Every now and then I whack my head on something really hard and buying a box of a Panini product seems like a good idea. The main problem with Panini is that they put out uninspired products and think that an overabundance of serial numbered cards and jersey cards are what people are looking for. Well, not this collector. I don’t think that I’ve been happy with a box of Panini basketball yet. Maybe Classics because that was autograph based and not jersey based.
So, what made me take the plunge on Totally Certified? Well, I was suckered in by cards slightly resembling Dufex. I should have stayed far away and just picked up some singles.
What did I get? Well, there are 16 base cards in the box. They’re silver and numbered to 1849. There were four red parallels in the box. These are numbered to 499. Don’t get me wrong, I like the way that these cards look a lot, but for what this box costs when you’re only getting 23 regular cards, someone like myself is probably better off just buying some singles.
Next up are the blue parallels that are numbered to 299. I really like the look of those a lot and it’s a shame that you only get two per box.
Hit the right player and the right number and you could do well on these cards. Otherwise, they’re not going to be worth all that much.
I only pulled one gold card out of my box. They’re the only parallels that are really limited at 23 copies. I don’t know what kind of attention a gold Turkoglu would draw, but I’ll throw it up on eBay and see what happens. There don’t seem to be as many people chasing Panini parallels are there are chasing Topps parallels.
The first thing that grabs your attention about the rookie autograph cards is the huge piece of jersey included in the card. The only problem is that these are event worn so there’s no shortage of material for Panini to use in these cards. Event worn is nothing special these days.
What is cool about these cards is that they are hard signed and that is something going for this product. This is the base version of the rookie autographs of which there are two per box. This cards is numbered out of 599.
As far as I could see, all of the jersey cards are colored which is nice. Low print runs are one of the few things that can add any value to plain jersey swatches. This Marc Gasol is the Totally Red version and it is numbered to 249 copies which is still pretty high. As long as Panini thinks that 4 plain jersey swatches in a $80 - $100 box is a good value, there’s no way that I can take them seriously as a card manufacturer.
Here’s another red jersey card. Did I pull a big pile of shit out of this box or what?
Seriously, is there any demand at all out there for plain jersey cards of Marc Gasol or Mehmet Okur? These cards won’t even get the .99¢ minimum bid on eBay.
This is the one card out of the box that I was happy with, but it would have been a lot less expensive for me to just buy the card outright. The blue versions of the jersey cards are numbered to 99 copies. It’s lower, but still not all that significant. I’m hoping that at this point the swatches contained in Garnett’s cards are from Celtics jerseys, but you have no way of knowing. In fact, there’s no guarantee that this is even a jersey swatch. The card states that it is “game-worn material.” It could be a sock, undershirt or jock strap by that definition. Gee, thanks Panini.
I pulled a second Totally Blue jersey card of Lamar Odom. This is numbered 1/99 so it might get some attention on eBay where it would normally just sit there. I dislike pulling Lakers even more than I dislike pulling Yankees. This card didn’t make me happy at all, but hopefully some Lakers fans out there will throw some money at this card.
The final card in the box is the Totally Certified Red version of the Evan Turner autographed rookie card. I’d just like to say, that’s a crap autograph Mr. Turner. This is a sharp looking card due to the color coordination though. All of the red goes well together. The red versions of these cards are numbered to 99.
Please, the next time that I start thinking about buying anything produced by Panini please smack me in the head until the thought leaves my mind.
2 comments:
Somebody should tell Panini there are other things besides foil board to put cards on.
At least the Evan Turner RC auto will get you something in return. Maybe not a ton, but he has his collectors out there.
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