basketball - 2012-13 Panini Innovation Basketball Hobby 15 Box Case (2 cases)

[alexlazarevich]

I've opened 2 cases of 2012-13 Panini Innovation Basketball.

• Nothing is for sale here. Everything is, or will be soon, for sale on eBay. (see my eBay link to the left) The better hits end Sunday Sept 8th and Sunday Sept 15th. I ship international and domestic, free combined shipping, free shipping on the monster hits, no reserve auctions all starting at $0.99. And I never end auctions early for any offer.

Gross Sales Results*:

• N/A, check back after Sept 15th

* Gross sales is the total value coming out of the cases I opened. It does NOT include cost of eBay/PayPal fees, shipping costs, time spent, or any other costs. It simply measures the total amount of money generated from the sale of the cards from this break.

My Opinions:

• I really liked this product, tons of variety, some nice hits to chase after, the cards are really beautiful looking IMO.
• The base cards are really boring. They don't seem to belong in this product at all.
• The inserts are tough pulls, this should add interest and value to collectors going after these
• The inserts are all foil textures, and they really look better in person than they do in scans. These are really nice cards. They are not serial numbered, but somehow that doesn't bother me much.
• Stained glass is not permitted outside of the church? When did this happen? Hint. It didn't.
• The RC Innovative Auto Gold's are /25, and the Rookie View Gold cards are /10, these should be nice chase cards.
• There are a few memorabilia inserts, my favorite is the "Stat Line", which features a swatch from a known NBA game, and the details of that game are listed on the card. I sure wish all mem cards were like this. These are just fantastic.
• The Rookie Basketballs memorabilia cards are kinda cool. All of them seem to be event-used though, rather than game used. It would be a lot cooler to get game used balls. Are game used basketballs available for sale? I don't even know. And how would Panini know if a player even touched that specific ball during a game, there are several game balls aren't there? Anyway, it's a cool idea I think, would like to see more game used basketballs in the future.
• The quality control seems to be a little less than normal for Panini. Some of the cards have slight dings on the corners. The RC Innovative Ink's seem to have the most problems. The Stained Glass inserts are acetate so they don't have this issue. But most others do.

Pull Rates from 2 cases (30 boxes):

• I pulled 5 Innovative Ink /25 Auto's (Kyrie, Barnes, Varejao, Morris, Lowry)
• I pulled 1 View Gold /10 (Kyle Singler)
• I pulled 2 View Red /25 (Blake Griffin, Evan Fournier)
• I pulled 1 All-Rookie Insert (Dion Waiters)
• I pulled 3 Innovators Inserts
• I pulled 2 Laser Cut Die Cut Inserts
• I pulled 3 Swat Team Inserts
• I pulled 4 Efficiency Inserts
• I pulled 4 Pride Of The NBA Inserts
• I pulled 7 Producers Inserts
• I pulled 16 Stained Glass Inserts - 1 of them was a purple stained glass (Pau Gasol) Note: the Stained Glass cards are very odd. (they are acetate, not glass) In scans they show up and bright and easy to see. In person, the cards have a very dark look to them, and the player name is nearly impossible to read unless you hold the card in front of a light source.
• I pulled 2 prime memorabilia cards, one was a patch the other was a basketball swatch which was not really prime at all

Some Scans:

[Dwade3HeatC]

Wow sick Kyrie! The cards look great, especially the Game Used Basketball swatch! I'm a big fan of GU Basketball swatches!

[brandonlec]

Dude! Fantastic Auto hits! And sweet ZBO Patch hit!

-Brandon

[SlickRick]

You've definitely been on a nice run of Kyrie hits lately. That helps the bottom line.

[StayingWarm]

Nice break Alex! I look forward to seeing your final summary (hopefully with you far into the black!)

[Jwhoops]

How many purple stained glass did you get? Any idea on the odds?

[benz35]

alex will you be busting FLAWLESS?

[alexlazarevich]

There are purple stained glass? I didn't even notice. Ah yes, I see it now. I have a Pau Gasol stained glass insert that is obviously more purple than the others. That is the only purple I seem to have pulled. I will update the original post. Thanks for the info!

And yes, I will be busting Flawless and Immaculate. Also Intrigue. Am trying to bust all Panini NBA products. But they are really jamming a ton of products into October, so I may not be able to buy as much Flawless as I'd normally like to.\

EDIT: I put a scan of the purple Pau Gasol Stained Glass in the original post, next to the Lillard Red Stained Glass. You can clearly see the difference in color. However, I just presumed this was because the Lakers have purple color in their uniforms. Are you certain this is actually a purple parallel? I should check eBay... but it's Sunday morning, trying to get ready for football. Checked eBay, and clearly it is an SP parallel. Cool! Thanks for the heads up Jwhoops!