Box Break - 2009-10 Panini Hall of Fame Basketball

I've been looking forward to busting a box of this product since I first heard about it.  Not only are there a bunch of great players in there due to the checklist only containing Hall of Fame members, but there are also a lot of players who have never previously had autographed cards in a product.  There are also beautiful looking nickname signature cards.  As a basketball fan, this is pretty irresistible now that it sells for about half of the MSRP.  If I had the cash, this is something that I'd definitely love to break a case of.

I lost my original box break, but here's a recap of what I got:

Panini Prize Winnings

I’m a little late in posting this, but I now have my Kobe Bryant autographed card that I won in a Panini Adrenalyn related contest.  Upon ripping open the envelope this is what I found:

The card reads, “Once again, thx for coming out and taking such a great picture.”  For reference, here’s that picture again:

Technically, the contest called for a picture of yourself with the bus, but I snapped these pictures as my wife was taking our daughter to the car as it was starting to rain.  This stop was before the contest was announced so I was hoping that the judges would be lenient.  While I wasn’t anywhere to be found in the picture, I thought that it did a great job of capturing the coolest stop on the Adrenalyn Tour, the Basketball Hall of Fame.  So, I submitted the picture, waited and ended up being selected the winner of the contest.


The really cool thing about this prize was how it was shipped.  They didn’t just take the card, throw it in an envelope and ship it off.  This card came in a special box worthy of their big name exclusive.

Upon opening the box, this is what I saw.  This is a 2009-10 Panini Rookies & Stars Kobe Bryant patch autograph.  If you’re not going to get an on-card autograph, this is by far the next best thing.  The athlete touched the jersey swatch and it looks a hell of a lot better than a sticker, especially the gaudy silver ones.

Here’s a look at the back of the card.  The serial number is 128/199.  While I can’t say that I’m a huge fan of Kobe, you can’t deny his place in basketball history and now that LeBron ran off to Miami with his tail between his legs, Kobe is certain to be the best player of this generation.  It’s kind of cool to have an autograph of a player of that caliber.  That being said, if anyone out there had the patch autograph cards from Timeless Treasures of someone like Bill Russell or Larry Bird I definitely think that a trade could be arranged.

Thanks again Panini for an awesome prize!

Technorati Tags: Panini,Kobe Bryant,Basketball Hall of Fame,autograph

I’m a winner!

I got shut out when Topps celebrated their new online presence with a month of giveaways.  My daughter won a box of Hannah Montana from Beckett and a box of Signature Stars from Upper Deck.  I came close to winning a beautiful Bob Cousy autographed card, but I want a little overboard on my confidence in the Celtics and picked them to sweep the Heat which led to a low guess on points scored for the series.

That’s all changed a little bit recently though.  The first victory came out of the blue and wasn’t from a contest.  I just happened to be browsing the Topps Facebook page and noticed that someone had made a comment asking if they could return off-center Stephen Strasburg cards to Topps for replacements.  Topps replied to let the poster know that they would be replacing these cards if they were sent in.  Being the smart ass that I am, I replied that they could just send their cards to Beckett and have them graded as 9.5s.  I don’t see the comment on the Topps page anymore, but one person who saw it before it was deleted really appreciated it.

Steve Mandy from Attack of the Baseball Cards in Union, New Jersey sent me a message on Facebook letting me know that he found my comment very funny and letting me know that he wanted to send me some packs that Strasburgs could possibly be pulled out of.  I sent off my address and a few days later had a package arrive containing one pack each of 2009 TRISTAR Prospects+, 2010 Bowman, 2008 Timeline and 2008 SP Authentic.  I wasn’t lucky enough to pull a Strasburg, but I did get a Red Sox Chrome prospect, a Bowman Throwback (absolutely love this set) and some other cool cards.  Attack looks like a very cool card shop and I can see why.  If Steve is willing to send off packs of cards to random people on Facebook, I can only imagine what he does for his customers in the store.  Thanks again Steve!

The next big piece of news arrived when I checked Facebook this morning.  You may recall that I went out to the Basketball Hall of Fame to see the Panini Adrenalyn tour bus when it was visiting.  On the way out, I snapped some pictures of the tour bus with the Hall of Fame.  It’s a good thing that I did because Panini ended up running a contest for the best picture of yourself with the bus.  I was notified today that I was the winner of the contest.  The prize?  Check it out below:

Wow, this is a very cool prize.  I’ve seen a few of these autographed patch cards in person and they’re very nice looking.  It would be cooler if it was a Celtics player, but I’m not going to complain too much.  I can’t wait to see this card when it arrives.  Kobe stuff should be even more desirable now that LeBron has given up on trying to build his own legacy and is now willing to try and be carried to some championships.

