Box Break - - 2010-11 Panini Zenith Blaster Box

The cards you find in retail are generally focused around what most would consider the low-mid range products.  During the 2010-11 hockey season, Panini revived the Zenith brand but decided to market a "retail" version of their product in addition to the normal hobby boxes.  What a great idea....

That was until you saw the price tag.  $29.99 for 3 packs of 5 cards!!  That's 15 cards for about $30, making it $2 per card.  Quite the steep price tag for anyone interested in busting retail, including myself.  I wasn't even interested in the hobby product at the time.  Not even the "Dare to Tear" promotional gimmick suckered me in either.  My LCS at the time had a Mark Messier Box Topper and they obliged the masses by mutilating the card only to find an EPIX Duncan Keith insert.  Good for a Chicago-land card shop but definitely a downer.

Fast forward a little more than 2 years and we now have these boxes still sitting on some retail shelves.  But our friends at Target are not about to have them sit much longer.  They have slapped everyones favorite round clearance sticker on these and have them market at $9.99.  So at about $.66/card, it might be easier to swallow.

Lets see what comes out of a blaster box of 2010-11 Panini Zenith.

First, here are some samples of the base cards.  There are both current stars (#1-115) and "short-printed" legends that are high numbers (#116-140).

I also pulled a GU card....

This card comes from the Winter Warriors insert set, not to be confused with the Donruss version of these called Boys of Winter.  Here we have Jared Boll of the Columbus Blue Jackets.  At least he still plays for the same team.  It's a plain blue swatch, if you can't already tell.

Finally, I pulled one Rookie Roll Call insert (not a jersey version but still)...


wait for it....

Taylor Hall.  In 2010-11 Hall and Seguin were the two big draws for the rookie class.  Getting a Hall out of this box was pretty cool considering how much 10-11 hockey I opened without as much as a peak of Mr. Hall.  I did pull a few Seguin's back then but alas, no Halls.  I have picked up a few since then but it's not the same when you unwrap one of the bigger draws of a set.

Now that the price has dropped, I would say pick up a box or two if you can find them.  You can even get a hobby box under $70 (I even saw one for $62).  They are nicely designed base cards, will probably yield a few nice hits, and are probably an easy set to put together for all you set chasers out there.