2012 Panini Prizm Review - 1 Box Break

It's been a while since I've done any reviews. I am just a slacker and that's all there is to it :).

Here we have a very nice product but looking at it, I felt like this has been done before, or has it? This year Panini has put out several lackluster products with the designs seeming to run all together. If you didn't collect cards and just came into the hobby, someone could show you an insert or jersey from each product and they would think it runs together. With that said, Panini got something right, even though the idea was taken from another company.

Panini Prizm's hype has been nothing short of crazy. The popularity of the Basketball product has carried over into Football. The boxes/cases started out at $100/$1200 per Panini's MAPP pricing program. However leading up until the days of the release we saw the prices increase in places reaching all the way up to $1400. Right now the prices have settled at around $120 a box and $1400 a case. I was able to find a box at my local shop for $109.95 but with tax it comes out to about the same.

The look and feel of Prizm is very slick. There isn't a natural curvature like there is with Topps Chrome and it has something different about it that makes it stand out from chrome. The autograph selection is kind of nice for collectors as they feature 78 veteran autographs and 100 rookie autographs. However with that crazy selection it means there is a lot of boxes/cases being cracked that will not have a good return. The autographs are not what pushes this product, it's the gold prizm parallels and those have taken off!

As of the time I am writing this, there is 3 Andrew Luck Gold Prizm Parallels on ebay already. They are each #'d to 10. Each of these has reached over $500 with one nearing $1000. Some people were afraid that the hype wouldn't carry over from Basketball sales, but it clearly has.

I decided to go ahead and get a box and here is what I got:

87 base cards
20 base rookies (Best one was Nick Foles)
3 Prizm Parallels (Alfred Morris, Stephon Gilmore, Steven Jackson insert)
1 Red Die-Cut Parallel (David Nelson)
2 Autographs (Alshon Jeffery, Kellen Moore)
No Golds =(

All in all this is a great product. I think it is great that each of the top rookies and autographs are harder to get, along with the gold parallels. This makes for a product that could keep its value over time. Unless you really want to spend the money (or feel lucky) I don't recommend opening boxes as the return is probably not going to be close to what you spent. This product is awesome for group breaks though. I feel like this is a  good product that could be a real home run hitter for years to come for Panini, and the first real competition to the almighty Topps Chrome.

2012 Topps Finest 10 Case Review

Finest is here! Finest is here! I am a refractor junky. My whole personal collection is based around finest and chrome refractors now. I absolutely love them and the aspect of getting new rookies every year makes it even more worth while. I try to get every 49ers refractor from the base down to the super. I am not always successful in this endeavor but I sure try. This year will be no different. We geared up for this by doing 10 cases worth of breaks and here is my review.


I guess I am good news type of person, so we'll go with that first. The look of the product does not disappoint at all. The shine of the cards and the refractors are all amazing. The colors are 1000x better than last year. The card looks as though the player is coming out of a colored doorway going into the light. These color refractors seem to fall a little less than 1 per box.

The Atomic refractors fall 1 per mini box and they also look quite awesome. The autographed gold and red versions are even better.

The product itself looks amazing, but what topps did to allocation and content absolutely destroys this product.


So you go to the message boards and check out some box breaks. You will ALWAYS see how some guy bought a box and pulled an RG3 1/1 or some crazy auto. However in the case of finest I'd say this is seriously few and far between. After breaking 10 cases of this stuff, it left a bad taste in my mouth. It was so badly allocated that it seemed like it was super tough to pull anything of value. I went ahead and compiled some data from the cases so we can see how badly this product really is.

Before looking at this I suggest taking a look at this blog post by Field Level View which outlines how Topps stacked the odds against the collectors. http://www.fieldlevelview.com/?p=2529
In his article he shows how the base rookies are numbered so high, that the odds of getting someone of value is stacked against the collectors. There are upwards of 40,000 base rookies auto jerseys and patches. You can only imagine how hard it is to pull a Luck, Griffin or Richardson.

What I did was list every hit that I had in hand or scanned. I may have missed a couple so this data isn't perfect, but it mirrors exactly what Field Level View stated in his article. It shows the percentage of even getting a mid tier rookies.

