Contested Shots 15: A Preferred Prize from Panini

Every few weeks, the official Panini blog, The Knight's Lance, holds a 'Where Is It?' contest. They provide a link to several photo galleries where they have hidden a handful of logos in among the pictures. The challenge is to find all of the hidden logos and leave a comment with the answers by the deadline, usually two or three days out. Lately it seems like there have been between 5 and 15 prizes given away with around 125 participants, so the odds are pretty good.

In March I won an Odell Beckham Jr. relic card from National Treasures Football. In the most recent contest I won a box of 2015-16 Panini Preferred Basketball. It arrived today, and I had a hard time keeping myself from pretending to be sick so I could leave work early.

This is one of those high-end trading card products that I normally couldn't just go out and buy. Both Dave & Adam's Card World and Blowout Cards have these on sale for $205.95 as of this writing. Each box contains 2 packs with 2 cards. The wording on the side of the box says, "Find 2 on-card autographs numbered to 99 or less and 2 memorabilia booklets in every box, on average!"

Here are the two packs. They are relatively shiny and rather thick, since they each contain a booklet card and another card.

Here is one of the booklets I got. It's a Playbook Rookie Jumbo Relics card of Jahlil Okafor. He's one of the recent big-name draft picks going to the black hole that is the Philadelphia 76ers. It's a pretty cool booklet, numbered # 071 / 199. It is the base version, with very rare Prime and Super Prime versions available for some players.

My second booklet is also a Playbook Rookie Jumbo Relics base version featuring Jazz forward Trey Lyles. He's not necessarily a big name, and I don't think the Jazz have really had a superstar player since Karl Malone and John Stockton left the team. This one is numbered # 132 / 199.

My first on-card autograph is Milwaukee Bucks guard Rashad Vaughn. This isn't the greatest pull in the world, but it's on-card and numbered # 59 /99. So far the eBay value on this box of cards is around $25, with the majority of that being tied up in the Jahlil Okafor booklet. Luckily for me, this was a contest prize, so I am playing with house money. 

My final card in the box is a pretty darn good one, a Silhouettes Prime Autograph of Grant Hill. It's numbered # 17 / 25 and has an on-card autograph and a multi-colored relic swatch with a bit of patchwork in the upper right corner of the window as well as a little bit of patch peeking out behind Hill's right shoulder. Grant Hill was one of my PC players when I was young and heavily into basketball cards, so I am tempted to keep this card in my collection.

Based on my hasty calculations, this card single-handedly brought this box from 'big loser' to 'average,' based on an acquisition cost of $206. The first three cards in the box are worth about $25 total, or just over 12% of the box cost. Based on the average of all four eBay sales for this card, I brought the box total up to $173 in cards, or 84% of the box cost. Depending on sales, you could wind up winning or losing on the $206 price, with losing a few dollars being the most likely outcome. I know collecting isn't all about numbers (I know I'm not getting rich off of this hobby), but I like to gauge how well a box lives up to its price tag. I am glad that the big hit in the box happens to be a PC guy for me.

I think it's pretty nifty that Panini runs these contests. I enjoy the scavenger hunts quite a bit, and thirty minutes to an hour of my time searching through card galleries has been a decent use of my time so far. It's not like I wouldn't be looking at cards online anyway. Thank you to Panini and Tracy Hackler for running these contests!