Tag Archives: memorabilia

Preview: 2011 Panini Threads Football

  By Sports Card Blog | August 6, 2011 - 6:07 pm |
3 Comments

With Panini tearing up the 2011 National in Chicago right now, it’s only deserved that I feature an up and coming Panini product. The NFL lockout is over which means it’s time to get to the gridiron and Panini Threads is ready to come back again for another year of NFL action.

Basing it’s product off past years, you will be able to find the always popular rookie letterman manufactured patch autographs amongst other main stays in the product. Now everyone knows by now how much I don’t like manufactured patches, but this is one of the few exceptions. I like the manufactured letter patches as it gives you a nice autograph and a little mini set to collect from your favorite player. I know it’s manufactured, but I like the way they are done.

But away from that, let’s look at the rest of the product. With 24 packs per box and 8 cards per pack you are in for quite a few cards with this product. Each box will yield 4 autographs or memorabilia cards with at least one of them being an autograph. It feels like this year when Panini says this, every other box has about 2 autographs and they seem to make sure there are 2 autographs in a box if one of them is a redemption which is nice. As far as autographs you can pull the aforementioned letterman autographs, rookie signature combos which go from duals to quad autographs, Gridiron Kings signature materials, and Franchise Fabrics signature materials. None of these are serial numbered extremely high so it’s always a nice addition to value.

You will also find 1 rookie per pack as has been a common theme with Panini this season. While I’m not a fan of making rookies so easily accessible, it is nice for the player collectors out there. You will also find 4 parallels, 2 Star Factor inserts, 2 Gridiron King inserts, and 1 each of Generations, Heritage Collection, Triple Threat, 2010 All-Rookie Team, and an addition insert.

Catch Panini Threads at your local shop on August 24, 2011 for probably the same price as last year as I can’t find a price yet.

Make sure to check out the official Panini Peek of 2011 Panini Threads football on their official blog.

Who wants to see the first boxes opened by Panini?

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Review: 2011 Panini Rookies & Stars Football

  By Sports Card Blog | July 29, 2011 - 9:56 pm | ,
17 Comments

2011 Panini Rookies & Stars may not be at the top of your list of products to break for this NFL season, but it appears to be better than you may think. It returns this year with 4 autographs or memorabilia cards per box with at least one of them being an autograph. You can find patches, jumbo jerseys, prime jerseys, just about anything in a box of this product. It features a 100 card base set with 50 base rookies which are only inserted 1 per pack.

The inserts are plentiful too with a homage to Donruss Studio with Studio Rookies, Longevity, and Freshmen Orientation amongst other insert sets. With a bunch of parallels and so low numbered cards, it’s definitely worth the time to check out this review and decide what you think about the product.

Base:

Inserts:

Memorabilia/Autographs:

Design:

The base design on this product is better than many other Panini designs. It features an action shot of the players on the front with a little bit of the background faded into a solid white background. This is a very clean base design with clean lettering along the sides. I believe this clean base design is great and should be in more products. The inserts look great too. Freshmen Orientation is great with the memorabilia embedded and Longevity looks much better in person then on scans that I’ve seen. Impressive. Now I do not like manufactured patch autographs with the autograph on the cloth…I would much rather have a sticker or on-card autograph as it’s cleaner looking. Also, the way some inserts look when they don’t have memorabilia embedded look really weird, like the one I have pictured. It’s just a weird shape with a symbol inside? That just looks lazy.

Checklist:

The checklist features 100 veteran base cards and 50 rookie base cards. You can pull rookies and stars hence the title of the product. But I find there are more rookies than stars when it comes to memorabilia and autographs. With the abundance of rookies, it may seem like it cheapens the product a bit as it’s harder to pull veterans of the game. Other than that, you can find all the top rookies of the game from the draft for this season so there is no complaints there. The base set and rookie set is reasonable as you just about get a full set in a box. So the checklist of players is pretty solid overall. I think it could use a few more stars.

