A Quick Peek At 2013 Panini Intrigue Basketball

Panini continues to water down their basketball license with another 2012-13 basketball release; I believe this will be Panini’s 24^th 2012-13 NBA product. With the NBA preseason set to begin in October this late August/early September set is actually closer to the 2013-14 NBA season than it is to the 2012-13 NBA season. I am trying to figure why the designers would use an obscure font for the title, who the Hell cuts away pieces of text in what seems a random pattern based on the letter.

 

Each $130 tin will include 2 packs, a 5 card pack and a 6 card pack. The five card pack contains 5 Intriguing Players cards and the six card pack contains a mix of base cards, inserts and hits. There is the 100 card base checklist plus the Intriguing Players 200 card set that is considered a set within a set. There are only 20 players on the Intriguing Players checklist with each player having 10 different cards each. There are a total of 15 insert sets with half of them being autographs or memorabilia card.

 

The autograph sets include:

Immortalized Autographs
Impact Rookies Autographs
Red, White & Blue Autographs
Slam Ink Autographs
Winning Ink Autographs

Dunk City Autographs

 

The memorabilia sets include
Rookie Auto-memorabilia cards
Intriguing Pairs Memorabilia cards

 

The base cards are pretty cool outside of the large chopped up “INTRIGUE” across the bottom (Harden base card pictured at the top), which I can probably overlook, but most of the rest of the cards do not interest me. Autograph cards were designed in two halves, one for the player and one for the autograph, the memorabilia cards are ok but they too were designed in halves. I think had most of the autograph cards been designed liked the base cards or even the Slam Ink autograph cards it would have come out nicer.

 

I can honestly say that this set does not intrigue me.

A Look At Chicago's Greatest Sports Moments

A reader recently sent me an email with link to a story and suggested it might be something worth reading, it was an article about the “Greatest Moments In Sports” for Chicago and I thought how neat it would be to go through the greatest moments for a city but in card form. Instead of just picking moments I thought it might be fun to tie a card in to that moment, something like a special rookie card, hard to find autograph or even a card with an image from the specific game.

 

I started thinking about other cities that have had great sports moments, the Championships and come back stories, the “David vs. Goliath” moments and amazing feats and records. Our hobby is built on these moments so they connect so effortlessly. I may try to put together a list for some of the major sporting cities where there always seems to be a “Greatest Moment” happening.

 

The Chicago story is pretty interesting because some of the selections seem obvious like the 1940 Chicago Bears NFL Championship Game or Super Bowl XX, Michael Jordan’s first Championship in 1991, the Cubs and White Sox World Series Titles and the Blackhawks 2010 Stanley Cup win but there were some unexpected moments too like Joakim Noah’s basket in triple OT of Game 6 versus the Celtics in the first round of the 2009 NBA Playoffs and the Cubs “Rally Hat” game in 1979 versus the Phillies when they were down 21-9 in the fifth inning and won 23-22 with 11 homers and 50 hits.

 

If you are a fan of Chicago sports it is definitely a unique view on the city’s greatest sports moments, here is a link to the story. Hopefully I can put together moments for other cities too, I figure trying to work out the events and tie in the cards will take some time but it would be a labor of love.

Fonzi, Jethro Bodine And A Harlem Globetrotter Walk In To A Bar... Stop Me If You Heard This One

Every so often you see an autograph checklist and you think

 

This year Panini’s Golden Age is representing the 1970s quite well with a selection of actors and athletes who define the decade nicely. I do like the red designs this year and you can never argue about on-card signatures. I also like that Panini is including Curly Neal from the Harlem Globetrotters, last year Meadowlark Lemon was on the autograph checklist.

   

 

Part III- 2013 Horrors Of War II

Today is June 6^th, D-Day. 69 years ago the largest amphibious assault in history led to a beach head on the coast of Normandy which changed the tide of war for the Allies and allowed them to begin the final march to Berlin. In total there were 155,000 soldiers from 11 nations that took part in the invasion along with 195,000 naval personnel and 5,000 ships in support. I find it fitting that I end my three part review of the upcoming Horrors of War II release on an important day in the history of World War II.

