A closer look at the cards I got for Christmas

 Back on Christmas day I posted a picture of the packaged cards I got, and today I'm going to do a little breakdown on them. I'm not going to cover every card...that would take all year...but I will give a decent breakdown on them. I hope.

Here they are all sorted by what group they came from. Top left is all of the repacks I got combined.

Chronicles was the hobby box I got and that surprised me, it's been a while since I did a hobby box. As you can see there are a LOT of different designs in Chronicles. Unfortunately, unlike the NBA set, each design is numbered separately, I only got two base cards in the box...in fact, the "base" set is only 20 cards, while the Spectra set is 75 cards. Or maybe it was the Obsidian set. One is 75, one is 65, and there's so many I forgot which one is which, even though I wrote it all down on paper just a few days ago. Not even all of the designs showed up in my box...there are two that didn't.

Panini being Panini, there are LOTS of colorful parallels, some of which are numbered. The Pink Josh Berry is SN to only 25 copies, the lowest number I got in my box. They have versions down to 1/1s. 

The inserts also have autographed versions available, of which I pulled three in my box. Oddly most are corresponding to the number of the driver's card in the insert set, but the Jeb Burton is lettered. All of the Obsidian cards are Prizm technology by the way. I had previously purchased the Ryan Blaney 1/1 autograph parallel from the Black set at a card show back in November. 

Now, the repacks. Unfortunately I either forgot to take a photo of them all spread out as you will see with the other sets, or my camera did that thing where instead of taking the picture it tried to zoom in and out instead. Either way, the good picture is not here. The cards from the Presstine repacks were all great...oh how I wish I had access to them on a regular basis. The cards from the Tri-Star box of repacks were generally in poor condition. Most of them ended up in my "get better copies before scanning them" box bad. 

...yeah. This is how I got it. 

The two relic cards came from Presstine while the Tiger Williams autograph came from the Tristar box. 

The oldest and newest cards in the repacks, both from Presstine. 

The Presstine packs gave me new sets that were not previously in my collection! Although I am focused more on my One of Every Player collections, getting a new set is still a thrill.

The Forgotton franchises insert is  was one of my most wanted inserts...you all know I'm a history nut, I even put it in the title of this website...and forgotten franchises are awesome! I saw this insert was available on Steel City's website and put it on my list. I was glad to get it. Some of these teams only got cards in two sets...ever. This, and the 2004-05 In the Game Franchises set. 

Moving on to NASCAR, the Brickyard 400 box was the only one where I was any kind of disappointed...and that's because it's only a 100 card set, and I got a stack of duplicates probably more than 50 cards high, but still came up 11 cards short of a complete set. Some of the cards I got 4 or 5 copies of. That was frustrating. 

The Top 10 insert comes with 4 different backgrounds- circles, stars, and sparkles were inserted randomly into packs and the tin factory set. A fourth, a foil image of their car, was only in a dual factory set issued with the Indy 500 set they also did. These are the new ones I managed to get from the box. I ended up with two copies of the Michael Waltrip card in this box alone, not even different backgrounds. 

Seeing them with the flash on really brings out the holographic foil aspect of them much more. 

Here are the base cards, of which the drivers they chose got a person and a car card, and the only other insert, which totally baffles me because that is from an entirely different set, but with a purple stamp on it. Hi-Tech did two Brickyard 400 sets, both in 1994 (one before and one after the race, most places list this set as 1995 but that's wrong) and the 28 car is from the before set, issued with the after set. Confusing. 

The 2009-10 O-Pee-Chee set is awesome, I really like the design. There are a lot of cards in the set. which I also really like, because I feel that everyone in the league should get a card. There's also a Retro and a Rainbow parallel, and a handful of inserts, including two Canadian Heroes versions, only the Ladie's version actually shows them playing for Team Canada. 

Unfortunately the repacks weren't the only source of damaged cards.

The 2003-04 Parkhurst Original 6 New York Rangers set was awesome! As a big time Rangers fanatic who's still learning the team's history, this was a nice snapshot, although I wish it was a bit more inclusive...it's only a 100 card set. The good news is that I got them all! All 100 cards joined my collection on Christmas day, previously I had only one insert from the set. The base set is made up of 6 subsets. You have the active roster of that season, retired players, All Stars from the team's history, a section on players who were elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame, the Captains in franchise history (but only a handful of them) and Franchise Leaders should be obvious. 

There are three inserts, of which I got only two. The main insert is actually very similar to the base set in look and feel, and has multiple designs. It's 14 cards long and I now have four of them, would like to complete it some day. The Jersey cards are pretty obvious in what they are. The one I didn't get was Autographs.

