A Father's Love For The World Cup

The World Cup is down to the Semifinals with tomorrow’s Brazil-Germany match and Wednesdays Netherlands-Argentina match with the winners moving on to the Final on Sunday July 13^th. At this point, with the way that the final four teams are playing, it could go any way. If Silva wasn’t out with his second yellow card and Neymar out with a back injury I would have picked Brazil to take it all but with those loses any of the four teams can win the title.

 

To celebrate the final leg of the World Cup I am going to post up some of my recent soccer pick ups. As I have said before the 2014 Prizm World Cup release is one of my favorite releases of the year so I am targeting these cards to build a set. One of the things that bothers me about this set is the flood of parallels but that doesn’t mean I don’t mind picking some up from time to time and here are the three Father’s Day parallels that I picked up this past week. The cards were inserted in to Panini’s Father’s Day packs and are #/7 each. The cards are exactly the same as the base cards except for the "Panini Limited Edition" on the front and the #/7 on the back.

 

While the top named players Father’s Day parallels are selling for well over $150 there are plenty that are selling for less than $5 with shipping. Together these cards cost me a total of $9.05, including the shipping.

 

First up is Alexandre Song

 

 If it were not for Suarez biting Italy’s Chiellini on the shoulder during a match Song would have taken the “A-Hole of the World Cup” award. He was beyond physical, hitting and punching other players during his two games. He received a red card against Croatia and was banned for 3 games by FIFA. He is currently at the center of an investigation, along with 6 other Cameroon players, by Cameroon‘s football federation for fixing World Cup matches. It was no surprise that I was the only bidder of this card and it cost me .99 cents and $2.50 shipping.

 

Next up is Joao Moutinho

 

Moutinho is a solid player but no goals, no assists and being overshadowed by Cristiano Ronaldo on a Portuguese team that did not advance past group play kept his card prices very reasonable. I was happy to pick up this card for $2.25 shipped.

 

Finally is Igor Akinfeev

 

Akinfeev is by no means the best goalie at the World Cup but in the first two games he gave up only 2 goals and with Russia needing a win over South Korea to move along he had to become a brick wall. If you want to surmise Akinfeev’s World Cup experience just watch Korea’s Keun-Ho Lee’s long distance goal in the 69^th minute. Just plain ugly goalkeeping but it worked out in my favor, .99 cents plus $2.32 shipped and I was able to catch and keep the card in my hand.

Panini's Subset The Elements

The other day I made a post questioning the reason behind a 15-card Tim Tebow insert, today I am taking an about-face and covering a Panini special release that I love. In the upcoming 2012 Father’s Day Promotion (beginning 6/17/2012), similar to the Black Friday wrapper redemption program the Father’s Day Promotion will work in the same way where customers can visit their local card shop, purchase select Panini products and you will receive special packs.

When Panini announced the program last month they released a number of images of cards that will be included in the set.  My favorite subset from the special release has to be the Elements set. This is a 10-card series that shows stars in the outdoors where the weather is in as much control of the game as the referees are. Panini used some beautiful full-bleed images with wonderful color and in some you get a great, close up view of the athlete. This is really how a base set should look, great imagery and minimal design elements.

There are two NFL stars, 6 NHL stars and to offer something for everyone, Panini added two NBA stars. While the NBA players do not play outside at the mercy of the elements, NBA collectors deserve cards from the subset too. Three cards really stand out among the rest, Tom Brady and Ryan Ellis, you get shivers just looking at the snow falling around them and with the Tim Thomas card Panini went with a beautiful close up showing the look of determination on Thomas as the ice shavings fly everywhere.

The backs contain a smaller/half-size image from the front of the card along with the card number and team logo. There is a write-up related to the specific game. You get to find out that not only did Urlacher's Bears defeat the New York Jets in the Week 16 game in the 2010 season 38-34 but you also find out that the Jet's flight back to New York was delayed because of the snowstorm. You also find out that Jagr, having never played an outdoor game, went overboard with the eye black during the skate around practice before the 2012 Winter Classic game against the Rangers.

Did I mention that I love this set? I really want to see this type of subset included in some of Panini's base products.