The 2025 Topps Chrome Football set was released today, giving Topps its first licensed football cards since 2016 and its first under the new agreement with Fanatics Collectibles, the NFL and the NFL Players Association. The release arrives as the company tries to reinsert itself into a market it left behind nearly a decade ago.
The biggest draws are the Rookie PREM1ERE Patch Autograph cards and the Gold Shield patch program, both one of one. Tetairoa McMillan, Matthew Golden, Jaxson Dart and Cam Skattebo are among the rookies in the PREM1ERE group, while Josh Allen and Saquon Barkley are among the 2024 NFL Honors winners tied to the Gold Shield cards. The patches are not generic swatches. Each Rookie PREM1ERE card pairs a signature with an embedded first-appearance uniform patch, and the Gold Shield versions use the gold shields worn last season by the Honors winners.
Fanatics Collectibles has been building the set as a broad play for collectors, with Clay Luraschi saying the goal was to appeal to “all different types of collectors.” The checklist also runs from Caleb Williams and Drake Maye to Tom Brady, Jerry Rice and Barry Sanders, and includes hundreds of autograph cards. Fanatics said Maye had not previously signed licensed cards, which gives his inclusion a different kind of pull for set builders chasing something new as well as something rare.
Topps has also pushed the product beyond standard football-card design. The set includes Kaiju cards styled like Japanese monster movie posters and Tecmo Super Bowl cards showing pixelated versions of players from the vintage video game. Luraschi said the patch programs are meant to elevate the way Topps relic cards are used and to “go a level deeper and tell stories and connect these pieces of jersey to specific moments.”
That idea is already built into the product. McMillan’s first regular-season appearance for the Carolina Panthers against the Jaguars in Jacksonville on Sept. 7, 2025 came with a small PREM1ERE patch on his chest marked with the word premiere and the year 2025, turning a single debut into a card chase that is meant to feel personal. He later signed a card in front of an audience this month at the 2026 Topps Industry Conference, a sign that Topps is leaning hard into live moments as part of the story it is trying to sell. The question now is not whether the company has a flagship football set; it is whether these one-of-one relics and throwback inserts give collectors enough reason to treat topps football as a must-watch return, not just a novelty comeback.
