Back to football cards this week! As I posted here, I hit my LCS last week and picked up a bunch of packs...then I headed to WalMart for some household stuff and found six fat packs of Illusions on the shelf for $5.96 each, so I bought all six. A little greedy, I know, but I haven't seen football cards on the shelf in months.
I am on Reddit r/footballcards pretty regularly, so I see that a lot of collectors have been finding Illusions on the shelf at retail and pulling FIRE. My assumption is that since the set only has 100 base cards, that the chances of pulling a Tua/Joey B/Justin Herbert base RC are pretty good, and that was definitely my experience. If fact, in my first two packs, I pulled a Tua base and a Tua Mystique acetate, a Burrow base, and a Justin Jefferson base, among other great cards. Speaking of Jefferson, I think he's the real deal. He is on pace to have a better rookie season than Mr. Randy Moss. If he can keep that up for just a few more years, he may be HOF-bound. As of right now, I think he is second in ROY voting for this season. Assuming Herbert doesn't fall apart or get hurt, it's his to lose, especially now that Burrow is out for some knee surgery.
Anyway, here are some of the cooler cards I pulled:
Jere you can see the Tuas, a Kamara Bronze parallel, Kyler, Derrick Henry, Nick Bosa, CeeDee, JJ Watt, Joey Burrow, Deandre Hopkins, and Brian Dawkins Living Legends acetate. The photography is sharp, and the rate of base to inserts is excellent. I do think that as you see more packs opened the prices will jump, then drop since virtually everyone in the set is a star, and there are a lot of great rookies who are pretty easy to find.
Overall, I think the base cards look...OK. I generally like the glossier, action-shot photography associated with some other sets, BUT if I had a kid who was of collecting age, this would be a set that I would strongly consider buying them. I think the small base set with the awesome looking acetate inserts would stoke out pretty much any kid. You're always going to get some great hits, and kids often just care about collecting their favorite players. On the other hand, many of us really like non-star players for whatever reason, so something more along the lines of Panini's Donruss set, which has a lower rate of parallels and stars, but more base players and a little nicer and more action-y photography might appeal as well.
One thing I really like are the acetate cards. They look and feel pretty nice, and the designs are excellent. I have opened a few more packs of this set, and one thing I noticed is that the printing around the edges of the acetate inserts can be a little hit or miss. You can see it on the top edge of this card if you look really closely.
It will be interesting to see how these hold up in years to come. I think that a penny sleeve and top loader are super important for storing these particular cards.
Will I buy more of these? Probably. I need a few more Packers for my PC, and if this is all I can find on the shelf, you bet I'll be buying it, but if it comes down to the ebay flippers and card shops, I'll probably pass and find something that appeals a little more to me visually.
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