2009-2010 Panini Season Update Review

Product: 2009-2010 Panini Season Update
Price: $40-$50
Content per box: 24 packs per box, 10 cards per pack

Box Breakdown:
1 Autograph
2 Memorabilia
22 Highlights
2 Silver
5 Playoff Debut
3 Lakers Legacy
7 Rookie Challenge
1 Prestige Rookie
4 Others

This set features:
200 base cards (180 Commons & 20 Highlight)
45 inserts from 3 different subsets: Playoff Debut, Lakers Legacy & Rookie Challenge(Look for serial numbered/jersey/prime/jersey signature/prime signature variations of these inserts)
5 Rookies
Jerseys, Prime, All-Star Patches & Signatures from players like Kobe Bryant, Blake Griffin, Tyreke Evans, and more.

For more information on this product, visit:
http://www.paniniamerica.net/pis/preview.cfm?product_id=220&product_configuration_id=549

Panini finishes the 2009-2010 run of basketball products with Season Updates. Here are some of the hits & inserts from my box:

REVIEW:
Pros: Ideal for set collectors, affordable
Cons: Design of certain jerseys and autos are taken from the inserts

Likes: What I liked about the product is that one box will get almost get you the whole base set. This product also features rookies that did not sign for early Panini products like Rookies & Stars or Threads. At the price of $40-$50 yielding around 3-6 hits per box, its a no brainier in my opinion, especially if you’re just looking to break packs.
Dislikes: What I didn’t like about the product are the design of the hits. When you buy a box of basketball, you want variety. With Season Update, some of the hits are basically made by taking the inserts and adding on memorabilia or autograph. With the rookies, although this is a year-end product, I wish they could’ve included more than just 5 players into the set.

That’s about all I have to say on Panini’s 09-10 Season Update, for a more in dept review of this box, continue reading after the Youtube video.

Final Critique
Product Design & Quality: 3/5
Price: 5/5
Overall: 4/5

Product Design:
Base:
This 200 base card set is great for set collectors. From the box that I opened, I was basically able to build the entire set except for 8 cards, 4 of which are case hits. One thing I have to say about the base is that although it has a nice full photography shot on each card, all of the base seems too similar and not much doing on. These base cards however come in parallel variation with silver /99, gold /24 & platinum /1. Another cool feature with the base set are the highlights that feature 20 of the year’s most memorable events, to sort of recap the season, something you don’t usually see in basketball products.

Inserts:
Another thing I really like about this product, which gives the product its name is the fact that Panini decided to bring back autographs from players like Demar Derozan or Serge Ibaka, which did not sign in the earlier products. Although there weren’t many rookies to look for, being a Derozan fan myself, this aspect of the product really stood out for me. Adding on the fact that Rookies & Stars was one of my favorite products of the year, this product made it that much more worth-while to buy.

Jeresys, Patches & Autos:
As mentioned before, I wish Panini could’ve done something different with some of the jerseys & autos, instead of just taking the design of the regular inserts(Rookie Challenge & Lakers Legacy). The only jersey card that had its own design is the Christmas cards, which I found really neat. It’s “cool” to know which game the jersey or patch piece came out of. With the autos, again aside from the insert designs, I loved the fact that they brought back autos from the older Panini products, and getting a few rookie players that did not previously sign. Autos also came in dual autos and triple autos, which features rookies like Tyreke Evans, Stephen Curry and of course the potential Rookie of the Year, Blake Griffin.

Price vs Quality:
This box is advertised 1 autograph and 2 jersey cards ,a total of 3 hits per box. However, most boxes that I’ve seen being opened actually gets you around 5-6 hits and at $40-$50 a box, you really can’t go wrong with it. Correct me if I’m wrong but one thing I’ve noticed from the boxes, is that each box around 2 autographs, but if you happen to pull a dual auto or a triple auto for that matter, although I havent seen a box with a triple auto yet, you only get one autograph card in that box.

CardboardCollection Eh?

Welcome to CardboardCollection! What’s this all about you ask?

Well the answer is quite simple. This is my new blog dedicated to everything cardboard. Everything about cards(sportscards or card games), I’ll be sharing them here. Or just whatever I feel like talking about when I’m “board”(no?not funny?)

A little about myself. As you might have guessed from the title, I am from Canada. I grew up in upper Toronto most of my childhood and was a pretty happy child. Since I was a kid, there was something about cards that I found fascinating. My interest for cards probably started with Pokemon cards when I was about 8 years old. I had no idea what to do with them, but I knew I loved collecting them. Growing up, I’ve gone from Pokemon cards to Yugioh cards to Magic the gathering: trading card game. Not so much into any of those anymore, but I still play magic the gathering with my friends from time to time. Here and there, I will be blogging about new products or decks that I make. Enough about card games and lets move onto my sports card collecting experiences, because that’s what I’m going to be blogging about most of the time.

When I was about 12 years old, my friend introduced me to hockey or what is known as the “Canadian Sport”. I gradually got more and more into the game and loved everything about it. I remember it was so much fun to watch the Leafs play and cheering on #13(yea you Leafs know who I’m talking about). To be honest, I don’t remember exactly when sports card collecting started for me, but I do remember going to the card show at my local community center and it was always exciting to browse around different booths to see if I can pick up a few cards of my favorite players. As the years went by, I continued to watch the game of hockey, but hockey cards slowly faded away for me. About a year later, another friend of mine got me into watching basketball. At first it was nothing special and hockey was still my favorite sport to watch. However, as I went into high school, basketball became more and more entertaining. To this day, I have became a die-hard Raptors fan and enjoy every minute of them on the court. About a year ago is when I started collecting basketball. So this is just the start of my basketball card collecting, and I’ll see where it takes me.

This hobby has gotten me to learn alot of new things on the internet: making Youtube videos on opening hobby boxes and showing off a trade I made, or learning how to use websites like Photobucket or Sportscardfourm. The newest edition to the list is learning how to blog, which I am really excited about and can’t wait to share everything I have to say about sports cards. On that note, I have to give a big shoutout to a friend of mine I started talking to through youtube, because I wouldn’t have known about using WordPress to blog if it wasnt for him. Here is a link to his blog, so be sure to check him out!

http://sportscardsinspokane.wordpress.com/

I think that’s about everything I can think of to introduce myself and how I started my card collecting. Sports cards isnt the only thing Im into, because I got family, friends and school as my top priorities, but its definitely something I do often on my spare time when I’m not busy.