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.