A Hobby Box of 2023 Panini Chronicles Racing

I really like Panini Chronicles Racing, probably because of the sheer variety of cards you can find in every box. I usually don't get lucky and pull huge hits of big-name drivers, but there's usually a smattering of stuff that fits into my various collecting interests. It's hard (for me) to have a bad break of Chronicles Racing, as there's typically something interesting in there. That all being said, I opened up a couple boxes of 2023 Panini Chronicles Racing recently. Here are some of the cards from the first box.

Technically I guess there is a Chronicles base set design and everything else is considered an insert, but I tend to think of the whole product outside of parallels and hits as one big conglomerate set. I took pictures of some of the sets designs I like, and some cards of drivers I collect. Some standouts for me this year were the Luminance and Thunder designs.

Here are a few more designs featuring drivers I collect. I especially like the Overdrive cards. They remind me of 90's Topps Chrome.

There were plenty of parallels in both boxes I opened. Most were of the /199 Blue variety. Nothing here really fits my collection, but I do like the look of the Blue parallels. The John Hunter Nemechek Pedal to the Metal card is especially eye-catching.

Every box has 2 Immaculate cards in it, which I guess replaces Spectra as the thick cardstock special set in the product. All the ones I pulled had serial numbering, but I don't know if that's true of all of them or if I am just lucky. I also got a Martin Truex Jr. card /99 and a clear acetate Richard Petty /100.

The lowest-numbered card in the box was this Lawless Alan /25. I've never heard of Lawless Alan, but he's got a great trading card name.

The box promises 4 hits, but I got 5 in each of my boxes. It used to be 3 autographs and 1 relic per box, but they did away with the guarantees this year. I still got 3 autographs per box, but I also got 2 relics per box. It's nice to get bonus hits, but I don't know if that happens across the print run. I guess the Chase Elliott Recon relic here is my favorite hit card from the box.

As I mentioned, there were three autographs in the box. The Spencer Boyd is /49, but I think the Chris Buescher Contenders auto is my favorite of the group.

That does it for my first Hobby box of 2023 Panini Chronicles Racing. Overall this is a fun break that pays off in variety and has a rather narrow checklist of stars and rookies, so you're likely to pull something you like if you're a fan of racing.

The Other Half of a Blaster Case of 2018 Donruss Racing

I'm back today with the second half of this blaster case of 2018 Donruss Racing. This is all going to be pretty similar to yesterday's break, but with a few different names thrown in. Hopefully I can come up with a few things to say in between pictures.

This batch of 10 blasters didn't have an /49 like the first one did, but it did have 3 cards /99, including a couple of inserts in Chase Elliott and Dale Jarrett, and a base parallel of Bobby Labonte.

The /199 contingent included Bill Elliott, Mark Martin, and Austin Dillon. I have a small collection of Mark Martin cards, so happy to pull something of his from this group.

The Red foil cards are numbered /299. Richard Petty is the most recognizable name here, as one of the most famous race car drivers of any era.

Mark Martin makes another appearance in the Gold /499 parallels. Other highlights include Kevin Harvick and a Kyle Larson Race Kings card.

The inserts get the Cracked Ice /999 versions, which in my opinion are some of the best-looking cards in this product. The Joey Logano Pole Position car card is pretty neat. I think Pole Position is the best insert in the set, and I'd contemplate trying to complete the base set of that insert. Bubba Wallace and Danica Patrick are both drivers who I collect, so I was glad to pull some numbered cards for those driver collections.

Another Bubba Wallace appearance is the highlight for me here, this time with a bit of firesuit in a relic card. These are the 1985 Retro relics.

Rounding out the relic cards are a quartet of Rubber Relics tire swatch cards. Probably the highlights for me here are the Matt Kenseth and Ryan Newman cards on the bottom row.

The ink from this batch of boxes comes in the form of an old-timer, Morgan Shepherd. Also in this batch of blasters was a dreaded Panini Rewards point card. 150 points will get you a whole lot of nothing in the Panini Rewards store, and you'll have to pay shipping if you want to get that nothing sent to you. I hate to waste a hit on a points card, but what can you do?

That does it for this blaster case. Like I mentioned yesterday, for $100 this blaster case was a pretty fun rip. I got 19 various hits, a bunch of numbered cards, and several base sets out of it. I'd probably do a similar deal again, but not on the same year of Donruss. You can only handle so many base cards before it gets ridiculous.

Some Box Breaks and Other Things

A while back I wanted to bust some packs, so I ordered some boxes of my favorite products of the last year or so from Blowout Cards. It feels a little weird that I don't have any baseball product in this order, but I've sort of moved into only buying singles and sets for that sport. I collect a relatively small number of baseball players, so the likelihood of pulling something that fits into my collection is slim. I tend to enjoy all kinds of stuff from racing, wrestling, and UFC, so the randomness of box busting is a little more collection-friendly for me.

There's the lineup of boxes. For wrestling I got a blaster of 2017 Topps WWE Women's Division, a hobby box of 2018 Topps WWE Women's Division, and a hobby box of 2019 Topps WWE Road to WrestleMania. For racing I got a box of 2018 Panini Victory Lane and a box of 2018 Panini Certified. I also got a box of 2018 Topps UFC Chrome. The pictures below are not really in order, so anyone who can't handle chaos should probably take off, eh.

