2009 NFL National Treasure Pen Pals

Today Panini gave Beckett an exclusive look at the 2009 National Treasure Pen Pals Autograph insert, I know… shocker that Beckett got the exclusive on the announcement. But I do want to give them the credit for releasing the information, something they should have done regarding a recent Topps announcement covering the fake RPAs.

The Pen Pals set is a 31-card set containing 84 total autographs, the cards contain between 2 and 4 autographs of the 2009 rookies. The 2009 National Treasure set is scheduled to be released in January 2010.

The set has some potential; some of the highlights include on-card signatures, a decent checklist and signatures signed in one of 3 different colored inks. There is no information about serial numbers or SPs, so I do not know if the colored inks differentiate the cards in any way.

On the flip side a huge sore spot is that the cards are generic and besides some foil and team logo they are essentially clones of the Panini 2009-10 Basketball Pen Pals inserts, which was previewed only 2 weeks ago. The sets are being released 3 months apart from each other; Panini should have re-created the Pen Pals set for their football release.

The checklist is listed below; Michael Crabtree appears on 9 different cards, Matt Stafford and Knowshon Moreno both appear 6 times each and surprisingly Matt Sanchez appears on only 3 cards.

Ramses Barden
Rhett Bomar
Andre Brown
Donald Brown
Kenny Britt
Deon Butler

Glen Coffee
Michael Crabtree
Aaron Curry

Nate Davis

Josh Freeman

Percy Harvin
Darrius Heyward-Bey

Juaquin Iglesias

Jeremy Maclin
Mohamed Massquoi
LeSean McCoy
Stephan McGee
Knowshon Moreno

Hakkem Nicks

Brandon Pettigrew

Javon Ringer
Brian Robiskie

Mark Sanchez
Matt Stafford

Mike Thomas
Patrick Turner

Chris Wells
Pat White
Derek Williams