Value:

Overall, the value appears to be there. It looks to be a mostly rookie driven product, as I don’t see much in the way of stars as far as the real value, game used and autographs, goes. But a good job is done with the rookies here as there are plenty of autographs and memorabilia cards to go around and you may get to pull a nice veteran as well. The patches are nice, there are nice jumbo swatches, and autographs from all the rookies you could want. The only problem I have is the lack of veterans but also a bit of a collation issue. There are 100 cards in a the base veteran set, I’m missing two from completing it and I have like 8 dupes. Just throw in the extra 2 next time, seriously, that’s a bit tacky. Other than that, this is a decent mid-range product.

Overall:

Overall, as I said above this is a very solid mid-range product. The base design is nice but there are still a couple of issues with insert designs and I still don’t like manufactured patch autographs with the way they are done now. The checklist is full of rookies but I feel like it could use more stars in the product to fill the stars void. The value is there, but mentioned with the above issues it could be a little bit better and get 5 stars across many of the areas. But overall, it’s definitely worth looking into as your next box of cards.

I’d like to thank Panini America once again for providing this box for me to review. Check out their new Facebook page here.

The contest for the manufactured patch autograph, my base doubles, and some inserts/rookies will be to tell me what you think of this product and tell me your honest opinion on manufactured patch autographs that Panini makes. I will pick a winner from a randomizer. One per person please!

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Preview: 2010-11 Panini Elite Black Box Basketball

  By Sports Card Blog | July 25, 2011 - 4:41 pm |
1 Comment

Black Box you say? Isn’t that a little box given to people who attend special card conferences and usually contain only the highest of high end players and cards? Don’t those usually sell on the secondary market for huge amounts of money that only Paul Allen may be able to afford? He’s the owner of the Trail Blazers and a former Microsoft head man in case you didn’t know that name. Well today, Panini announced the future release of this product next month with a stunning gallery of cards.

Well this is almost that product. Think about a box of Exquisite…probably on steroids, or at least some heavy duty vitamins. Better yet, combine Upper Deck Black with Exquisite and add in those steroids or “vitamins” or “the clear” whatever you want to call it. This product could be that epic.

At 7 cards per box and 1 pack inside that box we hope for epic hits and of course some solid design. It actually looks like a combination of everything their NBA players could put together in one great product. Every box will contain 3 autographs, 2 memorabilia cards, and 2 inserts. All those autographs and memorabilia cards? They are numbered to 149 or less. Those inserts? All 99 or less. This is the premium product for the premium collector.

Someone cue some AC/DC.

Inside you may find some of the first NBA Booklet cards numbered to 25 or less. How about Champions cards featuring a 5-auto card of the 1969 Boston Celtics or the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers teams numbered to just 10? Do you love Kevin Durant? Who doesn’t? A 10 card insert set called Thunderstruck featuring on-card autographs of Kevin Durant numbered to 10 each will also be featured. There will also be Elite Series Signatures with NBA autographs numbered to just 49 or less, Crusade with autographs, memorabilia, or autographed memorabilia pieces numbered to 149 or less, and other great insert sets signed on card as well.

With the design of some of these cards, my jaw has hit the floor with some of the most beautiful Panini cards to date.

August 31st is the date to get your paws on probably the hottest product of the year. No price has been released yet, but I’m expecting close to $400 for this product.

Seriously, these on card autographs blow my mind.

So does this 10 on-card autographed Kevin Durant subset.

More on card goodness in store for Black Box Elite basketball.

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Contest #3 Winners

  By Sports Card Blog | July 20, 2011 - 5:23 pm |
2 Comments

I’ll make this short and sweet for you guys.

The winner from the 2010-11 Totally Certified basketball review is the person who guessed closest without going over to the serial number 192. That would be….BA Benny with a guess of 177! We had a lot of people closer, they just went over the number :( Congrats BA Benny with another contest win! That’s two in a row.

The winner from the 2010-11 Zenith hockey review is the person who guessed closest without going over to the serial number 067. That would be….Ashley with a guess of 056! I believe that is RJ’s wife, a Twitter follower of mine. Glad to see a loyal follower with a win! Congrats!

I will be emailing each of you for your address and notice of winning. I think I still have yours BA Benny from the last time you lucky dog.

