Prizm a Plenty!

A few weeks back I picked up a hanger pack of 2018 Panini Prizm World Cup cards on a whim while strolling through Target.  I really liked the cards, but wasn't such a fan of the $9.99-for-15-cards price point.  Well, I ended up doing this...

I found a couple of giant lots of unopened hobby packs on eBay, what amounted to a few boxes worth, at a price that worked out to well under $2 per pack.  Now that's my kind of bargain!  Even now, a couple of months later and well after the conclusion of the tournament, boxes are still going north of $100 (and contain 24 packs), so this was a good deal in my mind.

Now, I'm not completely naive.  I realize what likely happened here.  Odds are a case breaker just ripped packs from new boxes until they found the guaranteed "hit" in each, then set the rest of the unopened packs from each box aside for this lot.  Doesn't bother me in the least given that I paid about a third of the price, and am more interested in completing the base set and pulling a few cool parallels than I am in pulling an autograph.

Tonight's post will cover the first 24 packs I ripped open, a poor man's hobby box so to speak.  With five base cards per pack (plus one parallel/insert/hit), and a relatively deep (by soccer standards, anyway) 300-card checklist, it would take perfect collation across 60 packs to finish the base set.

Happy to have pulled Ronaldo in my first batch of packs here, given that he would certainly be one of the pricier singles to have to chase down later.

I landed quite a few of the game's brightest stars in the base cards that I pulled here.  James Rodriguez was easily one of the best players in the 2014 World Cup with Columbia...

...and the same goes for Luka Modric in the 2018 World Cup with surprise finalists Croatia.  This is just my second card of the 2018 World Cup's Golden Ball winner.

All told, between these 24 packs and the cards I had previously I am now sitting at 140/300 for the base set, or 46.7% complete.  Plenty more packs to go however, hopefully the next 24 get me over the 60% mark at least.

As far as inserts and parallels go, I pulled just one of these Connections inserts, featuring Sweden.  Maybe my least favorite insert, but I only pulled a single one and it was new to me at least.

Next up, Fundamentals.  I ended up with only one of these as well, featuring Toni Kroos of Germany.  I doubt whether either of these first two are all that rare in terms of insertion ratio, most likely just a result of the random grouping of loose packs I was sent.

And now, the two insert sets I actually like, New Era, featuring the brightest young stars in the game...

...and Scorer's Club, which as the name implies showcases the sport's best offensive talents.  I pulled five New Era inserts and five Scorer's Club cards as well.  Worked out nicely that I pulled the two sets I enjoy five times as often as the two I don't.

The highlight of the product for me are the numerous colorful and amazingly shiny parallels.  In this grouping I pulled a single Hyper Prizm parallel, Swiss defender Ricardo Rodriguez, who plays his club ball for Italy's A.C. Milan.

I got a pair of these sweet-looking Mojo Prizms (gotta laugh at that name).  These look great in hand, and even better on the scanner bed apparently.  The better of the two I pulled is this Kasper Schmeichel, who was Leicester City's goalie during their improbable rise to the top of the Premier League table (and is still their starting goalkeeper to this day).

The most common parallel was, as expected, the Silver Prizm.  Think of these as equivalent to a basic Refractor in the Topps Chrome products.  They look nice, and allow you to see much more of the background texture and design elements than their darker base card counterparts.

I ended up with eight of these, so basically pulled one every three packs.  My favorite was certainly this Philippe Coutinho, one of the game's premier players in that tier right below the Neymars/Ronaldos/Messis of the world.  Philippe was so fun to watch during his time with Liverpool that I've been searching out his cards for years now, was nice to pull a new one for my collection from a pack myself.

I also landed this rarer Red Prizm featuring Gustav Svensson of Sweden, and serial-numbered to /149.  I was excited to pull this even though I admittedly don't know much about Gustav as a player, because I may try to build a franken-set of the 300-card set built entirely of different parallels, and this will be a unique addition towards that project anyway.

Well, that was fun.  I don't rip packs all that often, and opening that many of them from a set I enjoy was some good entertainment I have to say.  I actually just finished ripping through the next 24 packs, and will have those results up here in the next week or so.

Thanks for checking in!