Sport Card Collectors: Zion Williamson

Showing posts with label Zion Williamson. Show all posts

Saturday, August 14, 2021

CARDBOARD REVIEW:2020-2021 Elite Basketball

Basketball season may have come to a rest, but not the cards. They are still flying off the shelves and new releases continue to come.

Let's see how today's box break went with a box of Elite.

Every box of 2020-2021 Elite basketball comes with 20 packs of 5 cards each. Each box guarantees 2 autographs and a good amount of parallels. Boxes run about $350 and like the 2019-20 set, 2020-21 Donruss Elite Basketball will be sold through Panini’s website.

BASE:

Elite has stuck with a pretty simple layout design over the years made up with a lot of foil. Some years it's plain and other years there is a shine.

This years base design is back to the shine and even adds a little bit of background photo.

The base set is built up of 100 base cards of veterans.

And 50 rookies numbered to 299 which makes for an overall base chase of 150 cards. I like how this base set is built. You are not going to find a rookie card in every pack and the numbering adds some value to not on the card itself, but to a set chase of the product.

Well done.

PARALLELS:

There are plenty of shiny parallels to find in Elite, but the good part is, there isn't an overwhelming about like you can find in some products.

Find the following, Red, Blue /99, Aspirations /99 or less, Status /94 or less, Purple /49, Gold /10 and Black 1/1.

Blue /99

Purple /49 (solid pull!)

Purple /49

Aspirations die cut /99

INSERTS

The inserts in this years Elite are fun, colorful, and shiny.

This Jokic Star Status is one of 20 cards in the set.

Primary Colors has only 10 in the set. This is the best of them to find..if only Panini had MJ rights.

Power Formulas has 30 cards to collect in the set.

And returning again for another year in Elite is Spellbound. Featuring 9 players this year, the Spellbounds spell out a players first or last name once collected all from the set.

HITS:

Elite is loaded with some great ink, but my box didn't contain any of the top ink in the set. It instead had some interesting signatures.

RJ Hampton. Nope, not that Hampton I collect but what a short to the point signature he has.

And then comes this Cam Reddish. Is this possibly the worst signed card you have ever seen? It literally looks like he was up late one night trying to get these done and fell asleep and the sharpie slid across the sticker. Charles Barkley would say these are TURRRRIBLE.

OVERALL THOUGHTS:

I really like the build up of the overall product. Design is one of the better Elite ones and I liked the fact the players name can actually be read in this foil use.

The value of this break was a little rough, but it was nice finding a Zion, something I didn't have much luck with in the previous years products.

Let me know your thoughts on Reddish's autograph and the product as a whole in comments.

Stay tuned for some giveaways from Elite coming up soon either on here or on Twitter.

Friday, September 25, 2020

It Only Took One

*caught a head cold so feeling very dreary today, and no, it's not Covid. Throats a little rough and nothing is better for a throat then some warm beverage. Wonders what warm beverage could sooth his throat....only one answer....*

Finding packs of basketball cards in retail outlets is impossible. I haven't seen a single pack of anything basketball since before Christmas and here we are almost a year later. Which in itself is hard to think about.

Why haven't I been able to find any retail basketball packs? Well, that's because of the "Wolf Pack."

The Wolf Pack isn't the fun one from The Hangover, this Wolf Pack comes to hunt down the vendor putting up stock to rip them apart for any sign of retail product they could flip.

This is what you will see from a distance if you time it right and arrive when the vendor is there.

When you get closer you will see them ripping ALL OF the retail out of the vendors hands and off the shelves like raw meat only to follow that same vendor to the next retail location to do it all over again. The Wolf Pack are relentless hunters.

Leaving only behind their death and destruction and a lot of Jack Links beef jerky.

Grrrrrrrr....

*takes a sip to calm the fueling anger I have for retail flippers, then is calm focusing on the main part of today's post*

Luckily for me, I got my hands onto my first basketball card pack via a contest on Instagram from welovesportcards. Otherwise, I probably would have gone the rest of the basketball season without any.

The pack, I won in a contest, was a 2019-2020 Chronicles basketball, which is one I was really hoping to open since I couldn't find any locally.

So what's next? Let's rip it!

*takes a sip, begins to rip*

Every hanger pack of 2019-2020 Chronicles basketball comes with 15 cards. I am not sure what the going price for these were when they came out. As I stated already, couldn't find any.

*another sip to soothe the throat*

The basis of Chronicles is a spread of different Panini products all into one. Most of the products included in the product do not have their own standalone product anymore but some are new specifically for it.

Each of the sets has it's own base set but fall in order of an overall base set that consists of close to 700 cards. Good luck chasing that down especially with this years rookie class.

My first four cards were not a bad start with the Beard and Chris Paul.

Base Chronicles has 50 cards to collect and Panini Threads has 25 cards to collect.

Then came the league MVP Giannis in which Prestige has 25 cards to chase down .

Up next, Cam Reddish rookie. What little basketball I did open around Christmas it felt like Reddish was in every pack.

Playbook has 25 cards to collect.

Wait...what's this? JA?! Yessssss! I didn't have any rookie cards of him, this years ROY. This pack was already worth the winning victory.

Luminance itself has 30 cards to chase.

Trae Young is a beast. Base Panini has 35 cards to collect.

A Donruss Rated Rookie (Donruss has 5 cards to collect) and another Playbook rookie this time of Jarrett Culver

Wait...Tyler Herro in here? Man, nice! I didn't have any rookie cards of him either and he has been playing lights out in the playoffs. Great pack find. Also featured is his teammate Kendrick Nunn.