I now pass the luck on to someone else and hope to read some cool stories of other people winning some cool items.

Technorati Tags: Kobe Bryant,Panini Rookies & Stars,Attack of the Baseball Cards,Stephen Strasburg

Family Fun: Panini Toy Story 3 Stickers

As my daughter has gotten older, I’ve looked for any opportunity possible to get her into collecting.  It hasn’t been that difficult since kids always look to do the same things that adults are doing.  When I’m searching the card aisle at Target, my daughter is also looking for something she might want to open such as Spongebob cards or Bella Sera figures.

My whole family shares a love of Pixar movies.  We went to see Toy Story 3 opening weekend and loved it.  While out shopping the other day with my daughter, we picked up the Toy Story 3 sticker album and a handful of packs.  I expected something along the lines of sticker albums that I had purchased as a kid, but what we got was something a lot more cool.

I don’t know how the collation runs on these things, but there is something close to chase stickers in this set.  In every 8 sticker pack you seem to get two stickers that are either the shiny prisms or the very cool, reflective fabric stickers.

The prismatic stickers look very cool and scan well also.  Here are a couple of shiny Slinky Dog stickers.  You can’t tell from the scan, but the Little Green Army Man sticker is printed on a reflective fabric.  These stickers are very nice and I’m hoping for a few duplicates of these to keep after completing the set.


Here’s what a completed page looks like.  The stickers are die cut to different shapes which makes for a great looking page when done, but this is not something that a little kid can do with good results.  When I was putting stickers into the album with my daughter, she took care of all of the rectangle stickers which I did all of the weird shapes.  Even I couldn’t line things up properly.  Check out the pipe to the left of Slink.  Oops.  There are three stickers on this page.  The first is of Hamm, Rex and Jesse, the second is of Woody and Buzz while the final one has Mr. Potato Head and Slinky Dog on it.

There are 180 stickers in the set which is pretty large.  I plan on buying a box of stickers to open a little at a time with my daughter and hopefully we can at least get close enough so that an order of singles from Panini will finish off the set.  This has been a fun way to share my collecting hobby with my daughter and I know that I’ll end up reading her the story in the book (Oh yes, the sticker book also doubles as a story book) many times before all is said and done.  Thanks Panini for a great set!

Technorati Tags: Toy Story 3,Panini,stickers

2009-10 Panini Studio Basketball

I’ve fallen behind on Panini press releases due to some being sent out in PowerPoint format and then having no free time.  So, I’ve decided to focus on a release that I did purchase some packs of and that is currently my favorite Panini non-gaming product available.

Here’s a picture of the Big Al base card.  It’s not often that you see a basketball set where all of the cards have a landscape layout.  While I do like these cards, I do feel like there’s a lot of empty space on the cards that could be better utilized.  The biggest culprit?  That giant blank area to the right of the action photo.  You’d think that the picture would look best if it fell right in the blue stripe?  Unfortunately, that space is reserved for this:

Jersey swatches.  On its own, this is a nice looking jersey card, but the problem is that it wrecks the design of the base card.  The majority of the cards that you are going to pull out of a box of cards are the base cards so this is a problem.  It makes the base cards feel like an afterthought.

The bad design carries over to the autograph versions of the base cards.  The stickers go right over the action photo.  I really hope that in the future that Panini stops using the same designs over and over again for regular cards, relics cards and autograph cards.  It’s the one thing, and it’s a huge thing, keeping them from producing top notch sets.  They still feel like the second tier company doing things like this and serial numbering the heck out of everything to create extra “hits.”

I was just goofing around with the design and chopped off the empty space on the right.  Doesn’t that make the card look better?  There’s still an awful lot of empty space though.  Is it possible to reduce the empty space even more?



Now I’ve chopped things down even more.  This card no longer has the player’s name or the brand name, but that can be easily rectified in the next step.

One thing that you may notice is that this is getting closer and closer to a portrait layout.  You can have some landscape cards in a basketball set, but when you’ve got players who are this tall you’ve got to go portrait.
Look, the picture is now in the stripe created by the set brand name and the player name.  Doesn’t that look much better?  Yes, some of the action shots used in this set are wider than this, but they’re black and white.  Panini shouldn’t be using the best action shots they’ve put on cards to date in B&W backgrounds.  Use basic shots in the background and this design will work without a problem.

The final problem with the design was that it was no longer standard card sized.  I’ve fixed that in the final step.  You’d obviously want to crop the picture of Big Al a little differently so that he fits onto the card a little better, but I think you get a good idea here even without doing that.

