Topps closed the 72-hour on-demand window on its Fernando Mendoza 2026 NFL Topps NOW Card #FMEN with a final print run of 126,501 copies — a figure Topps confirmed itself on X after the sale tallied up. That single number, printed on an $11.99 base card commemorating Mendoza's selection as the No. 1 overall pick by the Las Vegas Raiders on April 23, resets what an "on-demand" print run actually looks like at the top of the curve. It also forces a recalibration of how every other 2026 rookie card should be priced.
(One housekeeping note before going further: the Topps product page title currently reads "PR: 126581," which appears to be a listing typo. Topps' own announcement and downstream reporting both use 126,501, and that is the figure we'll use here. Separately, at least one outlet printed Cam Ward's 2025 figure as "300,006" — a clear typo for 30,006. Numbers in this category travel through a lot of copy-paste, and the primary product pages are the only sources worth anchoring to.)
The new ceiling, in context
Before Mendoza, the Topps Now all-time record belonged to Victor Wembanyama's 2023-24 Rookie of the Year card, which Topps announced at 113,777 copies in May 2024. Sportico and cllct both reported the milestone at the time. That Wembanyama figure had itself displaced a Shohei Ohtani Dodgers-signing card at 107,541.
Three things change with the Mendoza print run:
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The all-time ceiling rises roughly 11% in 24 months: 107,541 (Ohtani) → 113,777 (Wembanyama) → 126,501 (Mendoza).
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For the first time, a non-baseball, non-basketball card holds the all-time Topps Now record.
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The category that just produced the record — NFL Draft — was, by Topps Now standards, a niche category as recently as twelve months ago.
The year-over-year NFL delta
The cleanest apples-to-apples comparison is the No. 1 overall pick from the previous draft. Cam Ward's 2025 Topps NOW Football #D-1, commemorating his selection by the Tennessee Titans, closed at 30,006 copies — a number independently confirmed in Sports Card Investor's listing for the card.
30,006 → 126,501 is a 4.2x year-over-year jump for the same slot (No. 1 overall, identical on-demand window, identical $11.99 base price). That is not a trend; it is a step change. Some of it is Mendoza-specific — a Heisman winner going to a major-market franchise — but the size of the gap is too large to be explained by any single-player narrative. The structural read is that the audience for an on-demand NFL Draft card has materially widened, and one year of comparable data is not enough to know where the new equilibrium sits.
What "on-demand" actually means at six figures
Topps Now was originally pitched as a scarcity product: a moment-driven card sold only during a short window, with the final print run set by demand rather than a pre-announced cap. That framing still holds for the long tail of the program — most Topps Now cards print in the hundreds or low thousands — but at the top of the curve it has stopped functioning as scarcity in any economically meaningful sense.
The hobby-relevant inflection bands look something like this, using verified Topps Now reference points:
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Sub-5,000: True moment scarcity. Most player-specific milestone cards live here.
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5,000 – 25,000: Strong demand, still selectable as a collectible-grade base. The 2024 Tom Brady Netflix Roast card landed at 12,969; the 2024 Diamondbacks "Beekeeper" card hit roughly 17,000.
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25,000 – 75,000: The card becomes a print artifact of a national moment. A 2023 Topps Now Ronald Acuña Jr. "40-70 season" card printed 36,544; the 2024 $1 "Dollar Dog" promo hit 44,270, though that one was price-distorted rather than demand-distorted.
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75,000+: Functionally an unrestricted base parallel. Ohtani-to-Dodgers, the Wembanyama Rookie of the Year card, and now Mendoza.
Comparable mid-curve figures are reported in cllct's coverage of the Wembanyama record. The structural observation underwriting the "unrestricted base parallel" framing is that the top roughly 5% of Topps Now cards account for the majority of the program's volume — the line is driven by a small number of celebrity-and-moment cards, not by a broad demand curve.
At 126,501, the Mendoza base card has more copies in circulation than most flagship base rookies have had inside a hobby case break season. Calling it scarce is a category error. It is a $11.99 sticker on an event.
The Chrome ladder is where the scarcity actually lives
The 126,501 figure unlocked the full Topps Chrome parallel ladder on the Mendoza print — including a 1/1 Superfractor that, per Topps' standard mechanic, will be awarded to one randomly selected buyer of the base card. That ladder is where the genuine scarcity sits: numbered Chrome parallels, autographed short prints, and the Superfractor itself are population-constrained by design, and they are the cards that will set the long-run secondary market for this player on this product.
