On a humid Aug. 12 night in Queens, New York Mets star Pete Alonso launched a four-seam fastball from Atlanta's Spencer Strider 394 feet into a Citi Field crowd of nearly 40,000.
And for the first time in 37 years, Darryl Strawberry was no longer the Mets' home run king.
Alonso’s franchise-leading 253rd home run — he’d add No. 254 later that night — not only helped lift the Mets to a 13-5 victory over their division rivals, it unlocked a collaboration between the team, trading card manufacturer Topps and third-party authenticator PSA that had been planned for months.
The first 15,000 fans through the gates Sept. 21 will receive a Citi Field-exclusive Topps NOW card celebrating Alonso’s home run record. A select few fans, along with special-event ticket holders, will score tiered PSA-graded cards that include short-printed parallels or game-used memorabilia.
New York’s Alonso giveaway is far from the first to feature trading cards, but it is the first partnership between Topps, PSA and a professional team for one event.
Work on the collaboration began in March with early conversations led by Mets senior brand manager Josh Cohen and PSA director of marketing Neil Hicks. Cohen, an avid collector, hoped to incorporate graded cards into the celebration of an upcoming milestone.
Alonso entered the 2025 season 26 home runs shy of Strawberry’s franchise record. Outside of the shortened 2020 campaign, Alonso has never hit fewer than 34 HRs in a season.
“It was really about how to make this the most fun for fans. What’s the best fan experience that we could give them?” Cohen told cllct. “Maybe we can create value here for a new asset or giveaway that hasn’t existed before.
“Our ownership group has really pushed us to think outside the box in terms of how to engage fans, how to bring people into the ballpark. So this is a way to bring some of those collectors that maybe aren’t necessarily Mets fans, but are looking for something cool and unique to come out, and then also for our fans to celebrate an amazing milestone.”
For Cohen and Hicks, the goal was to create something that resonates with current collectors but could also create new ones.
Professional teams have created custom trading cards in the past, but those giveaways are typically low quality.
“I kind of proposed the idea of something that’s very unique and has a chase element, make this actually a collector’s item where there could be a secondary market for this card ...” Hicks told cllct. "Not just something that people are going to kind of have as a throwaway giveaway, but create something that’s a little bit more unique for the fans.”
It quickly became clear partnering with Topps was the easiest path to create any card with a high print quality and a chase dynamic.
The Topps NOW print-to-demand program, which allows fans to purchase cards commemorating specific events during a limited release window, was the perfect match.
Topps NOW releases already regularly incorporate short-printed parallels and chases including game-used memorabilia and autographs, and Alonso’s milestone would be the type of moment the program would target anyway. The non-Citi Field variation, which was sold directly to fans for $11.99, had nearly 21,000 orders earlier this month.
Though NOW cards are more simple than traditional Topps sets, the digital printing process provides a high print quality with a fast turnaround. According to Topps senior VP of product Clay Luraschi, the company is able to design and print a collaboration such as the Alonso giveaway in roughly 10 to 14 days.
From there, several thousand will be sent to PSA for grading and inclusion in a tiered system with six levels. (Mets owner Steve Cohen is a prominent investor in PSA's parent company, Collectors.)
The lowest level, Tier 6, includes the gate giveaway base card, while higher levels feature short-printed variations, including color-matching Blue or Orange parallels, and the Tier 1 game-used relic made with pieces of Alonso’s batting gloves.
Between 2,500 and 3,000 cards included in the giveaway are expected to be graded by PSA. To date, 85% of the more than 4,400 cards from 2025 Topps NOW Baseball authenticated by PSA have earned Gem Mint 10 grades, according to third-party grading tracker GemRate.
Any success from the activation — including any interest in the cards on the secondary market — could help reshape how card giveaways are deployed by professional teams moving forward.
According to Hicks, there’s a clear path to replicating the giveaway elsewhere, and it could be a key moment if PSA is involved in the authentication process.
“I’d love to see this program extend to every MLB team, every sports league including the NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLS, you name it,” Hicks said. “I think there are so many important and key milestones that are hit within every major professional organization out there, and if we can be involved with it — to bring some joy, bring additional collector value not only to their fans, but collectors around the world that follow those teams — I think that would be a very exciting venture for us at PSA.”
For Topps, the giveaway will hopefully put the NOW program’s flexibility and versatility on display. Trading card collecting has long been linked to America’s pastime, and an even deeper connection could be made when cards are associated with important moments rather than random packs.
“We would love to do more Topps NOW programs throughout different stadiums in the league, because we think it’s a great way to not only get people into this wonderful hobby, but it’s a great way to commemorate an event that they could potentially be at,” Luraschi told cllct.
“I bet a lot of people that get that card on that day at Citi [Field] were at that game. So now they have something that they can hold on to forever, a memento that they can connect with at a moment they were part of.”
“We have milestones every year, throughout the baseball season, and if we can find ways to commemorate that for fans and create a new asset as it relates to fan engagement, that’s awesome,” Cohen added.
“People love bobbleheads, but this, I think, really is a unique thing that people hopefully will be really into and will want to see more of.”
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture. He was previously the Collectibles Editor at Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on X and Instagram @benmburrows.