Other popular inserts include “Cookies & Milk” player cards laid out next to a plate of holiday treats as well as retro styled “Holiday Past” cards based on 1960s and 70s designs.
New for 2021, Topps introduced a “Holiday Homes” insert set transporting players to festive winter scenes. Ranging from 1-5 cards per player, these pose athletes inside snow globe dioramas or decorating Christmas trees amid falling snow. Outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. received the highest Homes count at 5 cards in different locations, while stars like Shohei Ohtani and Fernando Tatis Jr. also received multiple Homes inserts reflecting their popularity. When paired together, the home scenes can form larger winter landscape collages – providing fun for collectors to assemble.
While base rosters make up the bulk of packs, Topps upped the excitement for this release by beefing up the ratio of short printed parallels and hit cards. Findable at approximately 1 per hobby box on average, the “Snowflakes” parallel dresses base cards in a delicate lace of white flakes adding sophistication. Numbered to only 2021 copies, these proved very desirable for collectors chasing limited edition versions of their PC players. As a true chase card, Topps crafted a 1/1 printing plate autographed by Tommy Pham to end its Inception autograph checklist with extreme rarity.
Packaged in festive red and green designs clearly branded as a holiday product, the 2021 Topps Holiday Baseball set proved very popular upon its late fall release. While supply chain and printing issues delayed some shipments into early 2022, the finished product lived up to the highly anticipated release. Containing fun new insert sets combined with the traditional base cards and parallels collectors look forward to each year, the 2021 edition gave baseball card fans plenty of holiday cheer to unwrap. On the resale market, the set has maintained steady premium pricing reflecting its place among the most coveted winter releases in sports card history.
Overall, Topps’ continued production of annual Holiday Baseball sets is something fans look forward to each November. While future pandemic disruptions remain a risk, the 2021 edition showed the company’s commitment and creativity in delivering a memorable winter treat for collectors. The inserted dioramas, retro designs, and increased short prints all amounted to one of the most exciting Holiday releases in recent memory. For those lucky enough to open valuable hits pulling Acuña Jr. Homes or the 1/1 Pham plate, the set provided lifetime memories of sharing the holiday spirit of baseball cards.