The collector-guidance point follows: do not conflate the base card with the ladder. A raw, ungraded 126K-print Mendoza is volume. The 1/1, the autograph short prints, and the numbered parallels are different assets with different supply curves, and they should be priced against player performance rather than against the print run that produced them.
The 2026 wax overlay
The print run does not exist in a vacuum. 2026 is the transition year for NFL trading-card rights. Panini's NFL license expires October 1, 2026, making 2025-26 its final NFL year and bringing the long-running Prizm Football flagship to a close. The Hobby Wire covers the broader wind-down dynamic; Pristine Auction's blog walks through what the 2026 transition shelf actually looks like for rippers.
Topps, meanwhile, has begun rolling out its first on-card NFL flagship Chrome product, with pre-orders that opened April 3 and a street date in mid-April. The practical effect: the 2026 Draft wax environment is structurally softer than 2025's was, with pre-sale-versus-current-price softness visible across hobby-box trackers. Anyone trying to put a precise number on that softness should pull live data from a tracker — Waxstat's 2026 Panini Prizm Football hobby box page is the right starting point, and figures should be re-sourced at the time of any transaction rather than carried over from older write-ups. We are deliberately not citing a specific percentage band here for that reason.
One directional observation worth carrying forward: Prizm Draft cards (collegiate-licensed, no NFL marks) have historically traded at a meaningful fraction of their NFL-licensed equivalents once the licensed product hits shelves. In a year when both the licensed product and the no-license "Draft" product exist side by side, and when the licensee is changing hands, that discount is a more important variable than usual.
How Mendoza was actually printed
Worth noting for collectors evaluating the rest of the 2026 Topps Now Draft checklist: Mendoza did not attend the draft in person, so the on-stage live-signed Topps Now autograph format that debuted this year for picks who did attend did not apply to his card. Sports Collectors Digest has the operational context on which prospects signed which formats. The Mendoza #FMEN is therefore the standard on-demand release; the signed and serialized inserts on his ladder are mechanically distinct from the live-signed autos on cards for other picks. Beckett's 2026 Topps Now NFL Draft checklist covers the broader release for reference.
Implication for every other 2026 RC
The 126,501 number does not just reset expectations for the Mendoza base card. It resets the implied floor for the entire 2026 rookie class on this product line. If the No. 1 overall pick anchors at six figures on an on-demand base, the downstream first-rounders — Bailey and the rest of the top of the board — should be modeled at lower but still-elevated print runs that, by recent historical standards, would have been remarkable on their own. "Rare" on Topps Now in 2026 means something different than it did in 2025.
For the collector evaluating a 2026 Topps Now NFL Draft card today, three guardrails:
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Price the base card as a souvenir, not a scarcity. The print run is the print run, and at the top of the class it is large enough to function as an unlimited parallel for years to come.
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Concentrate position-taking on the Chrome ladder — numbered parallels, autographed short prints, and the Superfractor — where supply is actually constrained by design.
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Re-source any percentage claims about wax softness from a live tracker at the moment of transaction. The 2026 license-transition environment is moving fast enough that figures from even a few weeks ago should be treated as directional, not as quotes.
The 126,501 figure is a clean, primary-source data point. Treat it that way. The narrative around it — what it means for the floor of every other rookie card from this draft, and for the on-demand product format itself — is still being written, and the next twelve months of secondary-market data will say more about the new equilibrium than any single moment-driven release can.
Related reading
Sources
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Topps (X) — Mendoza #FMEN final print run announcement (126,501)
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Topps — Fernando Mendoza 2026 NFL Topps NOW Card #FMEN product page
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Topps (X) — Wembanyama Rookie of the Year card sets prior record (113,777)
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Sports Card Investor — Cam Ward 2025 Topps Now Draft base (PR 30,006)
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Sports Collectors Digest — Mendoza, top prospects sign first Topps NOW cards
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The Source — Topps NOW debuts real-time signed cards at 2026 NFL Draft
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Heavy.com — 2026 Topps NOW NFL Draft cards (note: contains a typo on Ward's print run)
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The Hobby Wire — 2025 Prizm Football and the Panini NFL license wind-down
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Pristine Auction — Best football card sets and boxes to rip in 2026
Note: This article contains AI-assisted content and has been reviewed in our editorial workflow.
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