Worth the Wait

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been giving Panini a lot of crap lately. I can’t stand how they design their cards for placement of relics and autos wrecking the base cards in the process. I can’t stand their overreliance on redemption cards. I can’t stand the high value that they put on jersey cards when setting the MSRP of their products. I really dislike that they don’t give you the exact numbers for how many autos and relics that you’ll get in a box. I hate that they have the NBA license exclusively.

Panini did do one thing right, almost, on last year’s release schedule. Hall of Fame Basketball was a great idea on paper, but in practice it kind of fell short. My three Harry Gallatin autographs and three Scotty Pippen USA jersey cards from six boxes back up that claim and then some.

This card here almost makes it all worth it though. On Monday, I found this card in my mailbox. It had almost escaped the toploader it had been shipped in so it looks like I caught it just in time. Please find a way to secure the toploader so that cards don’t have a chance of sliding out Panini. Having to send this back right after getting it in the mail would have been the final nail in the coffin.

This is a beautiful card. Summitt has a great signature and these Famed Signatures cards are laid out greatly. The redemptions for this card were consistently selling for around $35 on eBay, but now the actual card has sold for $20 and $25 in the first two auctions of in-hand cards. Weird. Isn’t it usually the other way around?

Now that I have this card in hand, I’m hoping that I don’t have to wait too long for Panini to get my Cheryl Miller signed and shipped off to me.

As far as the Hall of Fame set goes, I’m still picking up cards here and there when the opportunity presents itself. I recently picked up some cards in a trade with Guy from The Retro-Set Addict.

There were a couple of other base cards, but these were the highlights. This is a different jersey card of The Chief than the one that I already had. The Cynthia Cooper is a great addition to my collection. It’s a shame that there are so many copies of all of the females in the set. There’s lower interest to begin with and the high print runs just kill almost any secondary market value that these cards might have.

I don’t think that I ever posted the contents of the 5th and 6th boxes of this stuff that I bought which killed my desire to buy anything but a case of this in the future.

Box 5 had me wanting to throw it out the window as it contained my third Harry Gallatin autograph numbered to 699. Way to screw up what could have been a cool set Panini. Why would anyone chase this stuff when you get the same crap over and over again? Nevil Shed signed this card with his nickname which is cool since I’ll never pull one of the nickname cards. That’s about all that can be said for this box.

Box 6 had some redeeming qualities, but the damage had already been done and couldn’t remove the bad taste that was in my mouth in regards to this product. One cool thing about this box was that it contained two jersey cards. Hot box! This was the first Parish card that I pulled out of packs, but I had already purchased one on eBay. Oh well. The Larry Bird jersey card is probably the best card that I own from this set and, if I’m remembering correctly, is my first Bird relic. I thought that the Rick Barry autograph was a very cool pull even if it is only a $7 card on eBay.

There were some base cards that aren’t pictured, but no one really cares about those anyway. I hope to one day finish the base set, but that might end up proving to be too tough of a venture since so much of this product is still sitting in unopened cases.

 

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