Here are a couple of card from the Victory Lane box, an insert parallel of Alex Bowman and a Engineered to Perfection triple relic of Denny Hamlin. I guess this is as good a place as any to repeat that I have a mild interest in Hamlin cards because I worked for his sponsor, FedEx, for a couple of years.

The blaster of 2017 Topps WWE Women's Division turned out to be a pretty good one, with a Blue parallel of Lana and an autograph of Nikki Bella.

These breaks were pretty heavy on the Alex Bowman cards. These cards all came from 2018 Panini Certified. I got that Red Certified Signatures Alex Bowman autograph with two relic swatches, a Gold All-Certified Team insert of Kyle Larson, and two different versions of Bowman's Skills insert.

Here are some Red and Gold parallels and hits from the Certified box. I bought the Certified stuff hoping to get a Hailie Deegan autograph, but that didn't happen for me.

Here are the last couple cards from the Certified box, a couple of basic relic inserts featuring Jamie McMurray and Chase Elliott.

Here are the hits from the 2018 Topps WWE Women's Division box. I got a Silver parallel of Rusev kicking Elias in the face, which kind of makes up for the fact that there aren't any Women's Division wrestlers on the card. That Carmella autograph is a testament to the fact that female athletes don't always have great penmanship. I am always happy to get another Naomi card, even if this is just a manufactured relic.

I got a # / 25 parallel, a Kofi Kingston autograph, and a Titus O'Neil manufactured relic out of the 2019 Topps WWE Road to WrestleMania set. You may recognize Kofi Kingston as the current WWE World Heavyweight Champion.

The UFC Chrome box was a fun break, as usual for this particular product. These insert Refractors are of the # / 50 variety.

These are some of the more colorful Refractors in the box, an Orange # / 25 of Lyoto Machida and a Green # / 99 of Chuck Liddell. 

The box was a hot box, meaning that every pack contained one of those Refractors with the crazy patterned background shown on the Rose Namajunas and Holly Holm cards. X-Fractors and Blue Wave Refractors both come one per box, but X-Fractors are unnumbered while the Blue Waves are # / 75.

Each box of UFC Chrome has two autographs (unless you get a hot box with an OctoFractor), and I did pretty well here. The Claudia Gadelha signature is a base autograph, while the Amanda Nunes is an Orange # / 25.

Back to racing with some more Victory Lane stuff, including a Justin Haley autograph, a nice Chase Elliott auto-relic, and a dual relic of Justin Allgaier.

I pulled two # 1 / 1 cards in this break, and they both came from the Victory Lane box. One is a Yellow printing plate featuring none other than Dale Earnhardt Jr. The other is a Prime Patches card of Jamie McMurray, featuring the series sponsor patch from his firesuit.

Here's a bunch of other stuff I've picked up over the last couple of months. These two autographs were fun finds for me. The Josh Reddick comes from 2012 Topps Mini. It was hard to find autographs in these Mini products, so it was cool to see one in the wild. The R.A. Dickey card is a wrapper redemption autograph from 2013. I don't recall seeing many of these out there, either.

I was glad to add another Jake Butt card to my collection. I believe this one comes from 2017 Panini Unparalleled. The Charlotte Flair signature is a Silver parallel from 2019 Topps Road to WrestleMania. I like the design of that set's autographs, so I was happy to get one of the Queen.

Here are a couple of redemptions that came in from Topps. One is a UFC Museum Collection autograph of Maryna Moroz, which I believe is the first Moroz signature in my collection. The other is a Vanessa Borne card from the 2018 Topps WWE Women's Division set. Again, I think that might be my first autograph from her.

These cards were COMC purchases. Up first is an Octane Autographs card of Bubba Wallace from 2018 Panini Victory Lane. The other is a Green autograph of Naomi from 2018 Topps WWE Undisputed. The parallel coloring bleeds into the photographs on this set, leading to some weird situations, but in this case the green matches well with Naomi's gear.

This year's Topps Heritage set included box toppers featuring Topps staffers. I had to chase this one down on eBay because it pictures Sooz, one member of the A Cardboard Problem blog team and an active member of card Twitter.

I was one of the people who ordered one of the tablecloth relic cards from Manny Machado's press conference. The backlash against this card was so furious that I had to get one for my collection. I love things that other people hate, and the laugh I get from seeing this card in my collection is well worth the price.

The Alex Bregman card is a replacement for a damaged Bregman relic I got in the mail after buying a 2018 Topps Holiday box that was missing a hit. Attached to the card was a sort of passive-aggressive note reminding me that the damaged card was not folded in half when it was shipped. That was kind of the point. I was disappointed in the packaging. Poor packaging tends to lead to shipping damage. The other card is a replacement for a damaged Sandy Alcantara card I pulled from a rack pack of 2018 Topps Fire.

I was chasing a Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat card from 2018 Topps WWE Legends set, and I was pretty happy to get this Bronze autographed relic. I also picked up a Diamond Dallas Page autograph.

I also got this cool Alundra Blayze Hall of Fame Ring relic autograph card. This is the Gold version of the card, so it is limited to 10 copies. In the same group of auctions I picked up this Paige VanZant signature from Leaf.

That about does it for this bunch. Although my production of blog posts has slowed to a crawl, I am still actively collecting. I am trying to get back into the swing of my hobbies, but there are a lot of things competing for my attention right now and I spend most of my time feeling worn out.