Basketball 10-Pack

I made a trip to Target the other day to pick up some padded mailers for a couple of packages I've been meaning to send out. Since I was already there, I had to check out the card aisle to see what there was to see. The shelves were pretty well cleared out of any baseball that interested me, so I had a look at the other options available.

I finally settled on a 10-pack basketball repack box, largely because of the Excalibur pack that was visible in the window. I figured the upside of a basketball repack was that they couldn't spring any Triple Play on me, but I forgot about Panini Complete, the low-budget set that Panini makes to appeal to set collectors. I got four packs of the 2016-17 version in this repack.

It's still a better product than Triple Play, though. It's got a large base set, which means that you get cards of many NBA players that don't appear in the standard 100-card stars and rookies checklists that dominate the landscape. There are a couple of insert and parallel sets to chase, including a Silver and Gold parallel system that brings to mind the old Collector's Choice formula. The best base card I pulled was probably that Kevin Durant card in the upper left. I got a No Back parallel of Meyers Leonard, a couple of inserts, and four Silver parallels. I guess the Vince Carter is my favorite of the Silver cards I pulled.

The 2016-17 Donruss packs held the hit of the break, with that Holo Laser Orange parallel of Frank Kaminsky. The card is numbered  # 11 / 25 and the shiny rays of foil look pretty neat. I'm not a Jazz fan, but I can appreciate how good Karl Malone and the Jazz were for such a long time. I'm still salty at them for beating the Rockets in 1997 and 1998.

The 2015-16 Donruss pack had an Anthony Davis insert and a Rudy Gobert base card. I know I just got done talking about how much I dislike the Jazz, but I like Gobert.

The most notable cards in the 2012-13 Panini NBA Hoops pack were coaches, with Gregg Popovich and a Glossy parallel of Scott Skiles. Vince Carter makes another appearance in the break, this time in a Mavericks uniform.

I am not a fan of Prizm, as it tends to be a wall of dull silver, but I got a couple of nice cards in the 2015-16 Panini Prizm pack, an All-Star card of current Rocket Chris Paul and a Point Men insert of Allen Iverson.

The 2015-16 Panini Excalibur pack wasn't all that exciting, but it had some good veteran cards, a Lakers rookie, and a Camo Crusade insert of Michael Carter-Williams. I especially like the picture of LaMarcus Aldridge in the camo Spurs uniform.

All told, this was a decent repack box. I could have done much worse for the money, and even the filler Panini Complete packs turned out okay.

Pack of the Day 136: 2015-16 Panini Excalibur Retail Pack

I was in Target the other day and I decided to pick up a couple packs of cards for some blog material. One thing I've been looking at on eBay recently is the extremely hard-to-pull Kaboom! inserts from Panini's Excalibur product. The prices on these things greatly exceeds my budget, but I am hoping that someday one will fall into my price range. I am not even too particular about which player is depicted on it, although I obviously favor some over others. With that in mind, I grabbed one pack of 2015-16 Panini Excalibur from the gravity feed box in the card aisle.

Well, there's not a lot to say here. It was nice to pull a Dwight Howard card, as the Rockets are my team. The Clutch City sleeved jersey he's wearing is an interesting look, too. Design-wise I can't say these are all that exciting. They look to me like every other fancy-pants set on the market.

That Anthony Davis card is a Team 2020 set. If I were made of money I'd collect his cards because we both have unibrows. The Ben McLemore card is a Light Blue parallel, which is distinguished by the color of the foil. The bottom cards in this scan feature players on the two NBA Finals teams for this year. By the time this post goes live the Game 6 tip-off will be about 26 minutes away, with Golden State looking to win the Championship and Cleveland hoping to force a Game 7. I wish Panini would put full career stat blocks on their cards instead of these truncated 'last season plus a career line' stats they are fond of. Sure, you can get that information and much more from multiple online sources, but I want it on the back of my sports cards.

Well, that wasn't the most exciting of packs, but I did at least pull a Rocket and an Anthony Davis insert. I would have liked to pull a Kaboom! or Crusade insert, but if wishes were fishes we'd all open aquariums or something.