Thanks to everyone for entering and stay tuned for more awesome giveaways! I haven’t used the Wheel O Awesome in awhile…might have to break that out pretty soon.

And be sure to thank Panini America as well for sponsoring the site with great boxes to review. Every time I get a box to review from Panini, free hits from the product will be going out and others will be added to the vault for future prizes.

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Review: 2010-11 Panini Zenith Hockey

  By Sports Card Blog | July 15, 2011 - 6:25 pm | ,
15 Comments

2010-11 Panini Zenith hockey marks the return of one of the most favorite brands of all time amongst collectors. Donruss revived it in the mid 2000s after it was a staple of the industry in the 90s. It disappeared again for a short period only to be revived once again with 2010-11 Panini Zenith hockey. It brings back all your favorite parts of the product from the past, red and white hot parallels, Dufex which is now called Nufex technology, and of course the Dare to Tear rip card!

So with that introduction I would like to bring to you the official review of 2010-11 Panini Zenith hockey brought to you by Sports Card Blog. A big thanks and shout out goes out to Panini once again for providing this to review. I can’t ever do it without them, so I hope this helps you decide to want to buy a box!

Base:

Inserts:

Game Used:

Autographs:

Design:

The design leaves more to be desired. As I sit here in look at the base design of the product I feel like it is something that I have seen before, which I have. It looks almost exactly like 2005 Donruss Zenith baseball which I had the pleasure of opening at that time. The design is just too plain and abstract in my opinion. I see some differences from the older product but the basis is pretty much the same. I was hoping with the revival of the product maybe the design could be updated a little bit. I don’t hate the design but it’s nothing real new and nothing appealing about the base set. While most of the inserts are sharp, especially the ones using Nufex technology, a couple look kinda similar to other products.

Checklist:

The checklist is massive with inserts and has a nice combination of both young and old inside the packs. There are a ton of rookies you can collect from the checklist itself, plus even more rookies if you Dare to Tear your rip card. They put in some very nice stuff inside the rip card which would pretty much make you want to rip the rip card no matter what. It’s almost not even worth it to keep the jumbo card unless you collect the player. The game used and autographs you can pull from this product is laden with stars, I would even say you have a better chance at pulling a star hit in this product than Luxury Suite. Overall, a very solid checklist.

Value:

If I were to price this product over what I believe its worth to be, I would put it at around $70-$80 based off what you get from opening it. That is exactly where this product sits right now, so I believe it’s at a good price. The name on the checklist are pretty good and the rookies being numbered to 999 or below keep the value in the rookies. The only problem that may hurt the value is just the sheer number of products that have come out this year. Product after product has these rookies in them and it’s hurting the value a little bit. I believe Panini tried to fix this by putting in a billion rookies in every product. But still, there are a ton of rookies out there if you wanted a specific one. Otherwise, Panini does a great job on patches and a lot of on card autographs in this product. For what the box sells at, it’s worth a purchase.

Overall:

Overall, this is a pretty average product by Panini. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it has some value to it with the great checklist and the current great price you can find it for. The design leaves more to the imagination as a whole, but the Nufex technology is fantastic. The Dare to Tear rip card is awesome and Panini, I’m leaving it to you to bring back the box toppers. Box toppers add such great value to boxes because you could do anything with them. Put in short prints, Dare to Tear, jumbo autographs, game used, or parallels, anything you want. If every product had a box topper I would be a happy man. The value as it stands is solid so I would definitely consider picking up a box.

Now, it’s time for some hot pack ripping action.

Oh, by the way. The best part of the Dare to Tear rip cards is that it makes a great puzzle afterwards! Sorry Sidney Crosby, you are torn up.

Oh yeah, want a contest too? We’ll do another guess the serial number. This time you are guessing the serial number from the Jacob Josefson rookie that is numbered to 199. I hope I didn’t say it in the video, lol. Closest to the number without going over wins a prize pack from this product including the Gifted Grinders Jersey and insert, along with another insert or two from this product at my disposal. Any comments about the review will help your chances! (Not really, but it’s preferred!)

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