There are also these He Shoots He Scores inserts which served as pack feeler protection, each team is available in three different versions, one point, two points and three points. As a big fan of team logo cards I was glad to get them, although I do wonder why Chief Blackhawk is wearing lipstick. 

2011-12 Score was the largest stack, and I had very few cards from this set beforehand, so that made it an awesome box to get. Oddly I pulled two copies of the St. Louis insert from the box, the only time that happened in any of the hockey I opened.

There are three parallels. Glossy, Gold Rush and Black Ice. I did not get any of the Black Ice cards. None are SN but the Gold was one in the box while the glossy were one per pack.

Here's a better shot showing the difference between base and glossy. Panini, which owns the score brand, thought this was a good idea for several years. 

There are three subsets to the base set- Season Highlight, Stanley Cup Playoffs Highlight and Hot Rookies. The Hot Rookies are not available in glossy for some reason.

Panini being Panini, they didn't remember to number all of the cards. This is supposed to be card #569, from a 570 card set. I may not be a huge fan of Panini, but I LOVED their Score releases. They only did four of them (this was the second) and all are great. In fact, if I were going to make a Top 10 list of favorite NHL sets, as of right now this set, 2012-13 and 2013-14 would make the Top 10. 

The blaster of 2014-15 O-Pee-Chee didn't give me as many cards but I really like this set as well. Great design, the Retro cards are cool too. The Stickers are awesome. The small card is an homage to the 1930s O-Pee-Chee cards, someday I'd like to get at least one of them for my collection. I can't really think of a lot to say about this set, but I really do like it...the O-Pee-Chee cards are some of my favorites from each season and I'm thrilled to have them.

The Donruss Priority box is the oldest hockey that I opened on Christmas and was the most unique in that there are two different sizes of cards in the box. These are the standard sized cards, which are packaged interestingly...the even numbered cards are in one version while the odd number came in the other. I had never had a copy of the base card in my hands before, I wasn't familiar with the design. I'm sure I've seen it before as I did have one of the 1st Class Package subset cards and surely saw the base card when I logged it onto my collection on the Database, but it didn't register. And the bright orange card on the right? 

cue sad trombone sound here. 

The post card sized cards are pretty cool, but as with all oversized cards a challenge to store. The top card, an insert called "Post Cards" have four little slats in them that you are supposed to put the actual postage stamp inserts into...of course, the postage stamp inserts, as seen by the base and Silver Patrick Marleau above, are printed on a very flimsy backer and probably wouldn't survive being stuck into the holes. They may even be stickers, but I'm not going to find out. 

As I've talked about in the past, I love the Olympic cards. Unfortunately, the box for the 2021 set was over $200, so I couldn't afford one. I got one pack and this is what I got. The April Ross card happened to be the 1000th Olympic card in my collection. which is quite a milestone. (if the numbers are correct, no guarantees). As much as I love the Olympics the sets they get aren't all that great to me. I would much rather have a card set issued AFTER the games which actually show the events and especially the winners...yes, even if they are not Americans. Until that happens (I'm not going to hold my breath) I will enjoy what is available. 

I hope you enjoyed seeing a peek at what I got...I'm sorry I messed up on the repack cards, missing the picture of them proper. Especially as I love getting repacks...that was my favorite way to build my collection when I built the majority of my NBA collection...but It's taken me 2 weeks to put this post together as is and I don't want to push it back any further. Thanks for reading.

Chronicles Blaster Review, an overview of the largest NBA sets ever

I'm actually excited about a Panini set. I'm still going to criticize them in this post, but the new Chronicles set is actually a really interesting concept, and one that has me excited for a Panini set for the first time since...2013-14?

First off. the new Chronicles set now holds the record for the largest NBA set ever, at 699 cards! The previous record for largest NBA set was 659 cards, and the record has stood since 1991-92 Skybox!