 

Today I will cover the “big” hits, cut signature cards and art cards.

 

In a close out post covering Horrors of War Series II, Famous Fabrics has released a preliminary list of the cut signature cards that are included on the checklist. HoW Series I cut signature checklist was made up with a large collection of Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korean War and Vietnam War with a number of veterans from other conflicts like the American Revolution, Gulf War, Cold War and War on Terror. The checklist from HoW Series II is similar but includes some additional conflicts like Carlist Wars (a series of Spanish Civil Wars), Crimean War, Franco-Prussian War, the French Revolution, the Mexican Revolution and Second Boer War. So far there are well over 150 veterans on the checklist from 19 different conflicts, and this is only a preliminary list too.

 

Like Horrors of War I the card designs and card colors are different for each conflict for example yellow for WWII, purple for WWI and blue for the Civil War.

 

 

The checklist for the art cards is also complete and contains 16 people, the Czar Nicholas II card has not been shown yet. Here is the list of 16 people on the checklist:

Benito Mussolini

Douglas MacArthur
Hideki Tojo
Winston Churchill
Jim Doolittle
Charles de Gaule
Joseph Stalin
Napoleon Bonaparte
Emperor Hirohito
Adolph Hitler
Heinrich Himmler
Erwin Rommel
Osama bin Laden
Czar Nicholas II
Franz Ferdinand
Dwight Eisenhower

 

 

There were multiple artists involved with creating this set with one of my favorite artists, Jared Kelley, creating 7 of the cards. He did 7 personalities x 10 cards each, so he did a total of 70 cards (out of 160 total cards). If you are interested in seeing more of his work, he has worked with Famous Fabrics/Sport Kings/ITG and Upper Deck; here is a link to Jared Kelley’s web site

 

Here are the cards created by Jared, he also did Czar Nicholas II but I have not seen that card yet:

 

Here are the remaining 9 cards; I do not know who the other artist(s) are at this time.

 

 

Being a history based set I feel very connected to these types of releases, they are educational and informative. As George Santayana said (and repeated by History teachers to this day in various forms) “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

Part II- 2013 Horrors Of War II

At the end of the month Famous Fabrics will be releasing Horrors of War II, a follow up to the 2011 Horrors of War I set. This base set checklist begins where Series I left off so this is a continuation of that checklist. This 40-card set will include cards #49 through 88 on the checklist and each base card will be limited to #/40. The checklist begins with card #49- The Seven Years War (1754-1763) and runs through 17 different conflicts ending with card #88- War on Terror.

The base cards are only the beginning of the product. Last year we saw each $160 box contain 2 cards, one base card and one cut signature, this year there will be 3 cards per box. No price has been announced yet. There will be one base card, one cut signature and one special insert. The special card will be one of four inserts; a Military Relic card (similar to the Las Vegas Summit preview cards), a Military Patch Relic card, a Hand-Painted Art card or an original 1938 Horrors of War Buyback card.

The Military Relic cards will contain a uniform swatch from various military uniforms and they will be numbered to #/30 each. I believe there will be 40-42 cards on this checklist based on the numbering shown on preview images.

The Military Patch Relic cards have uniform patches and each card is 1/1, based on the numbering it appears that there may be 200 different patches.

The Hand-Painted Art cards have a 16-card checklist and each card will be #/10. Jared Kelley is the artist who painted the cards, I will cover the Art Cards tomorrow.

The 1938 Horrors of War Buyback cards are original cards that have been graded and slabbed by PSA; no other information has been announced about these cards.

I am a little confused about the numbering, there are only going to be 1,600 boxes printed total and with one special insert card per box there should only be a total of 1,600 special cards. The math just does not add up though when you look at the preview cards. Not counting the buy-back cards the numbering shown already equals 1,610 special cards, not to mention that if there are 1,250 Military Relic cards it means there are 41.6667 cards on the checklist (huh?). My guess is that these label numbers are just mock-ups and not actual numbers.