Contested Shots 30: A Thanksgiving Playoff Prize from Panini

Every few months, typically around a holiday, there is a scavenger hunt contest on the Panini America blog. They will link to several photo galleries of Panini products, where there are logos hidden in a certain number of pictures. To enter the contest, you have to find the logos and comment with the locations of the hidden images. There are usually 150-200 entries, and 10-20 prizes, so the odds of winning something are pretty good. I recently participated in the Thanksgiving contest, where the prizes included boxes of 2017 Illusions Football, 2017-18 Ascension Basketball, 2017 Chronicles Baseball, and 2017 Playoff Football. I won one of the prizes, which happened to be a box of 2017 Playoff Football. I've won twice previously, getting a box of 2015-16 Panini Preferred Basketball at the end of August 2016 and an Odell Beckham Jr. National Treasures relic card in the 2016 Easter contest. I think there were about 160 entries in this latest contest, so an entry had about a 1 in 8 chance of winning a box of cards. I think it took me about 30 minutes to find all of the logos. Sometimes it takes me a little longer.

A few days after I responded to the e-mail notifying me of my prize, it arrived on my doorstep. This particular product has 12 packs per box, 8 cards per pack, and tells me that I should find an autograph and a relic card inside.

The pack design mimics the box design. Marcus Mariota seems like kind of an odd choice for a cover athlete given that he's barely inside the top 25 fantasy quarterbacks this year, but he had a pretty good season last year and he's the leader of a probable playoff team this year.

Based on what I pulled from this box, a typical pack will hold 5 base cards, 1 rookie, and 2 inserts/parallels.

I think this is a good-looking set. The base checklist includes 200 players, with a mix of active and retired players. It seemed like there were a lot of retired guys in the set, but maybe collation is playing tricks on me. I had to photograph the Broncos from the box, Bo Jackson, Neon Deion, a couple of quarterbacks, and a neat kicker card.

I got a total of 58 base cards in the box, with no doubles.

In addition to the 200-card base set, the checklist includes 100 rookies. They are short-printed, falling about half as often as you'd expect based on the size of the checklist. I got 13 rookie cards in the box, or about 1 per pack. These four were the highlights, the top two because they made an impact and the bottom two because they were rookies for my son's favorite team (Bengals) and my favorite team (Broncos). Also, Jake Butt's last name is Butt. In retrospect, I probably should have ignored Mixon's card because of his legal history, but I forgot about that until I looked him up just now.

There are plenty of inserts in this product. I kind of like most of them. They take me back to the 90's, which were kind of the heyday of inserts. The folks over on Cardboard Connection seem to dislike them, saying they are cheap-looking and pointless. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Boss Hoggs is the running backs insert, highlighting various ball carriers. When I see Derrick Henry, my mind immediately thinks 'Eddie George.' I guess Eddie George will always be Tennessee's running back in my world.

The Flea Flicker insert shows three playmakers from each team, a rusher, a receiver, and a quarterback. This might be my least favorite insert of the group, probably because the three player photos don't leave much room for anything else on the cards.

Gridiron Force is devoted to players on the defensive side of the ball. I was happy to get a Von Miller card, but disappointed to pull two Ravens. I might dislike the Ravens more than I dislike even the Broncos' division rivals. Michael Strahan was a nice pull, though.

These Playoff Momentum inserts are pretty flashy. I think this might be the insert devoted to wide receivers. If not, my collation made it seem that way. I like the design of this insert, with the lines and positioning making the players look fast. The Jordy Nelson is a 1st Down parallel, and is serially-numbered # 96 / 99. All of the parallels in this set have football-themed names, like 1st Down, Kickoff, Hail Mary, Red Zone, Touchdown, and so on.

Star Gazing appears to be a catch-all insert featuring star players. I pulled a receiver, a tight end, and two quarterbacks. There are some pretty decent cards here, although I think Rob Gronkowski's party boy gimmick is tiresome. It works for him, though, and you can't deny his talent on the field.

Thunder & Lighting is the quarterback/receiver insert. I got two of them, with another couple of cards featuring Packers and Patriots. I guess there are worse teams to pull.

The box promises two hits, on average, and both of mine were parallels. The relic card was a Kickoff parallel of Jordan Howard's Headliners insert. This card is numbered # 31 / 49. Howard has been a top ten running back this year, so this is a decent card.

My autograph is another Kickoff parallel, this time of Josh Jones' Rookie Signatures card. It is numbered # 11 / 99. He plays Safety for the Packers, and is currently 4th on the team in tackles. He's also got two sacks. I don't mind pulling a defensive player autograph, especially from a free box of cards. 

I pulled two base parallels from the box. This might be one of the cooler cards from the box, a Kickoff parallel of Jim Brown. Look at that old-school uniform! This is just a cool card. I don't know football cards well enough to say if this photo has been used before, but I thought it was neat. This one is # 075 / 299. 

The other parallel was in the last pack I opened, and it was quite a shock. This is Jordan Mathews' Touchdown parallel, numbered 1 of 1. Mathews struggled with injuries this year, but he's not a scrub. I can't recall ever pulling a non-printing plate 1 / 1 before, so this was a pretty awesome card to find in a pack.

I like this product. If I were more into football cards, I might chase more of this stuff. The base set looks good, I like the inserts, and the hits are about what you expect. The only thing I don't really like is the short-printed rookie cards. You'd have to open 9 boxes with perfect collation to complete the base set including the rookies, and that is just too many. I know a lot of products use short-prints to keep people buying them, but I hate that tactic. Other than that, though, I enjoyed opening this box. It was exciting to win the contest, and I got some very nice cards out of it. Thanks to Panini for the box, and for running the scavenger hunt contests. Even when I don't win, I enjoy spending a little time looking for the hidden pictures and hoping that my name comes up in the list of winning entries.