Happy Hobby Sports Cards Podcast · David Gonos

🎙️Love/Hate Review: 2025 Topps Basketball & Topps NBA Living Set! - Ep. 2.42

October 31, 2025·36 min·2 clips

The Topps NBA Living Set starts with LeBron James as card number one, numbered 1 in a 1957 design.

David Johnson starts from a straightforward place: Topps finally has the NBA license, and that matters to him. He treats the return as a real hobby change, not just a logo swap. The show then settles into a love-hate review of 2025 Topps Basketball. First comes the love list. Then comes the dislike list. The structure stays loose enough to feel like a collector talking across the table while sorting through cards. He keeps bringing the conversation back to budget-minded buying, which is the lens he uses for the whole channel. He likes that Topps basketball can bring some of the old Topps baseball energy into a new sport. He also sees the release as a preview of what Topps football might look like when NFL cards come back in a few months. That gives the product more weight than a single checklist. The episode then shifts into the new Topps NBA Living Set. David asks listeners which players they are most excited about and whether they would buy LeBron now or wait for the secondary market. He notes that cards have already dropped fast after release, so his advice is to give the market some room before buying singles. He also mentions rumors that the product may have been printed heavily, and he treats that as a mixed result. On one hand, overproduction is not ideal. On the other, more retail availability could make basketball cards easier for kids and new collectors to find. He pauses for a quick plug for davidganas.com, where he points listeners to year-by-year rookie-card lists and eBay links. The plug runs long, but it fits the show’s collector-first, practical style. The episode closes with a direct ask for comments and reactions. David wants to keep the discussion going and fold listener thoughts into the next show.

As heard by us

David Johnson's Topps basketball discussion keeps the focus on availability, pricing, and the risk of buying too soon.

David Johnson frames 2025 Topps basketball as a real Topps NBA return, then sorts the set into what works and what does not. He keeps coming back to the practical collector problem: how easy the cards are to find, what overproduction might do, and why the early singles could…

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If you want a quick read on Topps' NBA comeback, start here.

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