Here's a quick breakdown of the record throughout history:
72 cards 1948-57 (1948-49 Bowman)
80 cards 1957-69 (1957-58 Topps)
99 cards 1969-70 Topps. This record stood for one season and would begin a period of expansion in the hobby
175 cards 1970-71  Topps
233 cards 1971-72 Topps (First standard sized NBA set since 1961-62)
264 cards 1972-75 Topps' sets for the 1972-73 through 1974-75 season were all 264 cards
330 cards 1975-1989 The 1975-76 Topps set was the largest vintage set, and would continue to be the largest set ever for the rest of the decade and the entire 1980s.
353 cards 1989-90 Hoops. The Hoops brand debuted in the 1989-90 season and was the first to have more than one series. However, the record would be short lived.
440 cards 1990-91 Hoops. Hoops outdid itself in it's second year but would reach it's peak in the following year, with the 1990-91 set topping the brand history at 590 cards. However, that would not be the record because...
659 cards, 1991-92 Skybox. The former record holder for the largest set in NBA history, the 1991-92 season actually saw three of the largest sets ever issued, and for that one year, the top three largest sets were all from that same season. Aside from the 659 card Skybox and 590 card Hoops. Upper Deck debuted with a 500 card set. (I've completed all three, too!). UD broke up the 1991-92 monopoly on largest sets from one year with a 520 card set in 1992-93.
699 cards, 2018-19 Chronicles. After a lengthy run for 1991-92 Skybox, the newly released Chronicles set goes 40 cards over the old record! Panini has gotten a couple sets into the top 10 already, with two 500+ card sets, but this is the first to clear 600.

Now...the problem that I'm going to complain about. There are only 135 different players represented in the set. The veteran players have only one card each (not counting inserts and parallels) while the rookies appear on at least 20 different card designs, which pads their numbers significantly. I decided to do a search on the checklist for Trae Young, and it came back with 22 results...although I suspect one of them may be a parallel that got listed as a base card. In a 525 man league, that's an embarrassingly sad number of players represented.

See, what Panini has done is to cancel most of their NBA sets, and put them all as subsets in the Chronicles set. This surprised me- I had seen the sell sheet and had guessed that each different design would be it's own insert, and the base set would be the usual typical Panini 200 or less card set.

In truth, each and every one of the subsets SHOULD be it's own release. But it's not. Basically it comes down to Panini getting rid of almost all their real sets to make room for more memorabilia delivery systems where it's average $400 for 4 to 7 cards. True sets, actually covering the NBA players, are getting rarer and rarer, and instead of actually producing them as they should be, we get Chronicles instead. But, I do love the concept. If they had given each of the veterans and rookies a card from each design, I would probably consider this in the running for best set ever...not just best Panini set.

While it's not anywhere near that, it's still a very fun set, and every pack was an odyssey through the Panini brand history- some of the brands used for the various rookie subsets have not appeared in the NBA in years, others are making their first NBA appearance. My first pack opened with a Marquee brand card (not seen in the NBA since 2012-13), followed by a Crusade (last seen as an insert three years ago), followed by Luminance, a set making it's NBA debut but previously seen in football, and finally two base veterans. And there was more to come...in fact, some of them that are available didn't even appear in my blaster at all! (not even counting the hobby exclusive designs). You never knew what was going to come next, and that was exciting!

One thing I noticed, and I do not know if this is something Panini specifically set out to do or just turned out to be a happy accident, but many of the cards show players wearing alternate jerseys, some of which are quite rare. Since Nike took over the NBA jersey license, they have instituted lots of alternate jerseys, most of which are exclusive for one year...the teams that made the playoffs in 2017-18 "earned" a special 5th jersey that was worn during the season. Getting alternate jerseys on cards is a treat, especially for me and my dormant but hopefully not much longer Uniform History series. Like I said,  I don't know if it was planned or not, but I enjoyed that aspect of the cards. 16 of the cards in my blaster showed an alternate jersey. One other thing I notice is that the photos in the set are very new. I got one of the Oklahoma City Thunder cards, and the Love's Travel Stops ad is present on the jersey. The Love's jersey sponsorship only began in mid-March, so that's a remarkably fast turnaround for Panini- they usually are very slow in getting updated photos. This is one of only two sets issued on the year that reflect the trade-deadline moves that occurred in early February, for example.

This is a base veteran card. They are bright and colorful, which makes up mostly for the fact that it's just a player in front of a computer generated background. This is one of the alternate jerseys, also.

The backs include the player's hometown! WOW! Panini has never bothered to include this, since they got the exclusive NBA license in 2009...I believe this is the first time home towns have appeared! International players only list country, but this is a huge thing, really. (as an aside, the Grizzlies waived Bradley and he joined the Lakers last week. This may be my only card of him as a Grizzly, ever)

 This was my first card from the set. It's hard to tell from the scan, but this is holofoil. This is an earlier photo as the Love's is not present on the jersey here.

 The very second card out of the box was this Pink Crusade parallel of Omari Spellman. It was the only SN card in the box, and looks much nicer in hand. It uses the Prizm technology, aka, Refractor.

My third card from the set is also my third card of this past season's #1 draft pick. The Luminance cards are my least favorite of the myriad designs used. The fronts have a black film-type affect over them...I guess the current term would be a filter. It really is this washed out looking in hand.

