Arch Manning break-out game sparks even more card demand

What happens when an established college cardboard commodity has a break-out game? We're about to find out ...

Texas Longhorns redshirt freshman QB Arch Manning -- the nephew of Eli and Peyton -- propelled his team to a dominating victory on Saturday and to the top of the AP rankings with a crazy day in relief of an injured starter, Quinn Ewers.

Manning completed nine of 12 passes for 223 yards and four touchdowns and also rushed for one more in a 56-7 drubbing of UTSA and that's just one more reason why people are buying and chasing down his cards from Panini America right now and perhaps more than ever before. That chasing wasn't a new thing -- he was a known player on cardboard (Thanks, NIL!) since before his first real snaps for Texas last season (one game) and first TDs (one passing, one rushing in some garbage time) last month.

Just like that, Manning has seemingly arrived -- depending on Ewers' injury status -- and just like the Heisman chatter the cardboard chatter has intensified for a lot of his stuff, which was already selling well.

Keep reading for the basics there.

Manning's time on Panini cardboard began in 2023 with a six-figure auction of a Prizm auto card topping a lineup of cards -- signed and unsigned -- only sold online (above) and has continued since then with online sets like Panini Instant and likely more to come with its new NIL program, too. But, for simplicity, here we'll look at stuff found in packs from selected (not in all) 2023 football releases and event promo packs (football and multi-sport) from the last two years. (He will be in 2024 football releases, too, when they arrive.) 

If you haven't looked at eBay this season, well, you'd see a flurry of big-ticket sales that might make you think he was the one with the Super Bowl rings at home (and asking prices on active auctions are higher). Overall, he already easily appears on more than 100 different cards with more than half being certified autos and some carrying memorabilia pieces embedded into cards -- even alongside his legendary uncles as you can see above -- with the overall volume bolstered even higher by parallels. It will all balloon into far larger numbers as time goes on, of course, but for now he's found in about 10 spots in packs and here's a quick (but not comprehensive card-by-card) rundown.

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2024 Panini National Packs (click here) & Gold VIP Packs (click here)
Show promo packs are the home to some of the newest Manning cards with an autographed card (/25) and other parallels of the basic card the standard find for him in the set made just for the National Sports Collectors Convention this year in Cleveland. The Panini VIP Party packs take things further with everything on Optichrome and even more color and flash (and ink) in play as you can see with the USA flag card up top. Between the two formats, there are more than 35 Manning cards to find.

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2023 Panini National & Gold VIP Packs (click here) 
Last year's show packs had him showing up more than 30 times in the VIP packs alone, and that's where most of them are found. He's also spotted once in the standard set and then on a handful of rare cards in the VIP Gems boxes. It's pretty much high-end VIP chase or bust here.

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2023 Panini Player of the Day (click here)
This shop promotion set included Manning on one chase card (/25) and had a one-card parallel chase -- a 1/1 auto. Needless to say both being rare probably pushes this off the radar for a lot of chasers vs. other options ... but you never know what might be in a pack.

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2023 Panini Immaculate Collection Collegiate (click here)
Manning appears on three cards in this release with each having parallels to bring the total up to 14 cards in all -- Immaculate Ink (five parallels), Immaculate Introductions Autographs (three parallels) and Signature Moves (three parallels). Each basic version starts at 99 copies.

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2023 Panini Flawless Collegiate (click here)
This high-end college release is the home to five different Mannings with everything under 25 serial-numbered copies. The basic card (above) has a gem embedded into it (three parallels) and its joined by a 1/1 Team Gems card, Team Logo Signatures (six colors), Patch Autographs (seven colors) and Legacy Patches (five colors) where he's joined by Eli and Peyton. In all, he's on almost 25 cards here with the entire product having about 269 cards for him in the entire high-end run.

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2023 Panini Prizm Draft Picks (click here)
Manning has a total of six cards here -- a popular and rare Color Blast insert and than an autograph card with four parallels (Silver, Orange, Gold, Black Vinyl) that was apparently a redemption in packs but is now live.

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2023 Panini National Treasures Collegiate (click here)
This release is the home to a pair of NT cards with a dozen possibilities due to parallels -- a Silhouettes card (four parallels) and a Silhouettes Signatures card (six parallels) with the basics starting at 99 copies. Also thrown into this one is something different ... a rainbow of five Optic autos -- standard, Silver, Orange, Gold and Black -- if you like some flash.

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Is there more here? Possibly ... if not now, there's always more to come (depending on when you read this) but this is the Arch Manning starting point with plenty of exclusive Panini cardboard to com and more games to be played.

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