Chrome Original Series 5

Arriving on December 23, 2022, only four months after the fourth chrome installment and three months after Sapphire, Chrome Original Series 5 landed just before Christmas to pull the brand back toward a steady production rhythm after months of printing backlogs and industry delays. The checklist anchored itself firmly in the fifth series from 1986, taking eighty classic cards and pairing them with twenty fresh creations to assemble a round hundred-card base set. Overall print runs climbed visibly above the levels seen in Chrome 4.

Retail blasters retained an exclusive Black refractor numbered to 99, but Gold refractors, originally planned strictly as retail hits, ended up slipping into hobby packs as well.

The core checklist took forty classic 1986 paintings across the customary "a" and "b" pairings, numbered 167a through 206b, and appended ten brand-new paintings numbered 207a through 216b. Rather than adopting an auxiliary code to designate the new art, Topps allowed the sequence to climb uninterrupted, showcasing two pieces each from modern artists Brent Engstrom, Joe Simko, David Gross, Joe McWilliams, and Neil Camera. The vintage puzzle backs from the original 1986 run were omitted from the reverse sides, but collectors could pursue fifty C-name variation cards that added alternate identities to existing art at a rate of 1:100 packs.

Chase opportunities centered on a deep parallel rainbow ranging from unnumbered base refractors falling one in every three packs down to one-of-one Superfractors and printing plates, with tiered print runs encompassing Green and Green Wave at 299, Yellow and Yellow Wave at 275, Purple and Purple Wave at 250, Prism and Aqua Prism at 199, and X-Fractors at 150. A major talking point was the fifty-card No Blue Ink short print set, inserted at 1:1,986 odds across all pack types as an intentional nod to the famous 1986 printing error.