I’ve always liked the “Icon” name and brand on Candy since they launched it a few years back. This year we saw a complete overhaul of the product and now the Icon set would no longer feature video highlights, which were only reserved for the new “Gems”. We’ve had three different Gem drops and in my mind I kept wondering how they were going to pull off the Icon drop later in the year, to make it compelling and stand up against the flashy new Gems. I think Candy has been nailing these drops this year, but does the Icon drop hit the mark?

Right off the bat — whoever is doing the designs in the Candy art department needs a raise. Arguably the best design work out there right now and the Icons are no different. The designs at every tier are eye popping and with differentiation from 3 different images, you’re not just chasing rarity tiers. A quick google search of the word filigree confirmed my suspicions that the backgrounds also will have animation in the designs, giving that “digital” edge, look and feel so it doesn’t feel like you’re just buying a static card online. If you have ever done Topps Bunt, some of the coolest things they do are with animations on the card designs and I am excited to see this come to Candy for the first time.

The way the new Icons are being released and presented really feels like an establishing of a “base set,” which I think works perfectly. It makes the Gem series feel even more like a premium tier product and locks in the rarity of those players in the video highlight card sets. If you bought a Gem of a certain player, you don’t get sniped by the Icon set here, which has a lot more cards per player. We see a return of the player having a card across each tier here, which had not really been seen yet with the Gems (outside of Uncut Diamonds)FOD Destin. This drives back to the base set sort of feel where you would have all 76 players at each tier. Within each tier though, we have the unique designs (which we started to see last season), along with the different image variations, which really feels like a nice overall collection. I also love seeing the callout to the City Connect uniforms being a focus within the drop. If we stay this course, we have a nice clear delineation within the product — Gems will be the “premium” sets and the Icons will be the “base” set to collect.

This release also feels like a very collector focused drop. The mint counts remain very low, even with Cores being /150; a big reduction from years past. As a collector, you can still put together the Core set, with animations on the Icons and still feel like you’re getting scarcity in the set and a quality product. The player selection of just the top 76 players across the league also feels like a good choice as well, reducing any speculation of seeing a return of fringe players making the way into a massive over-minted set. We also see only 2,287 packs available with 10 Icons per pack. Kudos to the Candy team all year for the commitment to long term building and not over flooding the minting machine. As we have seen all year, there is a focus on the best players in the best product with low mints and crafting of a curated set that is fun to collect.

The one area I would say feels like my only qualm is the pack structure. I love the chasers again, especially with the vaulted S1 packs. I am a huge fan of that idea of putting old packs into new packs as “chasers,” I just wish there were more of them. At $50 with 2 guaranteed rares at minimum, this feels like we will need something to prop these up in the long haul. If the recent activity has shown us anything, even at /150 mint count, we will see a good chunk of .50 flooring at some point for Cores, maybe even uncommons, but /75 is a much nicer sell there. Sure, it is not Candy’s job to dictate based on the secondary pricing collectors set, but it would be nice to see a little more load on the chaser front to help make the chase feel worth the pack price.

I’ve raved over the challenges throughout each drop this season and this drop is no different. We see a very nice mix with a rare+ set challenge for a Paul Skenes reward, which doubles for the Gunnar Henderson full set chaser, which is any tier set completion. Back is also the partial completion for an Elly De La Cruz reward for a nice mid-way point. One pack will get you nearly to the Elly reward itself. To me, this structure really helps prop value to the rares, since that set will get you all 3 rewards. The rewards themselves are featuring 3 of the hottest names of the season (outside of maybe Judge or Witt). Make challenges easy to be understood, with clear rewards that people want, featuring collectibles people will want to keep. This one again checks all the boxes for me!

Even with the aforementioned pack structure for $50 putting a bit of a toss up, between shots at chasers, legendary, epic, multiple rares and getting a big chunk of a challenge out of the way; I will absolutely be ripping packs. I love ripping packs and I want to continue to support the product in the way they’ve shown the focus to the collectors on the platform. This doesn’t feel cash grabby, nor has any drop this year. Icons feels like another brick in the long term build that we’re doing brick by brick. In general, I really like how they’ve fit Icons into the overall product structure. It protects and props up Gems, while still providing a high quality, digital base collectible for those who want it. I personally love set building, so I will certainly be working these. Oh and wen checklists for sets?

Until next time, collect more Icons, watch more Gems, tell more stories and we ride at dawn…

Rounding the Bases on the 2024 Candy MLB ASG Icon Drop was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.