AJ Jenkins  SP	2
Russell Wilson SP	2
Doug Martin SP	3
Devier Posey	8
Joe Adams	8
Stephen Hill SP	3
Brock Osweiler SP	3
Ronnie Hillman	10
Nick Toon	7
Bernard Pierce	2
Kendall Wright SP	2
Chris Givens	9
Jarius Wright	13
Michael Egnew	12
Robert Turbin	6
T.Y Hilton	9
Mohamed Sanu SP	1
T.J Graham	7
Matt Schaub	1
Isaiah Pead	1
Rueben Randle	2
Dwayne Allen	7
Brian Quick SP	1
Michael Floyd SP	2
Nick Foles  SP	3
David Wilson SP	1
Justin Blackmon SP	1
Ryan Broyles	10
Coby Fleener	8
Alshon Jeffery SP	3
Torrey Smith	1
Lamar Miller	1
LaMichael James SP	1

This is from roughly 10 cases +/- 10 hits.

These were the big hits that we got from 10 cases:

Mohamed Sanu Gold Atomic Auto /25

Triple Rams Auto GU /10

Doug Martin Red Atomic Auto /10

Colt McCoy Red Auto Jersey /25

Trent Richardson auto patch /10

Mark Ingram Auto jersey /10

Michael Floyd Auto patch /10

AJ Green Red Refractor Auto jersey /25

Justin Blackmon Finest Moments

Kendall Wright Gold Atomic Auto /25

Devier Posey Pulsar auto Patch /25

Brock Osweiler Finest Moments Auto

The spreadsheet shows how many of each hit was pulled. We were lucky to pull one of the big ones. However, The thing to take in from this is the mid tier rookies. They are very hard to pull! With names like Nick Foles, Kendall Wright, AJ Jenkins, Lamichael James, David Wilson and Mohamed Sanu (among others) coming out 1 per 10 cases drowns the value of this product out. For people who rip and flip, if you didn't generally hit something huge, you would end up clawing your way back to the threshold by getting the mid level guys. In finest, this is non existent. In the first 5 cases that we opened, we did not pull an autograph numbered to anything less than 25. The ones we did pull were duds. I really can't fathom why Topps would do this. It is either taking advantage of collectors because last year was so successful, or they are saving the big names for their big releases like Five Star, Chrome and whatever else they drum up this year. As mentioned before, there is always someone who gets extremely lucky, but for the most part people are taking it to the chin and it shows. 

2012 Topps Chrome Baseball Break + Review

It's that time again, when every card collector's wet dream comes true. Chrome and Finest are here. The baseball is just the tease for us football guys and I like to get at least one box every year for my self. This year doesn't disappoint!

This year they have put 2 autographs in a box. This adds a whole lot of value to the product and makes it worth while to continue to open the box if you hit your auto in the first 5 packs. The colored refractors are amazing as usual and boxes seem to be delivering a lot of fun to casual collectors. On average from what I've seen by people posting their breaks,  people are getting several colored refractor autos in a case. I happened to be one of the lucky ones who pulled one from one box. Here is how my box shook out:

The rest of what I got was pretty much base or regular refractors. I did also get a Yu Darvish rc, but I guess that doesn't mean much as the market floods with his stuff. Overall I was very excited to see so much color from one box and I sure hope this is a preview of things to come in the football realm. With product costs rising so much, chrome is one of the most fun products to open for the price. I may end up getting more with the gathering anticipation of football looming 3 months away.


UPDATE:

Looks like I also hit a Jeter SP variation. I would've never known that I hit one had it not been for this post http://www.cardboardconnection.com/2012-topps-chrome-baseball-variation-short-prints. Check those base people!

2012 Topps Inception Review - 5 Case Break

With last year's product being so popular, Zack and I decided to do a 5 case break. We originally wanted to break this ourselves, but with being so rookie heavy we decided to do a group break.

 The looks of all of the cards are pretty sweet, but this product just doesn't deliver like I think some of the future release. My first impression was that the base cards are sweet. These are some of the best looking base cards that I have ever seen. You also get a couple of parallels in each Pack/Box and they aren't too shabby either. The numbering scheme is kind of silly being 252, 123, 75, 50, 25 and 1/1. The downfall of the product is that it is so rookie heavy and before pre-season or any action in the football year leaves this a top heavy product as well. It seems as if you do not hit an RG3, Luck or Richardson that your case was pretty much a loss.

