Review: Panini Certified Football 2013

First off, I would like to say thanks to the WONDERFUL people at Panini America for providing us with this box to review. Here are many places you can find Panini America: official site, blog, Twitter, and Facebook. If you don't follow them at all..you should! They talk to you on Twitter, have contests on their blog and Facebook and the site is also fun to visit!

Box Break Down:

• 10 Packs Per Box, 5 Cards Per Pack 
• 4 hits per box
• $90-$95 per box
• Look for Mirror parallels

 

BASE CARDS:The roots of Certified base cards stay the same. Clean design with standout player on silver foilboard. Certified has also been known to have #'d subsets as well. This years includes the Immortals and New Generation subsets both # to 999 with the words written across the top of the card. I like that Panini does this to the base cards. Adds more value to just a plain base card if they are limited. Not to mention, it adds more fun to chasing down a base card set. I know there are not many of us set chasers left, but being one myself, this is what I look for.

We did run into a problem with some of the base cards we thought we would warn you about. Due to the silverboard technology used and the thinness of the cards, be very careful upon opening packs as it does not take much to damage a few corners as we found out a couple of packs in. But as long as you open slowly, you will be fine.

 

INSERTS: Mirror parallels are this products bread and butter inserts. You will find three of these in every box. There are Mirror parallels of Red, Blue, Gold, Emerald and Black that are numbered from 250 all the way down to 1. Our box didn't bring the boom in terms of Mirror parallels, but gotta say that they are very eye appealing.

 

AUTOGRAPHS: In terms of BOOM this box didn't provide it with the autographs. We were a bit disappointed not have pulled a FRESHMAN FABRIC as one of our autographs. Two base autos were not quite what we expected from this box. Though design is nice with the mirror red appeal on the New Generation subset card.

The Freshman Fabric design this year is spectacular if you haven't seen it. Here is an example (remember this isn't a card we pulled from this break and just an example taken from Panini's blog)

Much improved over past years designs. Just because we didn't land one in our box shouldn't scare you from trying the product. Because these alone will catch your attention.

JERSEY/PATCH CARD:  Most breaks will give you 2 autos, 2 memorabilia. We landed a bonus patch card in the box in our last pack of Eric Decker. It's a gold mirror parallel version and its DIRTY! No, it's not like that. It's literally dirty. The patch has dirt stains on it so you know that it's game used.

All of the jersey cards in this product are well designed. The Robinson and Ellington jersey cards above are "trapped" into the card. And if you take note the Robinson is a gold parallel version. But our favorite was this Decker. Nice to see some filth on these game used cards. And the mirror shine helps it stand out too.

New to this years lineup is Emmitt Smith and Barry Sanders Insert Sets! Find silhouette die-cuts over a jumbo material swatch, including autographed versions! And if you are like me, silhouettes are ones you chase.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: In terms of design, the overall product is beautiful. It also has a lot to offer with the right box break. We have seen other breaks that were much more impressive than the one we had so don't let this break scare you away. We did get a bonus hit however and it was sick. But it was a little disappointing not to find a Freshman Fabric and only base autographs. Not every box will give you this.

Speaking of not every boxes, there’s the existence of three Hot Boxes per 24 box case (one in each eight-box inner case) that will replace every base card with special Platinum parallel versions. These alone will be another chase. Especially those of us trying to get rainbows of our favorite players.

In the end, if you are a fan of Certified, this years product will not disappoint especially with the new add ons.