 The Playoff brand has a long history in sports...but not the NBA. There were a couple of sets with the Playoff name, but never just playoff. It was Playoff followed by something else. This is a great design and should have been used as a full set. Since Chronicles is set up the way it is, only rookies ever get to be on this design. This is actually a pink parallel, which is hard to tell. His name is in pink foil, which is blaster exclusive, I believe. I wish we got this as a full set instead of Status.

The pink on this card is much more obvious...and it's awesome! I've never been a huge fan of the color pink, (even though the first Edsel I ever saw was pink) but this is great. I really like it. Double bonus- both the Clippers, who Robinson plays for, and his opponents the Kings, are wearing 4th alternate jerseys here. Honestly, this card is so nice in hand that it's one of my favorites from the entire blaster.

 Essentials saw just a single release as a standalone set, in 2017-18.

 You'd think Panini would publish a Panini branded set as their flagship, but they don't. In fact, since they got the NBA license in 2009-10, they have only issued three Panini sets, the most recent in 2013-14. I really like this design and wish we got a full set out of it. This is only my third card of this year's Rookie of the Year, and my first in action shot.

 Studio saw one NBA release, a couple of years ago. It's holofoil.

 Elite was last seen as a standalone set in 2013-14. This card is partially holofoil. The part covering Spencer Dinwiddie, who, despite being a key figure on the Nets, did not get a card in the set.

Rookies & Stars is a Blaster exclusive, and was last seen as a standalone set all the way back in 2010-11, Panini's second season in the NBA!

One of the things that surprised me the most was the mix of technologies in the base set. Panini basically usually sticks to one and that's it- and they aren't the only one. I am thinking on it and I can't remember any sets that mix base, holofoil and chrome technology. There are some with inserts or parallels, but this is a base card. This set has all three, and for all I know may have mirror foil in one of the subsets that I didn't get as well! (although, I hope not- it's my least favorite technology...but the card companies love it, so they keep using it, even though I don't know anyone who actually likes it...I digress). They call this one Phoenix. I'm not familiar with that brand, but a quick check of the Trading Card Database shows that Phoenix has been produced in Football for the past three years and this card mimics the 2018 design for football exactly. It appears that the football set uses the Prizm (Refractor) technology whereas this is very clearly Chrome, or as Panini calls it, Optic, technology.

I did not get two of the rookie subsets from my blaster, Chronicles Rookies and Obsidian. There are several subsets that were not put into blasters, so I had no chance to get them. Looking at the sell sheets on the Database, it appears that other options for different packaging configurations include Gold Standard, Vanguard (an old Pacific brand making it's NBA debut), Timeless Treasures, Origins, Gala, Titanium and more are out there. With 48 cards in a hobby box, I'll be keeping my eye on Dave & Adam's to see if it goes down in price...I would definitely like to do a hobby box at some point. It's currently at $160 so that's an easy no, but last year's set was originally $180 and is now down to $75...still more than I want to pay, but hopefully once the Zion Williamson cards come out and people forget about chasing anything but the newest rookies the price will drop and I will spring into action. Last year's Chronicles set was a hobby only product, so I only have two cards from it- I picked the cheapest SN card I could find on COMC just to have it represented in my collection, and then I added a Jayson Tatum SN parallel at one of the card shows I went to in the winter. Based on what I've seen on the Database and for sale on COMC, the 2018-19 set is much better design wise and variety wise than it was in 2017-18.

Since this set is all about the rookies, I want to add in a bonus card...(you may have noticed I chose one of each design to post)...I managed to pull both of the key rookies from the set.

Trae Young really came on strong at the end of the year. After a slow start, he made a very strong case for the Rookie of the Year award...if I had a vote, I am not sure where it would have gone. Co-Rookie of the Year would have been very fitting. Young has the scoring touch of Allen Iverson and the passing and court vision of Jason Kidd...he's going to be the Hawks icon for a long while. He's also been known to randomly hug people he sees walking down the street wearing his jersey!

Although I did complain a lot in this post, I really DO like what they are doing with this set...I can just see so much untapped potential that was missed, but that is Panini's trademark, so I'm not really surprised by it...saddened by it is more accurate. Even so, this has instantly become one of my favorite Panini sets...possibly #2, after 2012-13 Hoops. That set was essential in getting me back into the NBA, so it's going to be very, very hard to top that one. This one is going to make a run at it. I'm really glad to have received this blaster as a gift...since I no longer chase new cards for myself, I would have totally missed the set otherwise. And that would have been the saddest thing of all!

You can see every card I got in this blaster, both front and back, on my Cardboard History Gallery HERE.

