Box Break - - 2011-12 Panini Rookie Anthology

Back in June 2012, Panini released an end of the year product called Rookie Anthology.  Reviews were mixed for this in the beginning as the price point (over $100) was a little steep considering this is a mish-mash or all the previously released sets.  What does that mean, you ask?  Think of Upper Deck's old Rookie Update sets from the early-mid 2000s and you would be pretty close to a match.

(Contrary to popular belief, I am over the age of 9, therefore I was able to purchase and open this product without legal ramifications for both the seller and my parental guardian.)

Rookie Anthology packs "updated" rookie cards of late entry rookies and players that got to see action further in the season from their card releases earlier in the year.  This is a great improvement over jamming early releases full of redemption cards.  Crown Royale, Pinnacle, Luxury Suite and Limited are all featured with additions to the Ice Breakers checklist, the Rookie Royalty and Silhouettes checklists, and the Limited Phenoms checklist.  In addition, Panini added their own base cards as well as Rookie Treasures which feature a dual sweater or patch plus an autograph of any of the plethora of rookies.

Each box contains 10 packs with 5 cards per pack.  Guaranteed in each box are 1 Rookie Treasures card, 1 additional autograph card, and 2 memorabilia cards.  

Let's take a look at what we pulled.

First, the BASE CARDS:

When I first saw these out there, I didn't think they were anything new or fresh.  Just basically your run of the mill Panini set.  The more I saw them, though, they kind of have a way of growing on you.  

The base set cards feature a zoomed in shot of the player, fully colorized to stand out from the background.  The color coding matches the team colors on the boarders and design.  There is a, believe it or not, fairly unobtrusive product logo in the top left corner, and a gold foil stamped team logo on the right.  The players name, number, and position are arced across the bottom in a ribbon/banner type design.  They are clean, bright, and look very nice side by side in binder pages (its only a 100 card base set).  

ROOKIE INSERTS:

The interesting thing as I already mentioned, with Rookie Anthology is that it is much like the old Rookie Update sets from Upper Deck back in the day.  Panini created new updated rookie cards with high numbers for the various sets produced that season and inserted them into this product.  Here's what we pulled...

From 2011-12 Crown Royale.  This is a Rookie Royalty card of Warren Peters.  Warren is in the Penguins system now after signing with the team as a free agent in July 2012.

 

Here are the Ice Breakers from the Pinnacle "Update" set that I pulled.  With the Nufex technology in full effect, it's hard to see what is going on with these scans (especially since my scanner now wants to put stripes on everything).  And on top of that, I forgot to flip them before I uploaded them.  Clockwise, I pulled Cody Eakin from the Capitals, Calvin De Haan from the Islanders, Peter Holland from the Ducks, and Anders Nilsson from the Islanders.

GAME USED/AUTOGRAPHS:

I pulled one Rookie Rivalry card.  Here it is and features Toronto's Matt Frattin and David Rundblad from the Coyotes.  For some reason, I pulled Rundblad in a few products as a hit.  Too bad I don't collect Portland Pirates cards, or Coyotes, or Rundblad.

Here was my Rookie Treasures card which features Tomas Kubalik dual memorabilia and autograph numbered out of 499.  These RT cards are numbered either /99, /199, or /499 with an additional run of /15 inserted as case hits.  Kubalik has played 12 games for Columbus but has not had a call up this season.  He has split time in the AHL between the Springfield Falcons and the St. John's Ice Caps.

But the next card made the whole box (and then some).  If you follow my Twitter, you probably already know what is coming.

Sorry for the crooked scan.  The picture I posted on Twitter was much nicer I think.  I even got a retweet by Panini because it's such a crazy card.  This is the big one of the checklist.  The RNH  #/99 auto/dual multi-color swatch card has been moving on the secondary market, albeit at a much slower pace now that we have some time between release and now.  It's kind of funny to see the differences in final sale prices between the plain swatch ones and the multi-color ones too.  But still, I had a heck of time even pulling basic RNH cards out of products last season.  Now this???!!!  I was pretty happy as I haven't had much luck on rookie autos as of late.  Very nice card, indeed.

