A Second Box of 2023 Panini Chronicles Racing

I mentioned in my last post that I'd opened a couple boxes of 2023 Panini Chronicles Racing. It's probably my favorite racing product to open because of the variety of designs and the checklist's focus on stars and rookies. I always know I'm going to pull something for my collection.

Here are four of the base designs that I liked from the box. Danica Patrick has long been the most numerous racer in my collection, and Brittney Zamora has been my non-retired collection focus for the last couple of years. Luckily they both make appearances in most products, so I always have new cards to chase.

These are four more of the base designs. I haven't counted the base designs yet, but there are quite a few Panini brands represented in the checklist. Thunder and Luminance are a couple of my favorites. Luminance has a very Stadium Club feel to it.

 

In addition to a lot of base designs and plenty of hits per box, this product also drops a lot of parallels on you. The basic parallel in Hobby boxes is the Blue /199. It's a good-looking color. Pulling a couple of Hailie Deegan Blues in this box was pretty good. She's one of the better sellers in the current crop of young racers.

My Immaculate pulls were both pretty low-numbered, with an /25 and an /51. I assume that all of the Immaculate cards are serially-numbered, based on my small sample size. The big names came in the Red parallels for me, with a Jimmie Johnson /99 and a clear Kevin Harvick /100.

Each box promises four hits, but I pulled five in each of my two boxes. Not sure if that's typical of the print run, or if I just got lucky. I pulled three autos and two relics per box, although Panini stopped guaranteeing a certain number of autographs this year. I pulled a basic tire relic of Tanner Gray and a triple relic of Austin Cindric.

The Chase Briscoe autograph here is actually an /10 Gold parallel, so it's the lowest-numbered card in my Chronicles break. I would argue that the Kevin Harvick Immaculate auto-relic is actually the hit of the break, though. It's a nice-looking card of a guy I kind of collect.

That does it for this break of 2023 Panini Chronicles Racing. It's a fun product with a lot of variety. Again, it's probably my favorite racing product to open because the checklist is full of good drivers and there is so much different stuff you can pull.

Just the Parallels, Inserts, and Hits from a Hobby Box of 2017 Panini Donruss Racing

A couple of days ago I got my three-box order of 2018 BBM True Heart Japanese Woman's Wrestling cards in the mail. That is one of my most-anticipated acquisitions of the year, and usually makes for one of the longest posts of the year. I am still working on processing all of the photos for that one, so it will probably be another few days until the post is ready. In the meantime, I am working through some of the posts in my wayback queue.

Today I decided to do this box of 2017 Panini Donruss Racing that I opened last year at some point. I opened this box of cards so long ago that I don't even remember how it came into my possession. I obviously purchased it somewhere, but I don't recall where or when. 

As with most of Panini's Donruss offerings, this product has plenty of inserts, variations, regular parallels, parallels of variations, and parallels of inserts. It makes for a fun break, but it can also kind of be overload when you're sorting all of the cards out (or writing a post about them). I think most of the Cracked Ice parallels in this set, like the Austin Dillon Phenoms card, have print runs of # / 999. The Call to the Hall and Top Tier cards are not numbered, but the blue border on the Hamlin makes me feel like it should be numbered. The Ryan Newman Rocket Man nickname Gold parallel is # / 499, while the Terry Labonte Iceman is the basic version. I don't know why the Greg Biffle Race Kings card is numbered # / 499 and the Ryan Blaney isn't, but there's probably some foil color variation that I can't see in the scan right now. I think the Danica Patrick and Michael Waltrip Classics inserts are both regular versions.

I believe there was a Cut to the Chase card made for each race winner of 2016, and I pulled two of Jimmie Johnson's victories. One is a Cracked Ice parallel. The Daniel Hemric card is a parallel of some sort, numbered # / 499, while the Matt Kenseth retro design card is some other kind of parallel, numbered # / 199. I know this is ground-breaking accuracy here, but I don't want to do research tonight.

Here are all the horizontal cards. I pulled a couple of Speed inserts, a regular Kevin Harvick and a Cracked Ice # / 999 of Martin Truex Jr. I did the same with the Pole Position cards, getting a regular Martin Truex Jr. and a Cracked Ice # / 999 Carl Edwards. I just got the one Track Masters insert, with another Jimmie Johnson insert from this box. Lastly, there are some parallels, with the Clint Bowyer featuring two different liveries being # / 499, the Blue foil Kyle Busch being # / 299, and the holofoil Press Proof of Martin Truex Jr. and his pit crew being # / 49.

Each box of cards contains three hits, which I think consist of two relics and one autograph. Most of the relics are these Rubber Relics tire cards. They aren't numbered, and feature swatches of race-used tires. My first of the box is Kevin Harvick.

