Early Preview Images: 2012-13 Titanium Hockey

Hockey is now cancelled through November and the remaining NHL season is up in the air waiting on groups of millionaires to figure out how to keep more money in their pocket while ignoring the fans who pay their salaries.

 

Meanwhile card companies are still going through with their hockey release schedule to give hockey collectors their fix. Pacific has Titanium Hockey set for a January release and after last year’s “miss-step” they returned to the original Pacific style designs. I think this will go over well with the hockey faithful.

 

Each $100 box will contain 5 packs with 4 cards per pack. There will be 5 hits (memorabilia or autograph cards) with at least one hit being an autograph.

The base card should be quite familiar returning to the metal/steel background design. The 100-card base set uses a simple design, the player over the Titanium logo. Each base card will have two hobby exclusive parallels, Ruby (numbered to player’s jersey number) and Gold (numbered to NHL Draft position).

 

The Gold Rookie cards, which there may be as many as 100 rookies but at least 50 rookies will be included on the final checklist, use the same design but with a gold background color and two “Rookie”  bars along the right and left borders. The rookie cards are going to be extremely limited with only 1 rookie card per 16 box case (1 in 80 packs) and each card will be numbered to the player’s jersey number. Panini will be including rookies from previous NHL drafts who spent some time with the parent club last season.

 

Some of the announced inserts include Four Star Memorabilia, Milestone Goal Die-Cuts, Game Worn Gear, Scorers and Metallic Marks Autographs. One of my favorites, Game Gear, is back to what we expect from Titanium from last year’s black and gold foil cards.

 

Preview: 2011-12 Panini Titanium Hockey

Schedule Release Date: June 13, 2012

Box Configuration:  4 cards per pack/5 pack per box

SRP: $100/box


Box Break:

5 Memorabilia or Autograph cards (1 per pack)


Case Break: (16 boxes per case)

One Rookie card numbered to player’s number

One Home Sweaters auto

Three Hat Tricks memorabilia cards


My Thoughts:

I was enamored with the Titanium Hockey sets in the early 2000s. While they would not win any awards for design, the sets were fun and they were one of the first products that contained a hit per pack. After 10-12 years I still have a handful of those old Pacific Titanium cards.

Fast forward a decade and now Panini holds the Titanium brand and is trying to put their best foot forward to continue the love that collectors held for those old Pacific products. I feel that they did some justice but on some aspects they lost sight of the prize.

The rookie cards bring you back, even using the red “Rookie” diamond. It is quite a bit larger than before but it still works. The Draft Day autographs are ok, but I do not like the studio shots it just seems like the players are disconnected from the sport. Panini worked in some nice parallels, I like the black backgrounds (#/25) as well as the base cards with the team colors and logos behind the players (not sure what they are titles) and finally the Private Signings are pretty cool too.

Now on to the other side of the coin, the baby-poop brown used for the Game-Worn-Gear is just horrendous. The design itself on the card is decent but the color used and tossing a sticker autograph and I have to add this to my “Dislike” column. The New Wave autograph has a 90s feel but when half of the card is misty for the auto sticker I can pass on this too. Finally, the Home/Away/Third Sweater auto/relic cards… normally creating a card with no obvious identifying cues to which the player is not a great decision. Panini made it work with the 2010 Panini Threads Jersey set but a basketball jersey is more recognizable when compared to a hockey sweater. Add in a sticker autograph and two relics and it seems like the designers had bigger plans then they could accomplish. Maybe if they had included the player’s name across the front it would have been better.

Pros:

A throwback to the older Titanium Hockey sets

Decent base card designs

Some interesting parallels

Lots of multi-relic inserts


Cons:

Horrid designs on some subsets/inserts

Ugly ass colors

Not a big fan of the Home/Away Sweaters Auto insert


Rating: 3 ½ out of 5

I think that this is a solid start on the reboot but instead of taking the expected/safe route they went out and tossed in a couple of changes and twists that I do not care for in the end. I would like to see this product continue in the future and evolve in to a solid release each year.