Yes, this final design might need a couple of tweaks, but I feel it looks much better than what I started with.  You can keep the same design for the relic cards if you want, but don’t print the B&W picture on those cards.  I’m really not a fan of that though so it wouldn’t be happening in this set.  I think an awesome set would have this for the base card and the jersey cards the way they are now.  Use the same basic idea, but tweak what needs to be tweaked in order to deliver the best looking product possible.

You know why the best looking overall set that Panini has released this year is Adrenalyn?  No relics or autographs to be designed around.  It’s as simple as that.  The etched foil cards are especially sharp looking and I’d like to see Panini use some of that going forward instead of the rainbow foil that they use far too often.

The Team Studio cards are an interesting idea and Panini loves their two-sided cards.  Personally, I’ve never enjoyed collecting cards where the player that I like is on the back.  I’d rather have two players on the front than one on the front and one on the back.  This is just personal preference and maybe no one else cares.  On the reverse of this card you’ll find Bill Lame-beer.  Sorry, but there’s no way that he’ll ever be making an appearance in this blog.

The Masterstrokes cards are slick looking.  You’ve got the photo studio with the large player images on the base cards and you’ve got the art studio on these cards.  I would call these the best cards in the set, but there’s another insert set that does it even better.  That set brings the theme back to the photography side of the studio.

These Skylines cards are one of the best things that I’ve seen come out of any product this year.  There are team colors which I love and it’s something different.  Yes, Upper Deck did something similar in the past, but that was over a decade ago.  Yes, there’s a lot of empty space, but it showcases the image of the city.  In this case you get a nice view of the Boston waterfront.  The players really pop on these cards.

Outside of the card blogging community, I’m a collecting abnormality.  I don’t care how sick the hits are if the cards don’t look good.  I’ve passed up cards for my player collections if the design is terrible.  I don’t have to have anything.  I want to have a collection that makes me happy.

Panini has been doing a great job on delivering hits and I’ve seen some beautiful cards come out of their products.  The on-card autographs in Classics are amazing.  They just need to step up their game when it comes to their base cards.  The high end releases are starting to come out now and I’m sure that the majority of their designs are set for this year, but I’m hoping that the base card situation improves with next year’s releases.

Technorati Tags: Panini Studio,Panini Basketball

Look at what some originality will do

I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t hop on the Panini bandwagon at first.  Topps had an excellent final release and Upper Deck’s last hoops set had some fun inserts.  The design of the first few Panini sets didn’t do it for me.  They love to design cards with space for jersey swatches in mind and that drives me crazy.  It’s better than swatches covering players, but all-new designs would be ideal.

I think one of the reasons that collectors get bored with the hobby is that you can only do so much with the same gimmicks every year.  Yes, pulling a Larry Bird jersey card is cool, but when there are Larry Bird jersey cards year after year it gets a little dull.  I pulled a Michael Jordan jersey card out of 2007-08 Fleer Ultra and threw it up on eBay immediately because there wasn’t anything special about the card.  It didn’t sell for what you would think a jersey card of the best player ever would go for since there are tons of Jordan jersey cards out there.  Eventually, the market gets saturated and the only people buying the 1,000th Jordan jersey card are the completists out there.

That’s why when something new to the hobby comes along, people go nuts over it.  Topps’ hat logo cards may not be game used, but they are well designed, look great and have low print runs.  That’s why they are selling for more than a lot of the plain jersey cards of the same players.  If Topps is doing the same thing for 10 years in a row, they will no longer sell for a premium, but this year they were something new.

Panini hit the jackpot with one of the subjects of their Blast from the Past jersey set.  Reggie Lewis was an athlete that Boston loved for more than his play on the court.  Lewis was constantly giving back to the community.  His loss was felt by the Celtics for years after his death, but as a person he’s still missed.  Lewis was on the verge of becoming a superstar in the league at the time of his passing.  Considered by many players to be the toughest defender at his position, he regularly shut down players like Jordan and Reggie.  No other player has ever blocked Michael Jordan 4 times in one game:

Lewis was also the only Celtic in the history of the franchise to finish a season with more than 100 rebounds, blocks, steals and assists during the 1991-92 campaign which was the best of his career.  This feat is something that LeBron James has yet to do although he came close in 08-09 when he fell short by seven blocks.  Kobe hasn’t even come close. Magic and Bird never did it.  Jordan only did it twice.  Scotty Pippen did it once.  Kevin Garnett did it eight times, Dr. J eight times, David Robinson seven times, Ben Wallace seven, Shawn Marion five times, Chris Webber four, Shawn Kemp three times, Josh Smith three, Karl Malone once and Rasheed Wallace once.  Dwyane Wade has done it and was the first player to have 2,000 points, 500 assists, 100 steals and 100 blocks in a season (along with just under 400 rebounds).  Hakeem Olajuwon just might be the career leader on this list accomplishing this feat 12 times.  I tried to find a definitive list of players who have achieved this feat, but my Google-Fu failed me.  Of course, this excludes any seasons before 1973 since steals and blocks weren’t tallied before then.  Bill Russell comes to mind right away as a Celtic that might join Lewis on this list if those stats were tracked back then.

