EVERY TIME I GO TO THE CARD SHOP I PICK UP ONE CARD OF RONALD ACUÑA AND ONE OF TRAE YOUNG. I WOULD PROBABLY GET THESE CARDS WAY CHEAPER ONLINE BUT IT'S MORE FUN TO HUNT MY PREY IN THE WILD. ON THE MOST RECENT TRIP* WHERE I WENT ON THE FIFTY CENT BINGE THESE WERE MY ATLANTA SUPERSTAR CARDS OF CHOICE
2022 PANINI CHONICLES OBSIDIAN RONALD ACUÑA
SO NORMALLY WHEN I CHOOSE A CARD FOR MY ACUÑA COLLECTION I PICK UP A CHEAP CARD I DON'T ALREADY HAVE WHICH MEANS LOTS OF FLAGSHIP BASE CARDS. MONEY IS TIGHT AND IF THE CARD COSTS MUCH MORE THAN A BUCK I HAVE TO THINK THRICE ABOUT IT. THERE'S BEEN A DONRUSS PARALLEL WITH TINY STATUES OF LIBERTIES ON THE BORDER IN THE BOX FOR MONTHS I REALLY WANT FOR THE LOL VALUE BUT IT'S NOT FUNNY ENOUGH FOR FOUR BUCKS WORTH OF LOLS. THIS ONE WAS ONLY A COUPLE OF BUCKS AND HAS HAS AN EXCELLENT DOLLAR TO SHINY RATIO. I HAVE STATED MY LOVE FOR THIS PRODUCT BEFORE AND I'LL TAKE ANY OF EM THAT I CAN GET
AS WITH MOST PANINI PRODUCTS I LOVE THE FRONT, NOT THE BACK. I LIKE THAT THEY COMPARE RONALD TO A VIDEO GAME CHARACTER THOUGH. TECMO BO OF BASEBALL, GET READY FOR A 70-70 SEASON FROM ACUÑA THIS YEAR NOW THAT HE'S 100%
2021-22 OPTIC TRAE YOUNG T-MINUS
FINDING A CARD WITH TRAE YOUNG AND A GODDAMN SPACE SHUTTLE BLASTING OFF TO THE MOON MADE ME REACT LIKE A TEX AVERY WOLF. AWOOOGA! OOH DADDY. THAT'S ONE THING ABOUT PANINI, WHEN THEY HIT ON A DESIGN THEY HIT HARD. I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS CARD AND IT'S PROBABLY MY FAVORITE TRAE THAT IS NOT A SLABBED ROOKIE. THIS APPEARS TO BE AN OPTIC-ONLY INSERT AND I HONESTLY WOULDN'T MIND PICKING UP A FEW CHEAP PARALLELS FOR A MINI RAINBOW
FOR AS TRASH AS MOST PANINI CARD BACKS ARE, THIS ONE IS EXTRA AMAZING. THERE'S A WHOLE ASS ROCKETSHIP CONTROL PANEL FROM A 50'S SCI-FI MOVIE ON HERE. POWER LEVEL, BLINKY LIGHTS, MANDATORY LOGOS, SHINY RED CANDY-LIKE HISTORY ERASER BUTTON. THIS GOOFY-ASS CARD MAKES ME SO, SO HAPPY. THIS ONE ALSO WASN'T THE CHEAPEST IN THE BOX BUT I'VE LEARNED THAT SOMETIMES YOU GOTTA SPLURGE ON THE GOOD GOOD STUFF EVEN WHEN YOU HAVE A LIMITED BUDGET. THIS YEAR HAS BEEN TUMULTUOUS FOR THE HAWKS BUT I STILL FEEL LIKE TRAE'S READY TO BLAST OFF
*WHICH IS NOW NO LONGER THE MOST RECENT TRIP AND THIS IS NOW BECOMING A SERIES OF POSTS
I, like many others out there, got a press release from Panini today. It's a buncha lotta boring stuff about their upcoming products and their first football product under the new license. It's sort of tedious. The first thing you see in the e-mail are some pics of their Prestige rookies like this one:
Typical crummy Donruss design that puts more focus on where the sticker autograph or relic piece that you won't get on the cards you pull is supposed to go than if the thing actually looks decent or not. I ain't gonna lie, that card looks terrible. Tip for Panini designers: if you can cut the card in half and vastly improve the look of the card, you're doing it wrong.
(non-SP ugliness just for Canuck)
Enough with complaining, I haven't liked Prestige since the '90s and I didn't expect this year to be any different. Here's the text of the press release, you can read it if you like or scroll down below to see my take on the whole thing:
PANINI AMERICA ANNOUNCES MULTI-YEAR TRADING CARD DEAL WITH NFL AND NFL PLAYERS
2010 NFL Product Debuts Today With Panini Prestige Football
NEW YORK, NY (May 13, 2010) – Panini America (www.paniniamerica.net), a subsidiary of The Panini Group, the leading global publisher of sports and entertainment collectables, announced today that the National Football League and NFL PLAYERS (the marketing and licensing arm of the NFLPA) has awarded them a multi-year trading card licensing agreement and license for Stickers/Sticker albums. The 2010 NFL season marks the first year Panini will produce NFL Trading Cards under their new agreement. Panini produced NFL Trading Cards after purchasing Donruss Playoff in 2009.