Kawhi Leonard was found for Hometown Heroes Optic which has 20 cards to collect.

Shut the front door...Zion too?!!? Can this pack get any better? Top three rookies in this class all found in here.

Essentials has 35 cards to collect.

And the good pack rip continues, we end with another Tyler Herro, this time a Bronze Parallel from Essentials.

*takes a sip before finishing up today's post and trying to decide how much Vitamin C to take today to help push this cold away*

Thanks to welovesportcards on Instagram for the fun pack rip and rookie card pulls for my PC. I had truly forgotten what it was like to open a basketball pack and I can see why the sport was so much fun this year.

As for the wolf packs, I do like how the hobby is booming right now, but at the same time its frustrating with them taking all of the retail in my area just to flip it. If only Zach Galifianakis led this wolf pack, instead of taking all of the retail the worse they would do is end up sleeping on the Walmart roof with someones baby and some pet of Mike Tysons.

Monday, March 9, 2020

The Panini Virus

The Panini Virus was created at the 2020 NBA Draft. It was set in motion and slowly started spreading...and spreading...and spreading until now where it has become a pandemic of concern.

Card collectors are racing to their local retail outlets looking for the supplies before it hits them but the virus has spread so fast that the supplies are either low or completely out. It has those who have caught the virus or could get it questioning if they should be overpaying just to have the supplies on hand just in case.

I have been in the hobby for over 25 years and I have never seen something like this. EVER. Panini NBA products this season have been insane all over the board. From Hoops to Prizm, they are hotter than Cindy Crawford in the 90's.

Collectors who haven't ever collected basketball or did at one point but no longer, are collecting it and can't explain it. Those who have collected basketball are loving it and those who don't even collect basketball are catching the virus as well just to flip it.

The virus spread so quickly even I wasn't prepared for it and caught some of it myself. You just don't know why or how you get it, you just do.

It has spread so much that its even hit my local Walmarts. NOBODY, I mean NOBODY (okay maybe like five people that I don't know) here collects. I can usually go in and find whatever I want in retail locations and that even includes those Topps Series 1 tins that everybody is going bananas for. I found at least 20 of those that nobody is touching including myself. But, I have spent the last month just looking for a pack of Optic and it has never been seen after three different Walmarts.

So on Friday I went to my local Walmart for necessities and it was a sad, sad sight. There wasn't a SINGLE pack, rack pack, blaster, mega box of basketball cards in existence. That's insane. I have never seen cards sell like that.

EVERYTHING was so empty. My guess is either someone is driving the distance knowing they could flip the boxes/packs or the very few scattered collectors here are just buying it to flip themselves.

My local Dollar Tree even had 100's of the NBA Hoops and Absolute packs, SOLD OUT. I went to grab a few more from there a few weeks ago and there wasn't a single thing.

It's exciting to see the hobby doing well, but at the same time frustrating. I see so many collectors especially on Twitter who buy out the whole retail shelf of product to flip for twice as much leaving us collectors who want to open up the product for fun with nothing. I am sorry, I won't pay twice the price for a box. I will just hang my head down in sadness instead.

Part of the virus I have caught is not like others. I have caught the RJ Barrett strain. For some reason or another, I am having a blast collecting him. I have yet to see him ever play or even know much about him other than he played for two of the basketball teams I used to support when I watched basketball.

Stay tuned for my Barrett collection I will post soon.

Fortunately for me, my basketball wasn't completely empty handed in the past month. I was able to bust a pack of basketball recently thanks to a contest win on Facebook.

Ages 9+...hmmm....do I qualify....

Here's the rip. Nothing to jump in excitement over.

It helped calm the virus down just for that day. That's it.

But when the fever returns, you have to cool it down. Not sure how I will yet with nothing in existence for basketball packs or boxes to open.

I am not sure how long this virus will continue for with basketball season winding down. Will it continue on all summer until next season starts? End when the season does? It's too hard to predict at this moment. All I hope is that I can keep my spread of the virus contained with Barrett, because I don't want to share what I am finding.

Friday, December 20, 2019

Going Back To Valley Of Cards

Valley Of Cards has become more than just somebody I work alongside with, but a good friend as well.

I don't just tweet any ones auctions out. I have to build a trust factor and know a bit about them. Not to mention, I wouldn't put myself apart of anything I wouldn't do myself. So not only do I tweet those auctions out, but I also participate in bidding on some of those as well. Like I have said before, he has a ton of great cards, ships stuff unremarkable even for a PWE and is just plain generous too.

Together we have given a ton of cards away and what you may not have noticed was that he also gave cards away without you even seeing. He private messaged individuals for their addresses and shipped them cards who always participated, but may not have won in the contests. If that's not a helpful/generous guy, I am not sure who is.

I recently won a few of his auctions and boy what a steal I got from them. At least in my opinion.

Zion mania! Well, I am not really into that but found this All Americans base and silver prizm for .99!

The autograph Darius Slayton and the jersey card above, $1.04!

Nice Slayton patch card, .99!

Score Slayton went the highest for $1.87, but way under what most go for.

But, then came the unexpected......like I have said....overly generous dude.

He added all of this into my package when he sent it.

Kaden Smith has played pretty well as a late season pickup for the Giants in place of injured Evan Engram. Hopefully it will carry on and he will be on the team in 2020. I was sent close to 15 or more of his Prizm rookies.