Let me reel in my tangent before it gets out of control.  Panini Classics Basketball has both a jersey card and patch card of Reggie Lewis and these cards have turned out to be extremely popular.  These are the only jersey cards ever produced of Lewis since he played before jersey and autograph cards were staples in packs.  The only Lewis autograph card in existence is a cut auto with Dennis Johnson with a print run of one.  A Reggie patch card numbered to 30 just sold on eBay for $119.50.  When is the last time that you saw a basketball patch card like this one sell for that amount of money without the names Jordan, Kobe or LeBron on it?  Even the plain white jersey swatches are selling well with this one numbered to 199 closing at $20.50.  Imagine if you could see every single color jersey swatch that you pulled out of a box of cards for $20.  What a great world it would be.

I wish that there was more of this in new card releases.  Whether it’s the inclusion of Negro League autographs in Allen & Ginter or players who haven’t already had mountains of insert cards produced, it’s going to take more innovation and freshness in releases to keep collectors interested now that the number of products being released is down due to exclusives.

Technorati Tags: Reggie Lewis,Players with 100+ rebounds assists steals blocks,Panini Classics

Sponsored Box Break: 09-10 Panini Classics

I came home Monday night to find a nice surprise waiting for me.  Panini had sent over a box of Classics to break open and review on the site.  This came as a complete surprise and made my day.

Packs of Classic carry a suggested retail price of $6 and boxes are currently selling for $83 on Blowout Cards.  You get 18 packs per box and 5 cards per pack.

The design of the base card is simple.  The cards feature large, close up images of the player and look very nice.  I didn’t see a lot of variety in the types of pictures used while going through the cards that I pulled out of my box, but I only have 75 out of the 200 cards in the set.

This set is chock full of goodies for a Celtics fan such as myself.  Once you get past the fact that Rajon Rondo was left out of this set in favor of Kendrick Perkins and washed up Rasheed Wallace, you start to see some very cool cards available to pull.  One card in particular that I will be chasing is the Reggie Lewis Blast From the Past Jersey card.  As far as I know, this is the first jersey card ever produced of the late, great Reggie Lewis.  There’s a regular version numbered to 199 and a patch version numbered to 30.  The two patches listed on eBay so far have gone for $50 and $70 dollars.  It definitely looks like Panini filled a demand with this card.

The set consists of 200 cards.  Of those 200, the first 100 are regular base cards.  Cards 101-160 are Legends and those are numbered to 999.  Panini states that you get at least 3 Legends in a box and I beat the odds there and pulled 4 Legends out of my box.  I got Buck Williams, Oscar Robertson, Kareem and Willis Reed.

This is not a product for set collectors.  With 16 boxes in a case, you’re not going to get a complete set of Legends out of a case at 3 per box and that’s if you get perfect collation.

I will be looking for some singles of Celtic Legends such as Larry Bird, recent and long overdue Hall of Famer Dennis Johnson, Bill Russell, Kevin McHale and Bob Cousy.

Cards 161-200 are autographed rookies.  All of the big names are here including Blake Griffin, Tyreke Evans, Stephen Curry and Brandon Jennings.  Some of the cards are numbered to 999 while this Jeff Teague is numbered to 553.  A couple of the rookie autographs are numbered to only 99 copies making a complete set that much tougher to complete.

The best part about the rookie autograph cards in this set is that from what I’ve seen, they’re all on-card.  That has been a rarity in basketball for anything that costs less than $50 per card.  I think the only stickers to be found are on the jersey cards, but some of the superstars could possibly be sticker autographs, I’m not 100% sure.

There are some numbered parallels.  Every card in the set can be found in various numbered parallels.  This David Lee is a Dress Code Platinum numbered 5/25.  I also pulled an Andre Iguodala Gold which is numbered to 100.

These cards are usually more of a crap shoot than anything else pulled out of boxes.  If you pull a numbered card of a minor star it’s no big deal, but if you pull a low numbered card of a big star then it may be your lucky day.  Pulling a serial number that matches the player’s jersey number can be rewarding as well.  So, it’s nice to have that chance to get a little something out of the box besides the advertised hits.

