Happy little trees, meet the hardwood.
On September 24, Topps and the NBA posted the same eight images: Stephen Curry mid-drive in front of a Bob Ross sky, Cooper Flagg in Mavericks white against snow and pines, and a caption that read, in full, “Happy Little Trees! We’re honored to partner with the estate of Bob Ross to create a set of incredibly special NBA trading cards. Topps x Bob Ross: The Joy of Basketball is coming soon!”
That is the whole announcement. It is enough to know the set is real and what it looks like, and not enough to know when you can buy it or what it costs. Here is what has been shown, what has not been said, and where we have put it on the calendar.
What was shown
The cards use Bob Ross paintings as the backdrop, with players cut in over the scenery. Across the eight images, collectors have picked out Cooper Flagg, Dylan Harper and Kon Knueppel from this year’s rookie class, plus Stephen Curry, Jalen Brunson and Victor Wembanyama. The Curry card shown is an autograph. Parallel names visible on the cards include Easel numbered to 75, Indian Yellow to 25, Crimson Red to 5 and to 10, and a Midnight Black one-of-one, all named for colours off a Ross palette, plus an insert called Budding Talents.
If you know the baseball version, that lines up. Topps ran 2025 Topps x Bob Ross: The Joy of Baseball with the estate last year, and this is the first time the collaboration has crossed into the NBA. The baseball release came as a Collector’s Box of eight ten-card packs with two autographs, and a single-pack Happy Little Box. Nothing says basketball will follow that format; it is only the precedent.
What has not been said
No release date. No price. No box configuration. No checklist. Topps’s own words are “coming soon,” and as of this writing the product is not on the Topps release calendar, has no product page, and no retailer we can point to has an official pre-order. Anything you see quoted for any of those is a guess or a placeholder until Topps says otherwise.
We will not put a number on the calendar that Topps has not announced. That has been the rule on this site from the start, and it is the reason the calendar is worth checking.
Where it is on the calendar
It is on the release calendar now as “to be announced,” with a note saying exactly that, and a link to Topps’s announcement. The row is set up so that when Topps lists the product with a date, the calendar picks it up on its own and fills the date in on the same row. If you subscribe to the calendar feed, the date lands in your calendar the morning it is announced, without you doing anything.
When the date, price and configuration do arrive, this post gets an update line at the top and the calendar row gets its own product page.
Why it matters this week
Cooper Flagg is the cover card of this set on the same day his NBA Debut Patch sold for $8,040,000. That is not a coincidence in the sense that matters: Topps is building its NBA year around the same rookie class the market just put a price on, and The Joy of Basketball is the first set announced since that sale. Flagg, Harper and Knueppel are all on these cards. Three of the four Debut Patch cards that closed overnight were theirs.
For a set with Bob Ross on the box, the pressure is on the paintings to carry it and on the checklist to be worth chasing. We will know more when Topps does.
Sources
- Topps’s announcement on X, September 24, 2026: Happy Little Trees, and the same post with the NBA on Instagram
- Card details read from the announcement images: Sole Retriever, Checklist Insider
- The baseball set: Sports Illustrated on The Joy of Baseball
