A Suns Redemption

My final step from my box break of 2013-14 Immaculate Basketball that I won last year is the Alex Len Rookie Patch Autograph redemption, which I received from Panini today. The card, #/99, is pretty cool. A nice image of Len along with a multi-colored patch, which appears to be part of the “N” from his nameplate on the back of the jersey, and a legible on-card autograph.

Len is an integral part of a young Suns team that is on the way up, a team that missed the playoffs last year by one game and are currently sitting at the #8 seed in the West at the halfway point of the season. This is a nice addition to my Suns collection.

In all it took 4 months and ten days to receive the redemption card.

Putting A Close To My Immaculate Basketball Box

In September I was fortunate enough to win a box of 2013-14 Panini ImmaculateBasketball from contest on Panini’s blog. This was quite an amazing prize considering that boxes are still selling over $400 each months later.

This is the highest priced product I have ever opened and is one of the high risk/high reward type products if you can pull some of the better cards, including the Sneak Peek show cards. It was a unique experience opening the tin and I appreciate that Panini has connected to their collectors with their contests and given us the opportunity to win a product that we normally would never have opened otherwise.

Hopefully I don’t seem like a spoiled brat looking a gift horse in the mouth but my box was a bit of a disappointment. I did keep two cards from teams I collect but I sold the other 4 cards from my box. Here are the cards and their final selling prices not including my $2.50 shipping cost

Joakim Noah Gold base card #/10 

1 bid $4.99
 

Kendrick Perkins jumbo relic #/75

4 bids $2.04
 

Bill Sharman Ink autograph #/99

5 bids $15.50

 

Michael Kidd-Gilchrist Sole of the Game shoe relic #/35

6 bids $26.52

 

I kept the Gary Payton Scorers Club autograph #/49 and the Alex Len Rookie Patch auto because I collect Suns and Sonics. I redeemed the Len rookie patch on October 7^th and it is still in the queue waiting to be filled.

 

 I probably should have held on to the cards a little bit longer because the closer we get to Christmas the higher the prices get.

 

The Noah gold base was relisted 3 times without anyone biting, I eventually lowered the price by a dollar and finally sold it. There is currently one gold base version #/10 at $14.00 BIN but I can almost guarantee it won’t sell at that price.

The Perkins jumbo relic was also relisted 3 times without any interest, I lowered the starting to .99 cents and it sold the same day as the Noah base card.

The Sharman Ink auto was the last card to sell, Dec 9^th, and was the surprise sell of the collection. It actually sold during the first listing at a higher price than expected. When I was pricing his cards his autographs seemed pretty common and his base Ink autos (like mine) were selling in the $2-5 range with the gold parallel #/10 version selling in around $7-10 range. A couple of last day bids jumped it to over $15 and my jaw dropped. Not a huge sale but considering that it was more than double of what I expected this was a win. Plus there was chipping on the card front I didn’t even expect to top $2-3 sale price.

The final card on the list, which was actually the first to sell, is the Michael Kidd-Gilchrist Sole of the Game shoe relic. When I listed it there were two already for auction with $29.99 and $35 BIN prices so I came in at $19.99 opening price and a $29.99 BIN option but I had no interest. When I relisted it after 5 days I dropped the starting price to $9.99 with a $24.99 BIN option. I ended up topping the BIN price by almost two bucks so I am not too upset.

In the end I was able to sell the four cards and make $49.05 plus shipping, which I have used to add some cool Griffey cards to my collection and one special card that has been on my Want List for 2 years (well, not the specific card but another version so I am happy). You will have to wait to see the "Want List" card on another day, it is being shipped right now and should be here by Thursday.

It's Gotta Be The Shoes!

There have been shoe relics inserted in to cards before but they were far a few between, definitely not enough to change the market and because the relics were often smaller in size it is possible that some collectors may not have even realized they were included in sets.

 

Panini has caught the attention of the collector’s with the inclusion of Sneak Peek jumbo shoe relics in the 2013-14 Panini Immaculate Basketball release. Low end cards are selling for $500, if you can call that low end pricing, but most are selling for thousands. When Immaculate was first released there were some Sneak Peek cards topping $10,000 but that has seemed to level out as more hit the market. With each card being either 1/1 or #/2 every single card is unique and no two are the same.

 

Next month we will see 2013-14 Upper Deck Exquisite Collection Basketball hitting shelves and with a similar price point and pack out as Immaculate there will be some competition for Panini. Upper Deck is kicking back at Panini (pun intended) with their version of a jumbo shoe relic called Signature Kicks.

 

To add some additional value to their cards UD will be adding an on-card autograph to each shoe card and with a checklist that includes Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Julius Erving you know that every card will be a winner.

 

I am not putting down Panini’s Sneak Peek cards, they are original and a well-designed card. The thing here is that the Panini shoe cards and Upper Deck shoe cards are similar but I wouldn’t say it is a straight apple to apple comparison but more of a Honeycrisp apple to a Gala apple, they are both great in their own ways.

 

Now on to today’s question;

Which shoe relic card do you choose?

A) Panini Immaculate Sneak Peek

B) Upper Deck Exquisite Signature Kicks

Box Break: 2013-14 Panini Immaculate Basketball

First I would like to thank Tracy Hackler and Panini for holding the contest, otherwise I would have never had the opportunity to open such a top-end box of cards. The box comes in a cool tin, with sleeve, and inside is a velvet-like inner pack which holds the gold colored box.

Each box contains one numbered base card and 5 numbered hits made up of autographs, patches and relics. Some of the top hits are 1/1 Logoman autograph patches, booklet cards, Insignia patches and Game-used Nameplate Nobility patches but the top of the heap, be all-get all hits are the Sneak Peek shoe relics. These Sneak Peek relics contain a large sneaker swatch  of star players like Kyrie Irving, Shaq, LeBron James and Kobe with the cards all numbered to either 1/1 or #/2 and even the cheapest cards are running a couple of hundred with most selling well over $1,000.

One thing to remember though is that these boxes are high-risk/high-reward. If you are lucky you can make out big but if you don’t have a four-leaf clover growing out of your butt you will have buyer’s remorse. Don’t get me wrong I don’t want to seem ungrateful, this was a unique experience, and I pulled cards from my two favorite teams but if I paid for the box I would have been disappointed.

 

First up is the Joakim Noah base card Gold Parallel #/10

 

A Kendrick Perkins jumbo relic #/75 from my least favorite team, the OKC Stolen Sonics

 

A Bill Sharman autograph #/99

The card has chipping along the green bottom

 

A Michael Kidd-Gilchrist Sole Of The Game shoe relic #/35

 

A Gary Payton Scorers Club autograph #/49

This card is very cool with the gold auto on black paper

 

Finally, an Alex Len Rookie Patch Autograph redemption

 

I collect Suns and Sonics so I got two cards for my collection, including the amazing Payton autograph. I also got a shoe card, just not the kind I was hoping to pull. So there you go…

A Box With A View

A little over a week ago I got an email from Tracy Hackler letting me know that I won one of their seek & find contests, I found 6 Panini logos located through various photo galleries, my prize was a box of basketball cards. Now I normally do not open basketball cards but stick with the occasional singles of Suns players but instead of selling the box I decided to open it to see what I got.

 

Of course it helped that it was a box of 2013-14 Immaculate Basketball and I figured I would never get the chance to open a $450 box of cards. You only get a preview of the Noah base card, you will have to wait until tomorrow to see what else I pulled.