Box Break Review: 2018-19 MVP

The 2018-19 NHL season is here, as my pre-ordered box of MVP showed up on Thursday! The first new set of the year is really more of a set for the 2017-18 season, as none of the player movements are noted on the card- everyone is still with their 2017-18 teams. Even so, it's the start of the season, and contains the first cards of the players who got in too late to be included in last year's sets.

In my box I ended up getting 140 of the 250 base cards, 12 parallels, 7 inserts and one insert parallel. There were no duplicates in the box, which is a plus. Unfortunately there were no serial numbered cards either, but MVP is not a set where you expect that anyway.

This is my first card of the new season:

The design is pretty nice this year, better than MVP has been in several years in my opinion. We get a mostly full photo with some whiteouts at the top and bottom, and a large metallic bronze border on the left side only. (The SPs feature gold, which scans exactly as the bronze does, and the rookies are brown). For the past several years the MVP set has had the photos digitally altered to just be the player in front of some computer generated design, this is MUCH better.

This is the rookie design.

Although it doesn't really show up in scans, the border and the MVP wordmark are printed in metallic ink. I got six of the rookies. Cards #201-250 are short printed, which means I don't think I will be able to complete the set- most of the game's superstars are cards #201-219.

I got 12 new people for my collection, more than half of them rookies. While I won't be showing them all now (I need them for my New People added in August post) I will show one now, a player I've been wanting to add to my collection for a while now:

Nico Hischier was the first player I ever saw get drafted in to the NHL, so that's kind of a big deal. He had a great season with the Devils last year and will be a major building block for them for a long time. He's also the first player I feel like I "discovered"...when I first began watching the sport I didn't know too much and was watching the World Junior Tournament. I didn't know what that was yet, but he was playing in it and tearing it up. I distinctly remember thinking "Why is he not in the NHL?" and then I learned, by listening to the announcers. Shortly after, he was drafted, and by one of my semi-local teams as well!

Honestly, his may be my favorite card of the box, actually.

There are 9 different parallels in this set, 1 of which is retail only so I had no chance to pull it, but I only pulled cards from two of them:
 Silver Script...

and Puzzle Back:

I like the Silver Script a lot more. The Puzzle backs would be cool if you could build an entire puzzle, but I'm pretty sure the puzzles are just larger images of the base cards so it's not really a huge goal for me to do that. I ended up with 6 of each parallel.

The set is light on inserts, but they are pretty good ones. The main draw this year is the 20th Anniversary set, which is 100 cards in the style of the 1998-99 set.

I only got four of them, unfortunately. I would have liked to have gotten more, but I'm a big fan of retro cards so I would have been totally pleased if they did the entire set in the throwback design. There is also a Gold version, and this year's Colors & Contours set is of this insert, instead of the base, and is SN198, or the super rare Colors & Contours Purple which are SN8. I saw some online but was not lucky enough to pull any myself.

The other insert is NHL Player Credentials, which use several designs in the one set.

Although it's really hard to see in the scan, the corners are rounded and the entire white part of the card is printed on what I call holofoil camouflage, it looks like the pattern on modern military uniforms but in holofoil. You can sort of see it on the black bar with the team name.

The one thing I dislike about this insert is that it doesn't have numbers- the number for this card is NHL-EK. Lettering inserts instead of numbering them drives me nuts.

I ended up getting three of the 40 cards in this insert

I was also lucky enough to pull an Autographed Parallel of the NHL Player Credentials insert, which are the only autographs to be found in MVP!

This was my first card of Dermott...but the base card, shown above in this post, was literally the next card out of the pack!
The odds of pulling this card were one in 267 packs, so I did pretty good, I think. Note that the autographed version has gold accents instead of the non-autoed version which has silver. Only 33 of the players signed for the parallel, but some of them are big names so I know completing it won't ever happen.

I was not lucky enough to pull any of the Buybacks. They inserted apparently the entire 220 card 1998-99 MVP set as Buybacks into this product, but they are all SN20, so they are not common.

I posted every scan on to one of my secondary backup blogs, which you can see HERE if you want to. Both front and back. They are all posted on the Trading Card Database as well.

One funny thing I noticed when I was scanning the box to post to the Database-

Upper Deck accidentally labeled it 17-18 on the tail end cap. I have to be very careful not to label the scans as that way as well- each new season usually sees me having to retype the labels a few times to reflect the correct year, and this is no exception, as I originally labeled the Puzzle Backs as 2017-18 releases. Oops! I think it's a given that in 2019-20 I'll label something as 2018-19, or as I typed the first time just now, 2081-19. I'll be 97 in 2081, yikes.