Box Break Review: 2016-17 Grand Reserve

I normally would not purchase a box like this...it originally retailed for $240. But, during the Dave & Adam's Black Friday sale, it was marked down to $99 and I took a chance.

This arrived with the box of Upper Deck Portfolio where I pulled that spectacular Wayne Gretzky card from the other day...I'll get back to that at the end.
Even with this box selling for less than half of the original price...I was disappointed with it.

This is the base card. It's a photo cutout of a player over a patterned field of white, with a team colored marble border. It's basically a whole lot of nothing. At least the photos were actually taken during the 2016-17 season.

I got 18 of the 100 base cards. The Grand Reserve logo and the jersey number and position octagons are embossed. All the cards are curved from top to bottom, probably a result of the embossing in the white nothingness.

You are promised one relic and two autographs per box. this was my relic.

Ouch. I've already redeemed it online and am now waiting for Panini. The one thing good is that Panini is the best the hobby has ever seen with redemption cards. When it arrives, it will be my first card of Kuzminskas, unless I get one for Christmas. The Knicks cut him a few days before I got the box, a mistake...he contributed more to the team than some of the players they kept. (Looking at you, Joakim Noah). The good news is, when this card arrives, it will be numbered to 25 and have four pieces of unidentified relics- I really wish Panini would bother to tell you what you are getting. Unless it's a piece of basketball which is totally unmistakable you really have no idea what you are getting. It should be autographed, too.

My two promised autographs:

Both are a combo of etched and mirror foil, so they don't scan well. They look nice in hand. Both are on-card and numbered to 75. Both are rookie season issues. It's only my second card of Willy Hernangomez, and my only one from his rookie season.

Here are my other inserts, which are also etched, but aren't serially numbered...or all that impressive, to be honest.

The Dominating Performances insert has numbers, Unbreakable card has a letter-number combo, while the Startups card has letters. Some indecision there on Panini's part. Personally, just having letters on a non-hit card is the stupidest thing in the hobby, and I'm glad Panini doesn't usually go that route, like Upper Deck and Topps did in the mid-2000s.

And...that's it. $99 on that. I figured I would take a chance and treat myself, because it's been a while since I did a box like this...and now, once again, I am reminded why I don't.

The Portfolio box, which I can't do a Box Break Review on yet as I've not finished opening it- cost almost 2/3rds less, at $35, provides much more cards (160 are promised, but probably less since that Gretzky was so thick only three cards were in that pack) and is much more fun. It's a real, collectible set, whereas Grand Reserve is one of the many memorabilia and autograph delivery systems with a token base set thrown in to keep people like me from whining too much.

While there is a place in the hobby for showcase sets, the problem is that is now almost all that Panini does for the NBA. We get a couple of real sets per year- Hoops, Donruss, Prestige- sometimes Excalibur and Complete- all of which are too short and ignore about 2/3rds of the NBA's players, by the way- but most of the focus are on these style sets. Honestly, it's why I am not posting much about the NBA as I am about hockey. I refuse to spend $240 before shipping on stuff like this Grand Reserve box- that would be insane. This set probably won't appear in my collection again...I have the Kevin Love base card coming via COMC, and hopefully my redemption card will show up some day- I've had two outstanding for over a year now, due to the players not bothering to sign the cards- but I won't be spending my money on this set again....not $99. If they mark it down to $30 I might...with only 100 base cards, and 18 of them coming per box, completing the set wouldn't be too hard...but then again, the base set is terrible, so (I can't believe I'm actually typing this) I am not sure I even want to. There's simply less NBA that's truly possible to collect...and there's not a darn thing I can do about it.

At least there weren't any duplicates.

May 2017 Trade Recap

It wasn't as many trades as April, but I still pulled off a couple.

First came from Trading Card Database member GoSkins16-0, and was broken up into 2 parts- cards from 2012-13 and a big batch of 1994-95 Flair. 39 cards worth of the latter set!

The two main highlights with this Pat Durham card above, and the only card Chris Childs got in his rookie season, which you have already seen on Nothing but Nets. Durham is one of those rare players, he got only two NBA cards, in 1994-95 Fleer and this card, I now have both!

There were even a couple of the USA Basketball subset, which were short printed to a degree.

Here's another base card, just because I felt like scanning it. You know I favor pinstripe jerseys.

From 2012-13, a season I consider important as it was the season I got back into the NBA- and the last season before Panini started to ditch real cards and just go super high end.
I got a bunch of 2012-13 Panini, my second favorite set of the season, which brings me to one card short, Anthony Davis's rookie card.

I got the last veteran card I needed for Prestige. This set is important as my first cards in my collection of Steph Curry and Kevin Durant came from this set, two of my five favorite players in the NBA today. Lots of other players, too, but those are the big ones. All I have left to chase now are short printed Rookies and second year players that Panini decided to call rookies.

I also got two cards from Past & Present but I didn't get them scanned in time.
Most of what I got, though, were Rookies and 2nd year but labeled as Rookie cards from Panini Marquee. 35 of them to be exact, and one of the retired players included in the set to boot. That year they issued the RC and not really but called RC anyway cards in 5 different styles, in various stages of rareness. (The rarest, of which came one per box and none in this trade, was leather)
Here's an example of each that came in the trade.

 Legend

 Swirlorama (my favorite style)

 Black

 Die Cut

PETG

As you can see from the cards shown, there is some star power present too. Damian Lillard won Rookie of the Year that year, and Isaiah Thomas, the 60th and final pick of the 2011 draft, has since become a superstar with the Celtics. I got TWO of his!

With the PETG plastic cards, they are printed on white plastic card stock but the Rookie word is clear. Very hard to pull a good scan off of.

What's unusual about the Marquee set is that each class of RC or not quite but still called RC are part of the base set, making it the largest set Panini has ever produced for the NBA. The Biyombo card shown here is card #500, for example. The set is 540 cards long, but only has 100 true base cards, unfortunately. Instead of this wasted space on giving multiple cards to people, they should have given all 450 players in the league a card instead.

I got another PWE from Sean Norris, including more Marvel cards and some cards from the Superman III movie set. I know it's a terrible movie, but if I don't have to pay for the cards, I will take them! Although not my first cards from the set, it is the first I've scanned.

 Most of what I got was from Punisher War Journal, but also one card from 1994 Marvel Masterpieces.

 And here's the scan from Superman III.

These are all in really good condition, despite the black borders on front and the red on the back. No chipping on any of the 4 cards I got. Rarity for a 34 year old card.