The Ghost of Zombie Pacific Returns!

The big news today is that Finest is Live. That's the news that everyone cares about. As far as I'm concerned if the base cards look half as good as the refractors I may have to knock over a liquor store and pick up a case of these puppies. Actually, maybe saving up for a minibox is a better plan than committing a felony. Gimmie Gimmie I want, etc. at any rate.

The real news came in my inbox today though. I got on Panini's mailing list and they sent me something interesting. Some promo material on 2010 Pacific Crown Royale Basketball. Wait, Pacific is gone! They don't exist anymore! This is Panini Crown Royale Basketball.

FRIGGIN GOLD CROWN DIE CUTS!!!

Same foil pattern and everything! How can this be? I guess somewhere in the middle of Score gobbling up Donruss and then Playoff gobbling up Score and then Playoff deciding to be Donruss again and then Panini gobbling up Donscorayoff, one of 'em gobbled up the corpse of Pacific and Panini just found the million dollar Crown die-cutter in a warehouse somewhere and decided to take advantage of it. And I, for one, welcome our new Zombie Pacific overlords.

Here's a .PNG of the hobby box. It was originally a huge .GIF but I took a screenshot and squnched it down. You aren't going to see any of the product detail sell sheet because it is in PowerPoint format and eff that noise. Adobe is annoying but .PDFs are there for a reason, people. Here's what I can gather from the .GIF of the box.

There are 7 cards per pack.
There are 4 cards per box.
Autographs are on-card.
It's probably going to be a mid-high-end product.
By this I mean packs will likely cost Jacksons instead of Franklins.
Die-cuts will be prominently featured. 
Kobe is everywhere.
The packaging looks like it's straight from 1997.

Four out of eight of these things I approve of. Funny how a company known for stickers smartly isn't using them for autographs here. As long as they are bringing back Pacific designs, maybe they'll do some of Pacific's weirder designs and I can make a Royale With Cheese joke in a future post. Hopefully Panini can one day gobble up Upper Deck, get a baseball license and bring back Fleer. WITH STICKERS. I can dream, anyway.