BONUS PACK CARD:

In every box of Rookie Anthology, there is a bonus pack that contains an additional card.  This card can be anything.  More times than not, it will contain one of the hits of the box or an extra hit.  On occasion, I have seen some of these with only base update rookies.  Mine....??

We had another pretty awesome autograph...

This is a 2011-12 Panini Limited Stanley Cup Winners Auto of Brad Marchand.  The card is some type of hybrid acetate/thick glossy/plastic-like material.  So much so, that Brad (and all the others) had to sign with a silver sharpie marker.  Brad's signature leaves something to the imagination but there is no question that it is his.  He even put his number on there.  Very nice looking card.

Overall, this is a nice Panini product.  The base cards are nice and at 100 cards for a set, it isn't too difficult to track down the ones you may need to fill a checklist.  The hits are plentiful and the opportunity to expand the base checklists of the earlier releases makes the set building chase even more challenging.

I would definitely recommend anyone to pick this up, especially at the current price point under $60.  Check around and you will find some great deals on this one.  You will probably get plenty of bang for your buck.  I know I did.

Box Break - - 2002-03 Upper Deck Classic Portraits Hobby

This is a long one so bear with me.

2002-03.  It was an innocent time back then.  Wait a minute...no it wasn't.  That was a year after the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, the nation was gripped by war, there were terrorists threats almost daily, and we lived in a world where we didn't know if it was an orange day or a yellow day.  That was also a time where I was not very interested in card collecting but more interesting in bottle collecting (as in beer).

At any rate, my new acquisitions lately for recent products have been accompanied by older products from that early 2000's era where I wasn't actively involved in the hobby.  I have been piggybacking my orders for the latest 2011-12 product with boxes from this forgotten era and my most recent pick-up was an interesting product from Upper Deck.

I acquired a 2002-03 Upper Deck Classic Portraits box.  This is somewhat of a forgotten set that doesn't get much air-play due to the apparent limited production of the product.  It's only a rumor, but I read that Upper Deck pulled the plug on this one before its final printing due to the lack of pre-orders by hobby dealers.  I don't know if that is true but that could explain why the base set with rookies has a book value of $250.  I know there is no one at Upper Deck that reads this blog but if you know anyone, shoot them that question and see what they say.

The set is made up of 138 cards with 100 base veterans and 38 short printed rookies.  Cards 131-138 were only available in UD Rookie Update packs.

These boxes are huge in size (thats a 50 count box of CD Jewel Cases underneath for comparison).  This is because not only do you get a hobby box of the cards themselves but you get a "mini-bust" of any number of players from their extensive checklist.  From what I can tell, there were 17 subjects and a total of 125 different busts featuring players in their home, away, and alternate third sweaters as well as autographed versions, marble composite variations, and glass versions.  The autographed special variations were also limited printed between 25-50 copies.

My mini-bust was of this guy...

That would be Dany Heatley in his home Atlanta Thrashers sweater.  As you can see, this is the Autographed version too.  It isn't the serial numbered one but nonetheless, it is very nice.  I have only seen these for sale a few times and the retail price tags are in the $40-50 range for most of the autograph versions (unless of course you get a HOFer or soon to be one).  I can't see trying to collect all of these because a person would need a wing on their house just to display them.  It was bad enough trying to get the Penguin bobble heads out of the Pacific Head's Up set.  But, there is a Lemieux and a Jagr in the checklist that I wouldn't mind procuring at some point in time.  For now I'll just stick to cards.

As for the box itself, it claims that there are an average of two Game Used cards as well as two sequentially numbered Rookie Cards.  There are 5 cards per pack with a total of 24 packs per box.  For the arithmetically challenged, that's 120 cards.  Since the base set is only 100 cards, one would think that there is a pretty good chance at getting the entire base set since I doubt there will be more than 20 inserts.  Of course, this is assuming that this was an Upper Deck set that had a collation with little to no duplication.

So here is what I pulled...

