2012 Panini National Treasures Baseball - Panini Steps it up.

If you're like me, and by like me I mean cheap and not well to do, you like to window shop.  I love watching Youtube box breaks and reading forum posts of super high end box breaks.  And the more I watch and read  the less I ever want to actually open a box of this high end stuff.  Just so much risk for your buck.  But I digress, the latest super premium baseball card offering is Panini's National Treasures.  And after watching the box breaks and reading about them on forums I have to say I really like this stuff.  I still would never spring for a $400 plus box of this, but I could see taking that $400, if I had it to blow, and picking up stuff I wanted online.

I have to say that Panini has really stepped it up with this super premium product.  Each "box" contains 8 cards all hits of some kind.  Including one book card and one on card auto guaranteed.  The one thing I would like to tell Panini is when you advertise your product you might not want to refer to most of your subjects as commons.  When you look at the sell sheet and the collection breakdown it says 150 commons and 75 rookies.  That's a terrible way to sell your product.  Might I suggest you say something like this, 150 active, retired, and hall of famers and 75 rookies.  Calling the majority of your players commons really doesn't lend to how great of a product you're trying to put out, especially when your product is 8 cards in a box inside a tin.

But I digress.  There are no base cards in this product.  There are lots of different themes and subsets  but they are all either memorabilia, autographed or both.  And I know I'm usually hard on Panini, but I have to say from what I've seen I really like this product.

Sure there are your base relics like this Al Kaline bat...

this Jackie Robinson jersey.  I really do like the over all design of much of the cards.  Instead of airbrushing all the players Panini decided to do head shots in black and white, cutting off the hat logo and chest logo of the player.  But what you get is a nice close up of the player and for an unlicensed MLB product, they do have a players association and HOF license, it looks really good.  I also think that Panini did a great job making these look retro, but modern and pretty much gave us a modern day cabinet card.   With great filigree and borders and just a really nice clean over all appearance, that  I find very attractive.  Not to mention there are some insanely nice cards in the product. Here are a few I found while window shopping.

There are lots of book cards.  Everything from this awesome Granderson patch to some large plain patches. All are very low numbered.

Panini released a pretty extensive drool gallery before the product launch and one of the really stand outs were the button cards.  Topps will also be putting out button cards in Gypsy Queen this year.

There are also some really nice patch cards too.

Panini also brings back the Rated Rookie with these signed patch cards.  There are also MLB Players Choice cards that are just like this with a different embroidered logo.  No Diamond Kings though which is kind of disappointing.

One of my other favorite themed cards in the set are the Hall of Fame auto cards.

This will be one of the cards I'm going after.  I do believe these are numbered to just 25 and are all hard signed.  A great design with the players year of induction and the HOF's logo.

But probably the best cards I've seen and I have no chance of ever owning one, because the few that I've been tracking in ebay are going for crazy money, are these bat knob cards.

I mean this would probably be the crown of my collection if ever it was to be acquired, or something like this.

Panini put out a drool gallery of these card too.

Color me impressed Panini.  If Panini can transfer this kind of effort over to more mid to low range offerings, if and when they were to get an MLB license, well it just might work out all right.  And the more I thought about it after my whole Look Back at Topps Exclusive License, the more I wouldn't mind the return of Rated Rookies and Diamond Kings.  Maybe there's hope on the horizon.  Anyways congrats to Panini for putting out a great product that I will never buy a box of.  But damn if it ain't fun to window shop.

cb out.