Merlin’s Gamers: Soccer’s Most Unique Insert Might Be Its Most Undervalued

When Topps introduced the Merlin’s Gamers insert in the 2023–24 Merlin UEFA line, it didn’t just produce another chase card, it introduced something that felt entirely new. The design looks more like a Pokémon battle card than a traditional soccer insert with energy meters, stylized power bars, and neon effects straight out of a video game interface. It’s bold, playful, and completely different from anything else on the market.

That difference matters. For the first time, a modern soccer insert isn’t borrowing from basketball or football; it’s borrowing from the global TCG world, Pokémon, Match Attax, Magic. Communities known for deep engagement and long-term collecting passion. Gamers is the first major soccer insert that feels at home in both spaces, and that crossover is one of the reasons it has so much long-term potential.

But what makes the Gamers line especially fascinating is how rare these cards actually are. The “base” Lightning Green Refractor shows up only once in every 35 value boxes. From there, the parallels get brutally scarce:

• Blue Refractor /75 — 1 in 363 boxes

• Fireworks Gold /50 — 1 in 545 boxes

• Fireworks Orange /25 — 1 in 1,089 boxes

• Bubbles Red /10 — 1 in 2,831 boxes

• SuperFractor 1/1 — 1 in 28,308 boxes

Those are premium odds. More restrictive than many inserts that have already become hobby staples. The supply is tight, and the design is memorable. Collectors just haven’t priced them like tier-one inserts… yet.

Part of the hesitation comes from the checklist, which is strong in talent but lighter in established superstar power than people might assume. Aside from Erling Haaland, who is unquestionably the global headliner, the 2023 Gamers set doesn’t include many players already cemented as elite hobby icons. The group is filled with quality names; Musiala, Rodri, Lautaro, Barella, Lewandowski, Salah, Julián Álvarez, but none outside Haaland have the gravitational pull that moves an entire product on their own.

And that’s exactly why Lamine Yamal stands out so dramatically. As the prized rookie of the entire checklist and one of the most important teenage prospects soccer has seen in a decade, Yamal gives the 2023 Gamers set its identity. His presence elevates the entire product. The sales back it up: Yamal’s SuperFractor 1/1 PSA 9 recently crossed the $41,000 mark, his PSA 10 Green Lightning parallels push into the high-hundreds, and even raw base copies regularly break the hundred-dollar threshold. He has already proven that Gamers can produce genuine modern grails.

But here’s where the opportunity lies. While Yamal has already risen, nearly every other player in the 2023 Gamers set remains astonishingly underpriced. That’s not because of talent; it’s because the rest of the checklist is filled with players who are emerging, not established… at least not yet. Arda Güler, now a central piece of Real Madrid’s future, routinely sells in the mid-teens. Fermin López, whose influence on Barcelona grows every month, sits around twelve dollars. Mathys Tel, one of Tottenham's most explosive young attackers, often sells for six or seven dollars. Désiré Doué, widely regarded as one of Europe’s most naturally gifted young midfielders, had a PSA 9 Gamers card sell in the low thirties. Lewis Miley’s Blue /75 went for around fourteen dollars. Even Rodrygo, a Champions League–winning forward at Real Madrid has had Gamers cards sell for pocket change.

The undervaluation doesn’t stop with prospects. Erling Haaland’s base Gamers routinely sell in the low teens. One of his Orange /25 PSA 9 copies sold for under $170, a price that feels unsustainably low for a short-print parallel of the most dominant striker in the world. Kevin De Bruyne has sold for under ten dollars.

This kind of imbalance, one player priced higher, everyone else lagging far behind, is exactly what the hobby saw in the early years of Kaboom and Color Blast. A single card establishes the ceiling, but the rest of the checklist doesn’t catch up until collectors recognize the importance of the insert line itself. That moment hasn’t happened for Gamers yet, but the signs suggest it will.

What strengthens the long-term case even further is the 2025 Merlin’s Gamers release. Topps didn’t treat Gamers as a one-off gimmick; the line returned with an even more powerful set of headliners: Mbappé, Bellingham, Endrick, Nico Williams, Xavi Simons, Viktor Gyökeres, and more elite rookies and U23 stars. Two strong consecutive years is how insert lines transition from “interesting idea” to “permanent brand.”

Collectors often don’t realize the importance of early-generation cards until years later, when supply dries up and the rookie classes attached to those early inserts become global names. The 2023 checklist might not be loaded with superstars today, but it’s packed with the exact kind of players whose value grows exponentially when their careers peak. Combined with Yamal’s grail-level sales, the scarcity of the parallels, and the immediate sequel in 2025, Gamers is positioned to become one of the more distinct and collectible insert lines in modern soccer.

For now, though, that gap between perception and reality is the biggest advantage collectors have. The players who stand out the most in the 2023 Gamers checklist for me are Erling Haaland and Christian Pulisic. The two true established hobby names whose global relevance is already locked in. Haaland is the unquestioned superstar of the product, and Pulisic remains one of the most widely collected and culturally significant players in the American market.

Another factor that strengthens the long-term outlook for Gamers is the PSA population data for the set’s two most established stars. Erling Haaland has only 67 total graded Gamers cards across every parallel, including just 21 PSA 10s of his base Lightning Green and a single graded Superfractor. For a player with one of the largest global collector bases in the hobby, those numbers are remarkably small.

Christian Pulisic is even lower at only 45 total graded copies, with just 8 PSA 10s of his base version and single-digit pops for every short-printed parallel, from Blue Lightning to Gold Fireworks and even Red Bubbles. For a player as widely collected as Pulisic, that level of scarcity is rare.

What these numbers show is simple: 2023 Merlin Gamers remains dramatically undergraded. Even the biggest names in the checklist have shallow graded populations, which means very few high-grade examples exist in the open market. If demand for this insert grows the way early Kaboom and Color Blast eventually did, the limited early PSA supply of players like Haaland and Pulisic could escalate quickly. Another signal that Gamers is still in its “early opportunity” phase.

The combination of scarcity, strong rookie class, cross-category design, and early grail sales creates a perfect storm. It’s unusual that a set with this much structural strength remains priced this low, but that moment in the hobby, when a line is still misunderstood, is often the best time to buy.