I know, I know. I said "Football only." But I saw these and really wanted to check them out. I was intrigued by the weirdness of a set that is not approved by MLB, but by the MLB Players' Association. This nuance played out about the way I expected...Lots of airbrushing on helmets, hats, and jerseys as well as no team names, just city names i.e. Seattle Mariners are just "Seattle." The actual cards are of decent quality, akin to Donruss or Score cards - other less expensive Panini brands, but the actual design sort of harkens back to a dreadful 1992 Score baseball set. While the cards certainly look better, I feel like the "ticket" graphics, which take up 60% of the front of the card really add to the appeal; rather, they hide what could actually be action shots of the players. While this could be a cost cutting measure (less potential background logoing to airbrush), or really just design choice. I have no way to know. I picked up a Blaster Box at Walmart for $30-ish dollars, and for that I received 30 cards, one of which was 150 Panini Points, so bonus for me!
The cards do have plenty of foil, which I obviously love, and plenty of subsets - Up & Coming, Game Day, Winning Tickets, First Rounders, and Potential among them. They seem to be pretty rookie-heavy, especially in the subsets, which I think pretty much everything is these days, and the photography of the players themselves really takes center stage, especially with the obscured backgrounds.
So 30 cards open, and here are the best pulls:
As with other baseball rips, I barely recognize anyone here...Pujols is about it. I think there was also a Verlander card, but that's about it.
The Paddack is numbered /299, so that's cool. Also, I didn't get an auto in this box, but I got points, and that's not really too far off. 150 points is enough for a mediocre auto on the Panini website, so I'll take it.
The Winning Tickets card looks great...kinda like a golden ticket. The First Rounders subset is clean and nice looking, too. I really enjoy some of these newer cards, and these are two of them. Unfortunately, the set as a whole doesn't really do it for me, so I'll probably just hang onto my remaining box for...whatever future reasons. Maybe a card show next summer?
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