“Panini has beenaggressive inthe U.S market and done aphenomenal job,” said Leo Kane, Vice President of Consumer Products for the NFL. “We are pleased to make available new products to our collector fan base including Adrenalyn, and sticker and sticker albums.”
Panini kicks off its 2010 NFL Trading Cards with its 2010 Panini Prestige Football product, which will be released today. It will be the first time the 2010 NFL Rookie class will be featured on NFL Trading Cards. Prestige will include autographs of top NFL Rookies autographed to 100 or less including Sam Bradford, Tim Tebow, Ndamukong Suh, Gerald McCoy, Golden Tate and Colt McCoy to name a few.
“We are excited to have been awarded an NFL and NFLPA license. We are committed to introducing NFL Trading Cards to a whole new generation of NFL fans and building new collectors,” said Mark Warsop, CEO of Panini America. “The NFL is one of sports premiere properties, and we are enthusiastic about introducing NFL trading cards on a global level.”
The Panini Prestige Football release will be followed by the release of other Panini Football products including: Donruss Elite, Score Football and Panini Classics Football – all before NFL Training Camps open. Panini expects to announce several agreements with NFL Players as the face of its products in the coming weeks.
“We look forward to continuing our partnership with Panini America. They’re focused on engaging kids, attracting new users and increasing brand awareness. These elements, coupled with a strong rookie class, is a recipe for success,” said Karen Austin, Assistant Vice President, Trading Cards and Collectibles for NFL PLAYERS.
As a leading global publisher of sports and entertainment collectables, Panini has license agreements with three of the major U.S. sports, including the NFL/NFLPA, NHL/NHLPA and an Exclusive Trading Card and Sticker Partnership with the National Basketball Association (NBA). Panini’s other partnerships include an exclusive license with FIFA for the 2010 and 2014 World Cup, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and with four-time NBA Champion Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers. Panini also has a successful collectibles business with consumer brands including DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon, Disney’s Toy Story 3, Hannah Montana and High School Musical, and Warner Brothers’ Harry Potter.
Did you read all that crap? I sure didn't. I was able to get this far:
and license for Stickers/Sticker albums.
Let me repeat:
LICENSE FOR STICKERS/STICKER ALBUMS
It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time!
YAAAAAAAAHHHHH STICKKEEEEERRRRRSSS!!!!!!
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Topps, you're getting left behind. You'll probably have to bring back Topps Total to compete with this one.
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.
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.
I got a package covered in customs forms and Canadian stamps yesterday. It was from Ernest of Canada who offered to send me some interesting stuff. THAT IT WAS. There was a pack of complete randomness (and I mean complete randomness) and also another pouch of four unopened packs. Here are three of them, the fourth is being saved for a video rip.
2008-2009 NHL LNH Panini Hockey stickers
Since Panini is now officially selling card in the US (the first Prestige pack I saw at Target with the Panini logo unnerved me greatly) it's appropriate that I now have a packet of stickers to bust. One net thing about these is that they are pretty huge for stickers. Almost the size of 1975 Topps mini cards. Maybe this will help me sort out my hockey crisis.
2008-2009 Panini FUTEBOL stickers
Well these are obviously soccer- uh, football... uh futebol stickers. Is there futebol in Canadia? I'm clueless. Watching the FIFA Fed Cup games this past weekend I learned two things: watching real quality international footsieball is awesome, and I know bugger all about how the sport works. For example: The Pursuit of 80'sness sent me a bunch of sticker packets and I planned to save them until some big soccer thing was going on. Then I blew it and remembered them in the second half of the US-Brazil match. I'm going to get my act together and post 'em all this month.
1986 O-Pee-Chee
O-Pee-Chee is all the rage right now and I'm sort of jonesing for some '86 Topps right now so this is pretty much the perfect pack.
Plus it's got my favorite anti-drug message on back! GET HIGH ON BASEBALL!!!
The NBA just booted Topps and Upper Deck from their card licenses and gave an exclusive to Panini.
Yeah, the guys who make the stickers.
Now, this murders off Topps and Fleer basketball, two sets I've liked for decades, so I'm not terribly happy about this. However, after seeing this quote from The Sports Card File:
There have been overtures made by both Topps and Upper Deck during the past year to the NBA requesting a sole manufacturer license.
It seems to me that this is a little bit of karma biting them in the ass for squeezing Donruss out of their basball license a few years ago.
Of course monopolies are never good, and it's a concern that what works in the international market might not exactly work here. Then again, The history of basketball cards is littered with long stretches of nothin' followed by classic sets popping up to fill the void. And Donruss has shown quite definitively that there's money to be made with unlicensed products. So all is not lost, fellow hoops lovers. We have plenty to look forward to.