These Dress Code cards are one of the few negative things about this set.  These cards only exist so that there can be jersey parallels.  The jersey cards look nice, but these cards don’t.  To top it off, the set checklist isn’t that impressive.  There are some players in this set that leave you scratching your head.

If these cards only existed as jersey cards then they’d be perfect.  I don’t see the need to have the base versions as well.  Since I’m a set collector by nature, I’d much rather have more base cards than an insert set where you get 3 of 25 cards.  My box contained Sam Perkins, Shawn Marion and Samuel Dalembert.

I’m not sure why it bothers me so much, but I really don’t like that these insert cards are designed with the jersey variations in mind.  It’s not quite as glaring on these Classic Combos cards and the player selection is much better, but those basketballs with the player’s jersey number on it are almost as big as the player pictures.

My box contained Kobe/Odom and LeBron/Shaq.  What I would have liked to pull would have been the Garnett/Pierce and Russell/Sharman cards.

Again, the jersey versions of these cards look good, but these “template” cards don’t look quite as good in my opinion.

These Classic Confrontation cards are two sided and feature players who have faced off frequently during their careers.  This card features Kevin Garnett who plays forward and Shaquille O’Neal who plays center.  There aren’t any stats on the card at all so you’re not really sure what confrontation they’re talking about.  Maybe it’s just weirdness on this card, let me check the other card that I got in my box.  That one features point guard Chris Paul and shooting guard Dwayne Wade.  Looking at the rest of the checklist, most of the rest of the checklist seems to make sense.  I just seem to have pulled two of the abnormalities.  There are some nice matchups such as Bird/Magic, Worthy/Parish and Kidd/Nash.

The final insert set is another one with a jersey window integrated into the design.  The jersey cards do look nice, but the regular cards look a little strange with the team logo floating in the middle of nowhere.  It results in the bottom part of the card looking crowded with the player smooshed over to the side to make room for the logo/jersey window.

My box contained three Classic Greats.  I was happy to pull Celtic Great John Havlicek, but also saw Lakers James Worthy and “Mr. NBA Logo” Jerry West come out of the box.  I think that I pulled all of these Lakers because the box destined for Boston ended up going to The Basketball Card Blog.  Now I have to hope for a Boston sweep and the Cousy card from that box will make its way to Boston.

So far, you’ve only seen one of the hits from this box.  Each box guarantees four hits, but you don’t know what kinds of hits that you’ll get with the exception that at least one hit will be an autograph.  I was very lucky with the contents of my box since it contained three autographs.  Since these are all on-card autographs that ends up being a great value.

This redemption card is for a Jodie Meeks autograph and is numbered to 249.  I love Panini’s card replacement process and wanted to see what their redemption process is like.  I really like that you can pick the time frame that you are willing to wait before you are offered a replacement.  I selected the 4 month time frame for this card to see what happens.

The final autograph in my box was of Jermaine Taylor and is numbered to 999.  I don’t think that I got a rookie autograph in my box of a player that averaged more than 5 points per game last season which is unfortunate.

Before I go on to the final hit from my box, check out the first post on this thread paying particular attention to the hits that were in the box.  That box contained two autographs that were also in my box as well as a patch card of a player named Gerald.  I had already stated that my box contained three autographs and you’ve seen all three of them so the final card in my box must be a patch card of a player named Gerald.

The big hit from my box was this Gerald Henderson prime patch card numbered to 25.  Unfortunately, this brings up another frustration for me.  Panini does a good job of designing the jersey cards on their insert sets, but make the mistake of also using those designs for jersey-less cards that don’t look as good.  Now you’ve got a nice looking base card with a jersey swatch slapped over the stomach of the player.

If this patch were placed inside of one of the insert cards it would have resulted in a beautiful card.  This is a beautiful patch in an alright looking card.  It just confuses me a little bit.  There’s a lot of good in this Panini release, but there’s a good amount of bad as well.

It may seem like I’m being harsh from reading the review of this set, but I think that is mostly due to the fact that this set contains a lot of one of my biggest pet peeves.  If Panini designed jersey cards and then only used those designs for the jersey cards, this set would improve by leaps and bounds.  They should also confine the jersey swatches to those cards designed to hold them.

The main selling point to this set is going to be the on-card autographs, but since you are only guaranteed one autograph per box, I don’t know if that’s going to be enough to push sales of this set.  I would have liked for these to be at least two guaranteed autographs.  I know that I would be disappointed if I purchase a box that contained one autograph and three relic cards.  My box contained three rookie autograph and that’s a box that I would have been very happy with if I had purchased it.  Yes, they aren’t great rookies at the moment, but sometimes you have to give them time.  People would have scoffed at Rodrigue Beaubois autographs at the beginning of the season, but by the end of the season he was one of the top rookies in the league.  So, someone such as Meeks who had a good college career and is on a team with some other good young players might hit his stride in his second or third season.  Due to the wide range of what you can get in a box, it’s tough to give this an overall value rating, but for my box specifically I would give it an A.  It’s tough to beat three on-card autographs and a low numbered rookie patch.

