I added a couple of Panini's various special event packs to my recent order from Dave & Adam's Card World. The first was a pack of 2014 Panini - Father's Day, which is a set that Panini puts out in June as a way to get dealers to buy their products. They get these packs if they purchase a certain amount of product, which they can then pass on or sell to customers. Most of these promotional sets contain cards from a variety of sports, but my pack contained two hockey cards. I am vaguely aware of Mario Lemieux as a big hockey name, but I couldn't tell you much else about him. Sean Monahan I have no clue about. He's part of the serially-numbered Rookie subset and this card is # 017 / 599.
The card backs feature the card number, a team logo, position designation, jersey number, name, and a short biographical snippet along with the set name and legal junk at the bottom. I've said it before, but I really like that Panini includes the set name on the back of their cards.
My second pack was from the 2014 Panini - Black Friday set. Similar to the Father's Day set, these cards were available for purchasing a certain amount of product during the big post-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy. I pulled a Happy Holidays memorabilia card from this pack, featuring a piece of Santa hat worn by running back Andre Ellington. He started the year as the lead back for Arizona, but got sidelined by a knee injury and Chris Johnson has played well in his absence. He might have a tough fight to get his spot back. I also got an airbrushed / Photoshopped base card of another hockey guy, Mark Messier.
According to the Cardboard Connection site, the Happy Holidays cards with initials instead of card numbers are limited to less than 300 copies. I guess that means that the other ones have more copies? You can see that Panini lost their NHL license somewhere between Father's Day and Black Friday, as Messier's card has the logos removed and his team is now the New York Hockey Club.
The final pack in this group was from the 2014 Panini - The National wrapper redemption set. From what I can gather, these card packs were available for redemption at the Panini booth at The National card convention to people who produced a certain number of Panini packs. Presumably the left over stock was then sold to dealers to sell / distribute. I have seen these packs offered up as bonus gifts by online case breakers, too. I did manage to pull a PC guy from my pack in Peyton Manning, as well as a card of Tre Mason, the St. Loius running back who has seemingly lost his job to Todd Gurley.
The card backs are basically the same as any other Panini special set card back, although Manning's card at least features a cropped version of the card front photo. I read in a few places that the Rookies like Tre Mason were supposed to be numbered # / 599, but I don't see any evidence of that on the card.
There is some fun stuff that can come out of these packs, as well as some pretty big hits. I am happy that I got one of the Happy Holidays relics and a Peyton Manning card. The rest of the stuff I don't care much about, but that's the gamble of busting packs. All that's left to review from this purchase is the box of Donruss basketball.
I would have written that one up first, but the Astros - Yankees game was on and I had to see that rather than crop and adjust a bunch of basketball pictures. I was not disappointed with my decision to watch the game, as the Houston bats got to Tanaka a couple of times for home runs and added an insurance run against Dellin Betances for good measure while Dallas Keuchel and the Astros bullpen pitched a 3-hit shutout. Now it's on to face the Kansas City Royals in what should be a tough series. The Astros are pretty much underdogs from here on out.
