Pack of the Day 96: A Box of 2012-13 Panini Basketball

I opened this stuff last year, but the post is in the queue and I might as well write it now. Dave and Adam's Card World had some decent deals during their Black Friday / Cyber Monday sale and I took advantage of some of them. One of the things I ordered is a Hobby box of 2012-13 Panini Basketball. Each box promises 7 Knight parallels and 2 autographs, along with cards from a handful of insert sets.

The base card design kind of resembles the NBA Hoops cards of the early 90's, mostly because of the key-shaped border around the photos. James Harden is having an MVP-contending season for the Rockets, and hopefully this year the team will advance past the first round of the playoffs. I'd probably start an Anthony Davis PC since I also have a unibrow, but I don't even keep up with the basketball PCs I already have. A new one would just be silly. JaVale McGee and Nate Robinson are a couple of fan favorite type players.

Chandler Parsons was on his way to becoming my favorite 'new' Rocket, but I didn't like the way he handled himself during and after his move to the Dallas Mavericks. Jeremy Lin has struggled as a Laker, and I wonder if Linsanity will be on the move again soon? David Robinson and Grant Hill are two of the players I collected a bit during my initial card collecting phase in the 90's, although Robinson was a rival to my favorite player, Hakeem Olajuwon.

This Matching Numbers insert takes a couple of players who wear the same jersey number and puts them on a card together. I guess it's a cool concept, but not a must-collect set for me. I'm not a huge fan of anyone in this group, either, so that's probably a factor in my lukewarm response to it.

These Spirit of the Game inserts fill the 'insert with photos taken from the vicinity of the backboard' niche. It's an all right insert, but I don't like how far the logo intrudes into the action photo. It takes up like a third of the card.

There's not much to say about these Knight parallels. They have the different logo down at the bottom and that's pretty much it. I've heard of Shved, but the other guys I am not that familiar with.

This batch is a little better, with Kyrie Irving as a pretty big star and Morris and Evans at least being guys whose names I know.

Here is the insert that fills the 'famous old guys' slot in the set, Heroes of the Hall. There are some big names here, but no one I have much attachment to. Moses Malone is pretty cool. Patrick Ewing is a villain.

And here is the star player insert, All-Panini. Zach Randolph and Dion Waiters aren't the biggest names out there. I guess I don't follow the NBA close enough anymore to know where they fall in the star/semi-star/scrub hierarchy, but they aren't in the core group of star veterans and they aren't the hot new rookies on the scene, so they must be in the middle somewhere.

It is really hard to tell from the front, but that Zach Randolph card is a parallel. It's a Christmas Card, too, carrying the # 12 / 25 serial number.

My two promised autographs are both redemptions for Rookie Signatures. One features Quincy Miller and the other is Kahwi Leonard. Miller has spent this season signing 10-day contracts and bouncing between the D-League and the end of the Kings' and Pistons' benches, not getting a lot of playing time. I imagine he'll probably be out of the NBA altogether pretty soon. Kawhi Leonard is the young star of the Spurs, the most boring great team in the Association. He was the NBA Finals MVP last season as the Spurs won the Championship, and he plays pretty good defense while scoring some points and getting some assists on offense. If he did similar things on a flashier team this would probably be a better pull, but even as it is this card will probably cover the cost of the box once it's redeemed.

And that's it for this box. I kind of like the base set, and maybe if I get around to sorting through the cards I will consider putting it together. The boxes are cheap, which makes sense considering what you get out of one. I am not too big on any of the insert sets. Mostly it's a good cheap break if you want to bust some basketball cards and take a flier on getting a decent autograph. But honestly, I opened a box of 2014-15 Donruss Basketball recently that I think was a lot more fun than this stuff. It's still a pretty low-end break, but there was so much more going on that it felt like I got more for my dollar. I'll post that whenever I get my scans all sorted out, so probably around the time 2015-16 Donruss releases.