The collation was fine.  I didn’t get any duplicates.  Panini boxes have this weird trend of inserts coming in numbered order.  It’s very evident in the flagship set where you get a ton of inserts, but you notice it in this set as well.  I pulled Classic Confrontations 7 and 8, Classic Combos 1 and 2, Dress Code 8, 9 and 10 and Classic Greats 13, 14 and 15.  Combine that with the other box break that I liked to which was extremely similar to this one and it makes you wonder.  I have to think that it wouldn’t hurt for Panini to possibly look into changing how they load up their boxes.  Then again, I got all of my promised hits which is a lot more than I can say for the Topps and Upper Deck boxes that I’ve opened over the past couple of years.  I’d give the collation a B+ with just a few points off for the quirkiness of the collation across the whole run of the product.

The condition of the cards out of the packs were good with the exception of one of the autographed cards.  The Jermaine Taylor had a lot of white showing along the black edge on the bottom of the card.  If it were a better card, I would send it back especially since Panini’s card replacement process is so great, but for this card I think I’ll just hold on to this copy.  This box gets an A for condition.

Finally we come to design.  I’ve discussed the card designs thoroughly in the box review so I’ll just give the grade here.  I’ll go with the middle of the road C.  There’s a lot of promise, but after a great looking set such as Studio, this was a bit of a letdown.

Overall, I would give this box a B+.  I would place this product at the top of the heap as far as Panini’s releases go this year.  The best looking set is Studio, but this is the set that people are going to go after if they want the best rookie autographs of this year’s players.

Technorati Tags: Panini,box breaks,Panini Classics,basketball cards

Panini Adrenalyn: The Game

I’ve got to toss out a couple of disclaimers before I start this part of my Panini Adrenalyn review.  First off, this game is designed for kids ages 6-11.  It’s been a long time since I fell in that age range.  (Paul Pierce and David Ortiz could tell you how old I am.)  Also, I spent a little over a year working at an online WWE collectible card game.  I picked up a little bit about game design during my time there just from sitting in on the design meetings.  So, that being said, here we go.

Each Adrenalyn card has two ratings on it.  There’s an offensive rating and a defensive rating.  There’s also a superstar rating, but that’s only used to settle ties.  The cards are nice and simple for younger kids.  If your offensive player’s stat is higher than the defensive player’s rating then you score two points.  If you selected one of the other player’s guards then the shot counts for three points.  You play your starting five in the first and third quarters and your bench in the second and fourth.  You can switch players from one to the other at halftime if you’d like.  I think that’s all of the rules.  It’s a slightly more complicated, better looking version of War.

That leads to my main beef with the game.  There’s no limit to the cards that you can play with.  Unlike MLB Showdown which used a point system and had a cap for your team, there’s nothing stopping you from playing with the 10 best Adrenalyn cards in the game and dominating.  I’ve never been a fan of games that favor deep pockets over strategies.  I understand that this game is being kept simple for kids, but if one friend ends up with more of the big stars or Ultimate Signature cards then the rest of their friends aren’t going to have fun anymore.  Limiting the number of superstar points you can use on a team or something like that which brought a little more strategy into the game would have been cool.  Right now this is a 300 card base set where the majority of the card would never be used.  That wouldn’t be the case if there was some sort of “salary” for the players.

Each card has a code on the back so that you can also use it in the online version of the game.  The online game is still in Beta testing and there are still bugs that pop up.  The website also allows you to trade cards and will eventually reward player as they accumulate points by playing games and entering codes.

My daughter is too young to really get into the game.  She did have fun opening the packs that we got at the Basketball Hall of Fame.  We just used the first number of each card to see who won since she doesn’t know all of the numbers up to 100 yet.  While we were playing, she declared that '”if I get a Big Baby card then I win!”  We didn’t get a Big Baby card, but we did have fun.

Panini Adrenalyn: The Cards

For the second part of my Adrenalyn report, I’m going to look at the card themselves strictly in a collectible point of view.

To be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of too many of Panini’s basketball releases.  Normally, I’d spend a decent amount on Topps and Upper Deck basketball, but I didn’t spend a thing on Panini basketball until the flagship set came out.  I like the Adrenalyn cards a lot and they were my favorite cards from Panini (until Studio was released).