Base Cards:   110 (complete base set 1-100 and 10 doubles)
Inserts:      6
Rookies:      4
Game Used:    2
Autographs:   1 (if you count the Heatley bust)

As you can see here, the box did yield me the full base set as well as a few doubles.  I also lucked out (if you can call it that) by getting 4 rookies instead of the standard 2 as stated on the box.  You can see Bobby Orr's smiling face on the pack which means he must be the focus of something in here, which he is.

Overall, the cards are very nicely designed.  They almost look like something from ITG.  The base cards have a zoomed in shot from an action stock photo that has been "portraitized" by the artists and their obvious talent for using Photoshop tools.  The backs feature that same photo only without the touch up, as well as a quick blurb about the player and a few years worth of stats.  The inserts are nicely designed as well and most feature some type of foil or mirror board printing.  I could have done better on the player selection for the inserts though.  I am happy with the product considering what it cost and I'm sure it is going to look nice in a binder. 

Check out images of the product.

First the base cards.  

Moose Hedberg and Jaromir Jagr in his first year as a Capital.  As we all remember, Jags was traded for Kris Beech, Michal Sivek and Ross Lupaschuk or as I like to refer to them as some beads, a sack of wheat and a small pox infested blanket.  If you click on these to enlarge them, you can see the "portraitizing" that I talked about earlier.

Le Magnifique!!

The Rookies...

I received Dennis Seidenberg, Jeff Paul, Shawn Thornton, and Alex Svitov.  No one really to write home about because we only really have two NHLers here.  Jeff Paul only ever played 2 games for Colorado, otherwise he was a career minor leaguer.  Svitov was a high draft pick for the Lightning but in typical Tampa Bay fashion, they gave up on him quick.  Thornton and Seidenberg both are on the Bruins.  I didn't pull any of the big names like Zetterberg, Frolov, or Spezza, plus the Ryan Miller could only be pulled from Rookie Update as I mentioned earlier.


Now the inserts...

I pulled two cards from the Etched In Time set.  These feature a variety of players overtop a prismboard background.  The cards have a brief description of the player on the back as well as a list of events in the players career that were significant.  I pulled Jose Theodore and Mike Modano.  Sorry for the Modano scan that had his name chopped off.

 

2 different Portrait Of A Legend cards featuring various achievements in the legendary career of Bobby Orr.  To highlight a little of the info on the backs of the cards...Orr won the Calder in 1967 and went on to score 120 points in 1969-70.  He was the first player in history to win four single season trophies..as well as a Cup.  His greatest season came in 1974-75 where he scored a career-high 46 goals en route to winning his second league scoring title.  He was also named to the All-Star first team for the 8th straight time. 

I also got two other inserts.  One is a Steve Yzerman Genuine Greatness card.  It features a few career highlights on the back side of the card.  The "G" in the background is some kind of red foil.  The other card is a Brendan Shanahan Pillars of Strength card.  These cards feature guys that can score but also mix it up with their physical play.  Once known for dishing out checks, he now collects them from players who focus too much on the physical play.


Finally, the Game Used cards...

Very nice dual sweater card of Jeremy Roenick and Simon Gagne.  Back then, this was a great tandem in hockey.  Now, Roenick has a broadcasting job for NBC Sports and routinely spouts off verbal epithets in the direction of Mike Milbury and Keith Jones.  Gagne is on the Los Angeles Kings but, as has plagued his career, he was knocked out for the season with concussion issues.  Gagne is a deadly sniper on the wing but his history of injuries has derailed what could have been a perennial All-Star career.

And I figured we'd go out with a bang.  Did I say bang?  I meant dud!!  This Krys Kolanos card had so much potential but then there is the dreaded white swatch of death.  Kolanos was a first round pick by the Coyotes in 2000 and his big break came in 2002.  He only made it half the season after Vaclav Varada blasted him from behind, knocking him unconscious.  He was on the shelf for a few months and then came back, beating Patrick Roy in overtime (pretty much his only career highlight).  Kolanos toiled in the minors for quite a few years, being used by teams mainly as an injury replacement.  He finally cracked a spot on Calgary this year and played fairly consistent.