The Immaculate Collection: Panini America Previews 2012-13 Immaculate Basketball

From the day Panini America’s 2011-12 Prime Hockey was announced more than 17 months ago, collectors of other sports have been clamoring for a similar product to call their own. The voices only grew louder when that inaugural edition of Prime released last August. And now that 2012-13 Prime Hockey is on the verge of release, the demand is deafening.

It’s obvious by now: Baseball, basketball and football hobbyists crave a Prime-like product that places a premium on some of the biggest, nastiest, game-worn memorabilia cards of all time. In late October, another sport’s collectors will get their wish — and it will be . . . immaculate.

2012-13 Immaculate Collection Basketball is slated to arrive October 16 and will deliver — quite frankly — some of the most unique NBA memorabilia cards ever created by incorporating the same hand-cut craftsmanship and attention to patch detail that hockey collectors have come to love about Prime. (In the special preview gallery below, we show you just some of game-worn greatness that awaits.)

And while Immaculate’s massively proportioned memorabilia cards will demand most of this product’s headlines, there’s much more to like. Every six-card box of 2012-13 Immaculate Collection Basketball will deliver one base card numbered to 99, one Autograph Patch Rookie Card numbered to 99 or less, one autograph or autograph patch card, one memorabilia card and one additional autograph or memorabilia card.

Among the product’s many highlights:

• Six Star Logos, the industry’s first six NBA Logoman Booklet 1/1s.
• Immaculate Caps memorabilia card featuring pieces of player-worn hats.
• Immaculate Numbers acetate variations sequentially numbered to the featured player’s jersey number.
• Immaculate Insignias memorabilia cards featuring team-specific found on the back and chest areas of game-worn jerseys.
• Immaculate Logos memorabilia cards featuring oversized pieces of Logos, Numbers and Commemorative Patches.
• Immaculate Standard cards featuring oversized memorabilia swatches of the top NBA superstars on the pristine Immaculate acetate substrate.
• All-Star Lineage and Title Winners Autographs: Autograph cards featuring players who have won an NBA Championship or appeared in an All-Star Game. All of these will be numbered to the number of a times the featured player has won a title or appeared in an All-Star Game.

We’ll have much more on 2012-13 Immaculate Collection Basketball here on The Knight’s Lance in the coming weeks. But for now, we’re done talking. We’ll let the following preview images speak for themselves.

Enjoy.