The design is a little busy, but these are cards designed for kids from ages 6-11 so that’s understandable.  The cards don’t go overboard though.  There’s a nice, big picture of the player right in the middle of the card with a ghosted head shot of the player in the background.  The player ratings aren’t obtrusive and blend into the overall design of the card.

The only other difference that you’ll see in the design of the base cards is in the rookie cards which have the word “rookie” vertically, reading top to bottom in the background.  From what I’ve seen, the rookies don’t rate all that well in the game so those were definitely added to appeal to collectors.

Back when the game was popular, foil inserts from Wizards of the Coast’s MLB Showdown were fairly popular with collectors.  Cards from recent games such as Topps Attax and Adrenalyn haven’t caught on with collectors.  It’s a shame that’s not the case with Adrenalyn because they’re nice looking cards and there are some nice chase cards as well.  What chase cards, you may ask.  Well, I’m glad that you did.

The most common inserts fall one in every other pack and are called “Special Cards.”  Two players from each team get this treatment.  The cards are printed on rainbow foil with holographic gold foil stamping on the player’s name.  These cards have increased stats compared to the player’s base card.

You can’t really see the rainbow foil in this scan, but it’s there.  These cards look very nice in person and the rainbow reflection lets your opponent know that he’s in trouble when you turn that card over.

“Extra Cards” fall one in every eight packs.  One player from each team gets this special treatment.  The cards are printed on metalized foil with micro-etching.  The etching is in the design of a swirl behind the player with an embossed NBA logo floating behind he player along with holographic gold foil on the player name.  These cards also have increased stats.

The next level of card is “Extra Signature Cards” and those also fall one in every 8 packs.  These cards look the same as the “Special Cards” with the addition of a foil printed signature on the front of the card.  You can find one player from each team done in this style with increased stats.

The final insert type is “Ultimate Cards” and those fall one in every 23 packs.  These cards look like the “Extra Cards” with the addition of holographic gold foil signatures and “unbeatable stats.”  These cards are really nice looking and are tough to find even when you consider that these packs only cost a dollar a piece.

All things considered, I like this set a lot.  I don’t think I’ll play the game all that often, but the dollar price tag makes it easy to pick up a handful of packs whenever you see them available.  I’m definitely going to track down the 10 Celtics base cards and 5 inserts for my collection.

Panini Adrenalyn: The Tour

I was invited, along with the rest of the people on Panini’s blog mailing list, to check out the Panini Adrenalyn Tour if it was coming to a location near me.  While the bus was coming to Boston, it wasn’t making any publicized stops for the public.  So, we had to make a 2 hour drive to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield to see the bus and the Adrenalyn promotion.  On the way there we beat most of the bad weather that was to drench Massachusetts over the weekend.

There was a small court set up inside the lobby of the Hall where kids could take shots for packs of Adrenalyn cards.  My daughter made a shot with the assistance of one of the Panini employees running the shoot-around and got her first pack of cards.

There were CYO teams playing on the court in the Hall which must have been a thrill for them.  There was a good sized crowd watching the games and when the kids weren’t playing they made their way upstairs to a room where Panini had the rest of their promotion set up.

I thought this was the coolest thing in the room.  There’s got to be something you can rent that combines this with the traditional bounce castle.  Imagine bouncing on one of those things to dunk.  That would be awesome.

This was also my daughter’s favorite thing in the room, but she couldn’t even come close to making a basket so she got frustrated quickly.  To be fair, she’s a little younger that the target audience for the game so they weren’t really marketing to 4 year-old kids other than making them smile by receiving free packs of cards.

This display explained the basics of how to play the game.  It was standing next to kiosks set up to play the game online.  I attempted to play a couple of games with the demo accounts that were set up, but the cards that the demo accounts had were as bad as the cards that I have in my own account and I kept getting creamed by other players with lineups full of special cards.

Speaking of special cards, the promotions for this event touted special cards of Hall of Famers that could only be uploaded to accounts from the Hall of Fame, but I didn’t see any sign of that going on while I was there.  It’s possible that those cards were special prizes or had all been given out already, but in the over two hours that I was at the event I didn’t see any sign of those cards.  The only thing that I was looking to pick up for myself at the event was the Larry Bird card so not seeing one was a little disappointing.

Here are the aforementioned game kiosks.  There were slots in the front of the kiosks made to dispense something, but nothing popped out while I was playing.

On the other side of the floor were kiosks set up for registering to play the game.  Packs of cards were given to you if you registered.  I already had an account, but I still got some packs.  I logged into my account to see if the special cards would pop into it, but no such luck.

One very cool thing about the tour is that Panini has been bringing out NBA Legends to play the game with kids coming out to the events.  Sam Jones, one of the NBA’s 50 greatest players and 10-time champion with the Celtics looked to be having a blast playing the game.  He was joking around with everyone and was really enjoying giving away Panini’s cards.

