Less than six months after expanding its trading card deal with Disney, Topps has delivered its first Marvel product with global distribution.
Anchored by a 100-card base set, sketch cards and voice actor autographs, 2025 Topps Finest X-Men ‘97 landed Wednesday to officially launch a new era of Marvel cards under the Fanatics Collectibles umbrella.
The pairing marries the famous Topps Finest brand, which is best known as the first mainstream product to feature a complete set of cards made with chromium cardstock, with Disney’s “X-Men ‘97” show, which debuted in 2024 as a revival of the popular “X-Men: The Animated Series” that ran from 1992 to 1997.
“We thought it was a really cool way to open the door to people that have maybe been used to collecting other brands for the last however many years and really introduce ourselves and show what Topps is about ...” Aaron Abrams, Topps’ director of culture and entertainment, told cllct.
“We wanted to give people an early and easy win that would give them that kind of love of set collecting instead of just trying to go after the biggest chase cards.”
Like many other flagship entertainment and non-sports releases, Topps Finest X-Men ‘97 arrives with a lean checklist geared toward set collectors — though it will feature plenty of chases, too.
Commonplace for the category, 1-of-1 sketch cards from popular industry artists will be highly coveted.
Topps also secured autographs from a number of X-Men ‘97 voice actors, including Ray Chase (Cyclops), Ross Marquand (Professor X), Cal Dodd (Wolverine) and Matthew Waterson (Magneto).
Dodd, Lenore Zann (Rogue), George Buza (Beast) are included signers that reprised their roles from the original series for X-Men ‘97.
“It’s important to get a legitimate chase,” Abrams said. “We live in a modern trading card world where that’s expected. The old Impel Marvel Universe didn’t really have any chase, and that was sustainable back then. But now if you put out a product with very little to no chase, it’s not going to be very well collected.”
For many, those high-end chases will be less of a focus, however.
According to Abrams, the goal for Finest X-Men ‘97 was to cater to both new Marvel collectors and those who have been fans of the X-Men franchise previously.
That meant keeping the price manageable — the $129.99 price point is relatively-low — compared to other recent ultra-modern entertainment and pop-culture releases.
The 2024 Star Wars Galactic Antiquities set, for example, released earlier this month with a retail price of $1,499 for nine total cards. Topps’ flagship Marvel Chrome set, which arrived as a limited UK release due to licensing restrictions, is now only available on the secondary market for around $500, according to Waxstat.
In addition to an entry-level price point, Topps had to carefully navigate how to pack as much nostalgia into the product as possible. Non-sports collectors, much more so than traditional sports fans, expect many of the finer details to be included with the top releases.
For these collectors, it’s important that annual and flagship releases feel much less like a roster update than their baseball, basketball and football counterparts.
“Is there a new comic book, a new character, a new storyline or a new movie that came out,” Abrams asked. “All the things that kind of add up to what you can do with a year-over-year set. Is there cool new art? Is there a new artist on the scene that’s really creating waves within the space?”
Artwork, more than anything, is especially critical for comic book-themed sets. The tie-in with X-Men ‘97 meant Topps was limited to assets from the show — new, original artwork is often preferred by many collectors — so the card compnay had to be especially creative in other ways.
For Finest X-Men ‘97, Topps attempted to add in key details through sets such as “Omega Level,” which features only the ultra-powerful Storm, Magneto and Jean Grey, as well as “DA NANANA NAAAA,” a nine-piece puzzle set meant to be a callout to the theme music.
To many Marvel collectors, the first few releases under Topps will be critical to the IP’s future in trading cards.
Marvel’s global card licensing shifted to Topps in 2024 following more than a decade with Upper Deck — though that run wasn’t perfect, a number of products were beloved by collectors.
Now, following decades of being primarily associated with sports cards, Topps will have to prove to entertainment and pop-culture fans that it deserves to make cards for iconic franchises such as Star Wars and Marvel.
So far, Topps has targeted areas it can improve the Marvel and Star Wars markets. Securing top autograph signers from the cinematic universes has been an important step.
Topps also hopes to limit IP oversaturation, something that has long plagued the entertainment market as sets for less popular movies, shows and brands flooded the market long after their original releases.
According to Abrams, finding the right brands, the right release cadence and the right product configurations won’t be easy, but the product development team is taking all of those things into careful consideration to make sure sets, both new and old, are highly collectible and hold value in the long-term.
“It’s just trying to strike that right balance of making sure that we’re doing right by the collectors, so that we’re not devaluing or causing inflation for the cards that already exist in market,” Abrams said.
“Creating a reason to exist for every year’s release is probably the big one … How do we make sure that the art that we’re using on one card is cool, unique and different, and that the value of last year’s card isn’t going to go down because there’s another Red Refractor /5 out there? We want to make sure that there is a reason to exist for every card in every set that we do."
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.