REVIEW: 2014 Prizm Baseball

Prizm has been a huge hit since it's inaugural release in 2012. This year Panini played around the box layout and cut down on packs per box and added more value by putting more Prizms in every box. Let's take a gander at what I am talking about.

Before I start my review, 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 interact with you on Twitter, have contests on their blog and Facebook and the site is also fun to visit!

Now onto the review:

BOX BREAK DOWN: 

• 12 Packs Per Box, 6 Cards Per Pack
• Two Autographs Per Box
• Six Prizm Refractors Per Box

PRICE: You can find most boxes around $60

 

BASE CARDS: (excuse the blurry pics for Abreu and Murray) 2014 Prizm sticks with it's basics, a chomium design that is similar to it's rival counterpart except these cards won't warp over time. I think that's because of how Panini made the cards a bit thicker. The design itself is simple with a player pictured and a border around them. Panini does the best they can without the MLB license and not showing logos on these cards.

There are 200 cards in the base set consisting of 170 veterans and retired along with 30 rookies including baseball slugging White Sox rookie Jose Abreu shown above.

The Victorino shown here is a Red Prizm numbered to 25

These BLUE MOJO Prizms are such a thing of beauty! Panini did a great job with these and they are numbered to 75.

INSERTS: Very impressed! The basic design of the inserts look are beautiful against the Prizm technology. But nothing is more impressive in these than the Prizm (refractor) parallels themselves. This year Panini has the following Prizms in their lineup:

- Sliver - randomly inserted
- Purple - numbered to 99
- Blue Mojo - numbered to 75
- Orange Die-Cut - numbered to 60
- 42 Jackie Robinson Tribute - numbered to 42 (Hobby Exclusive)
- Red - numbered to 25
- Gold - numbered to 10 (Hobby Exclusive)
- Finite Black - numbered 1 of 1 (Hobby Exclusive)

There are also Prizm parallel's of their other insert cards as well. They are truly a thing of beauty. I know if I could afford the singles, I would for certain put a rainbow together. But, the singles sell well on the market as they are a red hot commodity especially the harder to find ones.

Every box promises 6 Prizms, two are supposed to be numbered (I got three), which this box provided.

AUTOGRAPHED CARDS:  In Prizm you get two autographs per box, there was no better way to kick off this box than opening it up and finding a autographed Prizm parallel of top prospect Byron Buxton in your first pack.  The funny thing was pulling the second auto that happened to be a Twin as well.

As for the design, I had seen some collectors unhappy about the size of the white box on these for the players autographs. Honestly, it doesn't bother me at all. I find the layout on these well balanced. I think the only thing that does bother me a little is having the top of the player's head chopped off. But, I understand why they did that, they had to hide the logos.

Some of the big signers in this product are: Mike Trout, Manny Machado, Chris Sale, Mark Trumbo, Brandon Phillips, Jose Bautista, Yoenis Cespedes, Buster Posey, Jose Fernandez, Evan Longoria, Troy Tulowitzki, David Ortiz, Clayton Kershaw, Jordan Zimmermann, Pete Rose, Jeff Bagwell, Mark Grace, Craig Biggio, Don Mattingly,Chris Davis, Tom Glavine, Darryl Strawberry,  Jose Abreu, Kris Bryant, Byron Buxton,to name a few.

MEMORABILIA CARDS: N/A However that would be awesome for Panini to expand to with these!

OVERALL THOUGHTS: Value comes to mind when busting a box of Prizm. With a lower price point, more Prizms with guaranteed numbered ones and two autographs I find Prizm to be a steal. It also helps that the design is nice as well.

The one thing to note about Prizm is a powder substance that you will immediately notice when handling the cards. I can try to explain what it is but it will serve you best to go straight to the source, Panini's blog The Knights Lance. I have provided the link with that info below:

http://paniniamerica.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/a-small-dust-up-panini-america-addresses-powder-mystery-in-prizm-and-crusade/