A few lucky kids won autographed Adrenalyn cards.  I was hoping that my daughter would want to play and win, but she remembered our last trip to the Hall and only wanted to see “the other upstairs” and the Michael Jordan movie.

While at the Hall of Fame, Panini presented the Hall with the Guinness World Record largest trading card.  Unfortunately, the subject of the card was Kobe Bryant since he’s the spokesman for Panini basketball.  I’m not sure how well received anything Lakers will be by Celtics fans, but the card is extremely cool even if it does have a Laker on it.  The card has a giant 15-inch by 15-inch swatch in it and is also hard signed by Kobe himself.

After the presentation, the card was moved upstairs where the rest of the Adrenalyn stuff was located.

Once the card was presented, we decided that it was time to hit the road.  The weather was going to get worse as it got later and we had another 2 hour drive back home.

Panini is hoping to make this a yearly event at the Hall of Fame, but if they are going to do that they’re going to have to make it part of the Enshrinement Weekend or some other big event.  The Hall doesn’t draw a lot of people and is out of the way for most collectors to head to.  The kids that were at the Hall were having a good time, but I would guess that there were fewer kids seen by Panini at the Hall than most of the other stops on the tour.  The kids that did go were getting huge stacks of cards though so they were pretty happy.  Next time, Panini just needs to park the bus at the beginning of the Rose Kennedy Greenway on a Celtics game night and their cards will be seen by a lot more people.

For now, I leave you with some pictures of the bus.  Upcoming are posts with my thoughts on the cards and on the game play.

Technorati Tags: basketball cards,Panini,Adrenalyn

Lazy Friday

I apologize for the lack of real content lately, but the state of the third floor just isn’t conducive to doing much of anything.  I’m up here right now for a little while, but I don’t plan on staying for long.  I’ve been told that things should be finished Monday or Tuesday which is cool since I’ve got Monday and Friday off next week and could get a lot done putting the room together and loading it back up.

Topps sent out a PDF with a ton of images from National Chicle.  For a set that was almost universally shit on when the first images were released, I think that this is a set that is going to end up pleasing most people.  The majority of the cards are nice looking and you get two on-card autographs per box.  If the product contains a strong autograph checklist then this product will be popular.

Since these cards were done by a variety of artists, some are better than others and cards that one person loves will be hated by another.  I have a feeling that the on-card autos will sell a lot more boxes than bad paintings might keep away.

I leave you with a couple of other cards that caught my eye.  A lot of the retired player cards have these same clouds in the background.  I’m guessing they were all done by the same artist.

Love the Eck in a BoSox uni.  He’s become a pretty good analyst for NESN.  He didn’t do that good of a job willing in for Jerry Remy though.

One thing that I dislike about many short prints is that you don’t know who is short printed until the company releases a list and without that list you have no way of knowing what is a short print and what isn’t.  That’s why I don’t mind when all of the SP are at the end of a set or on a different card stock.

Panini sent out information about the short printed Rookie Ticket cards in Contenders Basketball.  They just weren’t very specific about it.  Hasheem Thabeet, James Harden, Tyreke Evans, Jordan Hill, Brandon Jennings and Tyler Hansbrough were all printed to 499 or fewer copies.  There are a lot of numbers that are fewer than 499.The cards themselves aren’t serial numbered so you have no way of knowing just how limited they are.  To me, it sounds like Panini started with 499 copies, threw out any that got damaged and then packed out the rest.  Blake Griffin, Dante Cunningham, Earl Clark, Jonny Flynn, Stephen Curry and Terrence Williams have cards printed to 649 or fewer and I’m assuming greater than 499.

In more Topps news, they’re taking a page out of Panini’s book and offering a prize to collectors who pull a certain card out of packs.  The first person to pull the triple signed Dana White, Chuck Liddell, Tito Ortiz card out of UFC Main Event will be flown to Las Vegas, NV and be Dana White’s personal guests at the UFC Training Center.  There are 10 copies of this card in existence and the other nine people that pull the card will get a pair of UFC gloves signed by the three fighters.

Panini sent out some news about their Adrenalyn Tour.  While it sounds cool for those lucky enough to go to games when the tour is visiting, I don’t think they’ll find enough players by just focusing on game crowds.  They need to be outside of the arenas as well.  If it turns out that they’re inside of the arena when they come to Boston I might have to think about making a trip to the Hoops Hall instead and see them there.  Probably not worth it though.

It looks like the big site news will have to wait until next week.  I’m excited for it to happen and to share it with all of you.  Have a great weekend everyone!