My next Rubber Relics card features Brad Keselowski. I don't really collect Harvick or Keselowski, but they are at least some of the bigger names in the sport. I am currently looking for an active driver to cheer for, as all of my favorite drivers have retired. I am leaning toward Darrell 'Bubba' Wallace Jr. and Kyle Busch, but I haven't decided yet.

The last hit of the box is my promised autograph, a Signature Series card of Dakoda Armstrong. He raced in the Xfinity series for most of 2017, but got released for lack of sponsorship.

Those hit cards didn't exactly blow my doors off, so the card of the break has to be this Black printing plate of Kyle Busch's Pit Crew card. It's a pretty nice-looking plate, and if you're going to get a printing plate, the Black one is usually one of the better options.

Pack of the Day 171: A Box of 2016 Panini Certified Racing

Back in May I ordered a few boxes from Dave & Adam's Card World. I never really got around to posting most of the stuff, because it wasn't the most exciting bunch of breaks in the world. I did finally get a Topps Star Wars High Tek box from that order posted here a couple of weeks ago, and now it's time for some NASCAR content.

I picked up a box of 2016 Panini Certified Racing in this order. It promises 2 autographs and 2 memorabilia cards per box (on average), as well as base cards, parallels, inserts, and parallels of inserts.

The base cards look like other base cards from Panini's racing product lines. These have a silver theme to the front, with team colors on the back. Retired drivers or drivers without consistent sponsor support get a basic silver and gray card back. Some of the cars get cards, too.

There is a subset for retired drivers called 'Immortals,' and there are also cards for some drivers in the lower series' that feed into the top NASCAR circuit.

This is the parallel that I got in the box. It's a Mirror Blue version of Joey Logano's car. It's got the eBay 1 / 1 thing going for it, as the serial number matches his car door's number, # 22 / 50.

This Mirror Gold parallel of Matt Kenseth's Epix insert is pretty limited and also an eBay 1 / 1, with a serial number of # 25 / 25.

I also got this die-cut Famed Rides insert of Terry Labonte's Kellogg's Corn Flakes car, numbered # 022 / 199. This insert set is pretty neat, with a focus on some memorable paint schemes that have run in NASCAR over the years. It's the sort of insert that might be up Billy from Cardboard History's alley, although his series on special paint schemes tends to focus on paint jobs that only ran once. 

I pulled another Kyle Petty autograph from this box, after pulling one with the same picture on it from a box of Donruss Racing I opened in March. This one is numbered # 161 / 299. Like I said back then, Petty's career happened before I got into racing, so I don't know much about him.

My other autograph pull was a base autograph from the Certified Potential portion of the set, featuring Nicole Behar, who currently races a car in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West. It is numbered # 208 / 299.

My first relic from the box was this Sprint Cup Swatches Dual card of Regan Smith. It is a Mirror Red parallel, numbered # 61 / 75. I wish that Panini would label the different relic windows with what piece of gear they came from, like Press Pass did on their relic cards. Sometimes you can tell or make a pretty good guess, but many times it is pretty difficult.

The final hit of the box was this four-swatch Complete Materials Mirror Green parallel featuring Kevin Harvick. Not a bad pull, and it's numbered # 5 / 5, making it a pretty scarce card. I like the colored lettering on the tire swatches.

That does it for this break. I pulled some decent low-numbered parallels and relic cards. I feel like I whiffed a bit on the autograph side of things, but that's kind of how it goes when you break boxes instead of cherry-picking singles on eBay.

Famous Last Words: "There's no way I'll win it for this price!"

I think this is something anyone who's been on eBay for a while has done at least once. You see a cool item and place a bid on it for more than you really want to spend at the time because, "There's no way I'll win it for this price! Someone will surely outbid me!" Then you get the notification that you've won and you have to jump through hoops to cover the unexpected expense. On a smaller item it may not be that bad, but this time I really did a number on myself.

I was feeling out the price level on this card from 2016 Panini National Treasures Racing, featuring signatures from six NASCAR drivers, including two favorites of mine, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Danica Patrick. I went one bid too far and stopped, thinking that surely one more bid would come in and save me. No other bids came in, and I found that I was the new owner of this six-signature booklet. It was a good price for the card, but not a price I needed to be dropping on cardboard and ink at the time. Still, it's a sweet card and I like it quite a bit in spite of the sticker signatures all around. The autographs are Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kasey Kahne, Kevin Harvick, Danica Patrick, and Casey Mears.

The booklet is numbered # 07 / 25, and the card number is CHEVY, which is interesting since half of these drivers are now in Fords (Kevin Harvick and Danica Patrick drive Fords for Stewart-Haas in the Monster Energy Cup Series, while Casey Mears drives a Ford in the Xfinity Series).

This is a pretty cool card and now acts as one of the showpieces of my NASCAR collection, but it also acts as a reminder to only bid if you're willing to pay up.