My name is Tracy Hackler. I am 42 years old. And I have a confession to make: I love 2012 Triple Play Baseball. I know this illustrated, animated tribute to baseball’s best players — with its 99-cent pack price, collectible stickers, and usable eye blacks — is supposed to appeal to younger fans when it releases in July. But I can’t help but love the product even more with each new view I get.
That certainly was the case late Friday afternoon, when I dropped by the all-revealing Panini America Routing Table for one final look before the long Memorial Day weekend. What I found were preliminary routings detailing some of the most unique and entertaining trading cards to come along in quite some time.
Yesterday we shared with you a 22-card gallery showcasing the first on-card autographs that have arrived for the upcoming 2011-12 Limited Basketball. Today, we’re shifting into precious-medal mode with a glimmering glance at the first autographs to arrive for the highly anticipated 2011-12 Gold Standard Basketball.
Here’s hoping the following sneak peek — including gems from legends like Bill Russell, David Robinson and John Stockton, and current stars like Shane Battier, Stephen Curry and Paul George – will get your holiday weekend started on the right foot, while whetting your appetite for more golden greatness to come.
As the 2012 NBA Playoffs carom quickly into the Conference Finals, hoops activity inside Panini America headquarters is heating up at a similar clip. In the last few days, we’ve been pleasantly inundated with heaping helpings of on-card autograph arrivals for highly anticipated products such as 2011-12 Limited Basketball and 2011-12 Gold Standard Basketball.
Most of the gems that have arrived so far for those two products have been signed by some of the greatest legends in NBA history; after all, many of today’s current stars are busy trying to get their teams to the NBA Finals.
In an effort to keep collectors updated on the status of those Panini America redemption cards that are currently being processed, we’ll frequently post a list, like the one included in the attachments below, detailing the most recent cards being fulfilled this week.
The following list is intended to inform collectors know which redemption cards from which products are being processed this week. We’ll update this list every Friday afternoon, so stay tuned next week if you don’t see your card here.
Like this:
Every year in conjunction with the NFLPA Rookie Premiere, Panini America officials work closely with the future NFL stars in attendance to produce a comprehensive Video News Release (or “VNR” as it’s known in mainstream media circles) chronicling the day’s events. Once the final cut of the VNR has been approved by the NFLPA, usually some time late Saturday night, it is distributed via satellite to any media outlets who want to use it.
Since the first satellite feed Sunday afternoon, this year’s VNR already has been picked up by more than 100 television stations who simply can’t wait to deliver coverage of their market’s top rookies producing their first Panini America NFL trading cards. This year, for the first time ever, we’re also making the VNR available to you in its entirety via the two special videos below.
Panini Peek: 2012 Prominence Football
Just one day after announcing the triumphant return of Momentum to its football portfolio following more than a decade away, Panini America is ready to release yet one more bombshell announcement: The introduction of the brand new 2012 Prominence Football, an eight-cards-per-box proposition that includes at least two autographs, one additional autograph or memorabilia card and five base cards or Legends.
The unique foundation of 2012 Prominence Football will be five different Rookie Card subsets devoted to the 35 young superstars who attended the just-completed 2012 NFLPA Rookie Premiere: Autographed Nameplate Letters, Autographed NFL Team Field Plates, Autographed Team Logo Patches, Autographed NFL Team Helmets and Autographed Event-Worn Jersey Cards.
The “Momentum” product name hasn’t been a viable part of the collecting lexicon since the start of the millennium. But that will change in a monumental way in late July when Panini America releases 2012 Momentum Football, a revered name from the pigskin past that has been completely revitalized for a new generation.
2012 Momentum Football will deliver 10 three-card packs per box and each pack will include one autograph or memorabilia card; each box will yield one Momentum Rookie Signatures RPS Rookie Card, three to four rookie autographs and five to six memorabilia cards.
Last November, Panini America officials brought — for the first time ever — the frenzy, excitement, energy and unbridled spending power of Black Friday to hobby shops across the country with a special in-store wrapper-redemption program that included a promotion-exclusive card set and unparalleled buzz.
Next month, they will do it again with a similar program developed around Father’s Day.
After seven long seasons away, the venerable Titanium brand will return to the ice with Panini America’s early-June release of 2011-12 Titanium Hockey, a re-imagined tribute to the trendsetting original that will deliver one autograph or memorabilia card in every pack and trademark Rookie Cards numbered to the featured player’s jersey number.
Earlier today, Panini America NHL gurus Chris Barr, Joe Reyes and Tim Trout tag-teamed the quality-control bust of one case of the product to make sure everything was falling as it should. But before they could rush the cards back to the production line, I snapped as many pics as I could for the following first-look gallery.
If you missed any of this weekend’s wall-to-wall coverage of the 2012 NFLPA Rookie Premiere right here on The Knight’s Lance, well, you missed a lot. So just in case you did, we’ve compiled all of our links from the blockbuster event below so you can relive all of the excitement one more time — or as many times as you’d like.
This post will also serve as an official contest notification. After all, we acquired a handful of autographed Rookie Inscriptions Personal Edition cards over the last few days for the express purpose of giving them to you, our loyal customers. How, exactly, are we going to do that? Keep reading to find out.
