Mail Day Saturday: Every Time I Look At This I Don't Go Blind

Today is the final part of my latest trade mail day with 90's Niche Football Card Blog. One I have been extremely excited about showing off.

As you have seen on here, I have busted a couple boxes of 2014 Panini Country Music hoping to find myself a Darius Rucker autograph and never had any luck in doing so.

Rucker, for those of you who may not remember, was the lead singer of one of my favorite groups of the 90's in Hootie And The Blowfish before deciding he wanted to crossover to country music. Honestly, with my dislike of country music, I haven't even heard one of his country songs so I am not sure if he is even any good at it.

In my mind, he is and always will be Hootie.

When 90's Niche Football Card Blog and I discussed the possibility of helping me acquire an autograph of his, we were looking at doing his basic auto from the product, but when a autograph silhouette came up for cheaper, he helped snag it for me and we made a deal for it.

I was beyond excited to add this one to the PC. Maybe I will even still bust some of the 2014 Country Music because it is so cheap just to see if I can land the other autograph of his from the product.

A big thanks goes out to 90's Niche Football card blog for the overall trade. With his help, I got the Rucker auto, I got my Psych set complete and was able to add some cool Giants cards. Another big trade complete for us and from what I can tell, another one will more than likely build up down the road.

Thoughts on today's pickup are welcomed in comments!

Breakin Wax REVIEW:2015 Elite Extra Edition Baseball Hobby HOT Box

When you think of prospecting products in baseball, usually the first thought that pops into everyone's mind is Bowman. Yes, it does me to but I am not as big of a fan of it as I used to be. Feels like Topps had put that on repeat.

So as normal, I think outside of the normal collector realm and found something I enjoy 100 TIMES more than Bowman, Panini Elite Extra Edition. Not only does this have prospects, it's LOADED with autographs, parallels and jersey cards all for about the same price. Why wouldn't you choose this over it.

See why I am so into this product as you read on.

In every box of 2015 Elite Extra Edition you will find 20 packs per box with 5 cards per pack. Most boxes will average about 6 autographs and 1 jersey card. Mine came with an extra. There are some HOT boxes that can land you up to 10 hits. Boxes will run you roughly $90.

The base cards are sharp. Foil done in a design similar to 1997 Donruss Preferred featuring the prospects in their college uni's. There are also 200 cards in the base set so that's not completely out of reach in a few boxes.

 So you take an already great looking base set and add some color and rainbow to it. Even more impressive. You can find four numbered cards per box. There are also die cut parallels.

 

And harder to find ones. This one of D-Backs prospect Domingo Leyba is numbered to 10.

 

There are other inserts besides the parallels to find. These aren't quite as impressive, but not bad in design.

  

I would have liked to seen this done in foil.

 

Now onto the autographs. You get regular base and parallels to these as well. Including chances at printing plates. I pulled some pretty decent ones for myself including

Kaprielian (even prettier in person) and

  

Jeter's future replacement?, Kyle Holder. This one is numbered to 10 as well. That makes two low numbered pulls so far.

Each box also comes with one jersey card. I thought the design popped on here.

 

I also pulled this autographed jersey card numbered to 50 as well. Like I said, this product is impressive. But even more impressive was my final pull....

A Boston Red Sox top prospect Yoan Moncada Rookie autographed silhouette /10. The silhouettes are making their EEE debut this year and I think it is an added winner for sure. One of my favorite designed rookie cards on the market.

Overall, not to sound cliche-ish, but Panini hit a home run here. Great looking base cards, impressive parallels and hits galore. I found value around every corner here and every pack I busted brought more excitement. 

This isn't even all of the awesome stuff that EEE offers. Check out the details on The Knights Lance, HERE. You will see even more offerings that I didn't pull such as Passing The Torch autographs that have Mariano Rivera on them.

Writers Note: Look for some of these cards in future giveaways and #SCCGivesBack mail days. Stay Tuned and make sure to thank Panini America and Tracy Hackler.

Review: Panini Preferred Basketball 2012-2013

One of the very few blessed times I got to try a high end product. Normally I can only stare at them. This one on the other hand if I could afford it, I would try it. Its a very cool product. Find out rest of my thoughts below and what low numbered auto hit we found. And as always, comment below your thoughts on this product.

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:

• 1 Pack Per Box
• (3) Autographs Per Box!
• (1) 6-8 Player Memorabilia Booklet Per
• $200 a box 

BASE CARDS:  Since the product technically doesn't have what I consider base cards since everything is autographed, I will take a second to focus on the box. The box for starters is HUGE! You read the outside and it says 4 cards per box. You are scratching your head as if why make a huge box for such little cards. Well, then you open it up. To be honest when opening it, I thought I found treasure at first or was in a mobster movie and had to drop off some cash in exchange for something as I felt I was opening a suit case and revealing its contents.The packs, the bonus Kobe pack, and the booklet are all in their own separate sections. I found this very classy.. Panini did great laying this one out.

INSERTS: No inserts only parallels to the autographs.

AUTOGRAPHS: Three autographs (three packs) in this product makes up a box alongside the booklet. One card per pack. The first card I pulled was the Mark Price numbered to 25 and in form of a Crown Royale silhouette auto. The next card found was the Nick Collison numbered to 49 and then the biggie of the box the Lenny Wilkens autograph green parallel numbered 1/5.

The autographed silhouettes are one of my favorite autographed card designs if not the favorite. The Panini's Choice award also comes out of Crown Royale and gives you a nice die cut auto and the players name in silver just jumps off from the cardboard. Then there is the Panini signatures that come in a array of colors of Red, Green, Blue, Gold and Black. I like the design on these as the background, at least on this one, has the player in a 3D appeal jumping out with you with color and with the background darkened.

Here are other types of autographs to find in this product

ROOKIE SILHOUETTES PRIME
ROOKIE CROWN ROYALE SIGNATURES:
PANINI SIGNATURES
PANINI'S CHOICE BLACK
There is a 600-CARD AUTOGRAPHED BASE SET 

JERSEY/PATCH CARDS: I absolutely love booklets. Look for incredible combinations featuring Draft Classes, Positions, Statistics, Career Achievements, Teams, and more. We got one called Inducted featuring a class of HOFers. And being a Knicks fan, find Ewing on this really excited me.

The one thing I like about booklet cards, it finally takes us away from the generic plain color swatch jersey card. I think most of us get tired of pulling those. I love the combinations Panini put together on these and I like how they all spell out a word with the a players swatch. You can also find Prime pieces in these as well that look absolutely stunning.

OVERALL THOUGHTS:Definitely has a high end feel from the outside of the box, to the inside of the box. The only card that was high numbered was the booklet and that was only numbered to 99. I think with the amount of low numbered hits and the many big hits this product has to offer, I Prefer to recommend you to it.I think most boxes will pack a punch from the multiple breaks. Not to mention how great the cards look.

RATINGS:  Bloggers Note: Our ratings are based specifically on the blaster, box or packs we opened and do not express what the overall product could bring. Ratings based on a 1-5. 1 Being the lowest and 5 being the highest.
                Packaging: 5
                Base Design: NA
                Insert Design: NA
                Memorablila/Autographs: 5
                Blaster, Hobby Box, or Pack Value: 5