Out of 5 cases we hit 1 Andrew Luck auto patch, 0 RG3 auto's and 0 Richardson auto's. This left much to be desired as the cases we opened were kind of blah. We did hit a Stephen Hill 1/1 auto and an Antonio Gates 1/1 parallel, but the other low #'d stuff was very mediocre (as of right now).

The teams that seemed to do the best were the mediocre teams where if you hit them in a team draw you'd be disappointed but would still hold out hope as there are chances to get an auto. Out of 5 cases 4 of the teams got 3 or more auto patch rookies. Those being the Panthers (Joe Adams) Texans (Devier Posey), Ravens (Bernard Pierce redemption) and Rams (Chris Givens). With only around 40 patch auto's this was  40 % of the auto patches from the whole break.

Here are some of the highlights from the break:

 

In conclusion this break was definitely a fun break. It is one of the best things to break in a group break due to the amount of hits that most of the teams got. However, if you're trying to break this and hope for your money back, it's very top heavy. It's a tough product especially if breaking a single box, much less a case. This will change as some rookies will shine, but at this point it's not worth breaking outside of a group break environment. 

Product Review - Music Music Music by Famous Fabrics

I must admit, I have never been so excited in my life to receive a box. I was literally like a kid waiting for Christmas. I really had high hopes for this box but such as life I was disappointed.

First onto the product. For us sports card nerds, we look forward to the new releases for new autograph innovations and ideas, and the newest rookie cards. For this it was something completely new to me. I never have purchased a non sports card box before and this product does deliver.

The product features "jersey" (shirt, dress, relic) cards of famous musicians and music stars. Some of the notable names that I can spout off of the top of my head are Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley and whole bunch more. The kicker to this product is that every box you open, you get a 1/1 cut auto. Now this is also the downfall to the product. It has an extensive autograph checklist featuring everyone from singers, songwriters and musicians from eras that most of us normal folk have not heard of. It is a treat for anyone to pull someone that you have heard of. The highlights of that checklist are amazing though. There is a cut auto of Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Bruce Springsteen among some other impressive ones. There is a Michael Jackson cut auto as well! That is already on ebay at: http://www.ebay.com/itm/MICHAEL-JACKSON-CUT-AUTO-1-1-2012-FAMOUS-FABRICS-INK-MUSIC-MUSIC-MUSIC-/130733354910?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e7050af9e

The memorabilia part of this product is very awesome, it features all known musicians and music stars and can end up being a better part of a break due to the not so well known autographs.

I for one want the Buddy Holly stuff from this product as I was born in his home town of Lubbock, TX and even shared the same barber as him (Jake Goss). I knew with the long list of autographs It would be dang impossible for me to pull the one I wanted, but I just hoped that I would pull someone that I have heard of.

I did a video to this break but it doesn't appear to be loaded yet.

Here are the results to my box.

I thought the Keith Moon stage worn shirt card was awesome. I am not a huge Sting fan so to me that one is whatever. The autographed card, I really don't know who he is. After searching about him, he was an old country singer who was born in the early 1900s. Although I have never heard of him, it is really a neat card.

Overall I love this product, I am going to try to score another box of this to try to get that awesome Buddy Holly cut or even one of the metal guys who are in this product. The pricing point is pretty high, but is definitely justified due to the fact that you're getting a 1/1 auto cut in ever box, along with the chance to own some of these guys who are deceased. If you're a music fan this product is for you!

A little about us

Welcome to Break the Case blog. This blog is intended to give a breaker's perspective on the hobby and to give product reviews and previews of upcoming products. We will also run our breaks from this blog until we find a home to run our breaks.

Zack(vincesanity) and I(ryo1549) make up Break the Case. Each of us are sports card fans through and through. I have known Zack for little over 5 years now and he has been one of my best friends in the hobby since the beginning. He and I have always loved breaking boxes. I have been doing group breaks for 4 years now, from the days on Beckett before their forum overhaul. From there, I moved onto FCB and did breaks there for quite a while. After that sight, I do breaks on thecardsite.com and also blowoutcards.com. We are taking it one step further and trying to do breaks for ourselves. You can view my videos on the following sites:

youtube.com/ryo1549
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/treasure-hunters-box-breaks
blogtv.com/people/ryo1549

We have started our own channel at blogtv.com/people/breakthecase. We also have a facebook and a twitter account. (@breakthecase1)

We look forward to posting the ins and outs of our breaks along with the product views and hope you'll follow along with us.