Drivers Start Your Engines!

NASCAR’s premier event, the racing season’s kick-off race Daytona 500 was delayed Sunday due to rain, NASCAR officials decided to switch to a race under the lights this evening. I used to be a racing fan, and from time to time I still get the bug so I figured to celebrate the race I would open some packs of Press Pass’ 2012 Total Memorabilia. This product is an upper-middle range product with boxes running around $110-125 each. I picked up a couple of retail packs for $20 each, which contains 5 cards including a hit (Hobby packs run $5-10 more and contain 9 cards). Each retail pack contains a base card, a red parallel, a Rising Star insert, a Memory Lane insert and a hit.

The base set consists of 50 cards and includes 33 Sprint Cup Series drivers, 2 Nationwide Series drivers, 1 Camping World Truck Series driver, 3 Legends, 6 Owners and 5 Crew Chiefs. There are also Gold (Not #), Black/White (#/99) and Red (#/250- Retail) parallels. Additionally there are 11 base card variations plus a #0 card. The back of the cards contain a quote and lifetime stats for drivers.

The inserts are Memory Lane which shows 1 of 9 drivers as a child and the back explains how the driver made their way in to driving. I pulled Jimmie Johnson (Who started racing at 4 years old) and Bobby Lanonte (A couple of years old) Memory Lane.

Rising Stars introduces us to 8 up and coming drivers including Maryeve Dufault and the Cope Sisters. The back of the card contains a write up about the driver.

The hits are broken down in to 56 Memorabilia cards, 8 Autograph/Memorabilia cards and 16 Booklet cards. Many of the memorabilia cards contain multiple relics or jumbo relics, hits in the retail packs are usually the single relic cards.

I pulled a Ryan Newman Fire Suit relic #/299 and a Mark Martin Tire relic #/99. The cool thing about the Martin relic is that the swatch is from the side of the tire and contains numerous ridges and patterns. Many of the tire cards that I have come across are from the tread area and are smooth from wear.