Let me start by saying, I haven’t been excited about Chronicles since the first day information was released. I wasn’t a huge fan of baseball (especially retail) and generally don’t like repurposed content/brands. So…when I spent some time with 2017-18 Panini Chronicles Basketball today… I began as a major skeptic. Let me take your through the case of this unique new product.
The Format
UPDATE: We’ve added CASE #2 & #3 details below!
The format of Chronicles is relatively simple. 1 Case has 10 Boxes…. 1 box has 3 packs….1 pack has 15 cards. Each pack is guaranteed 1 hit (Auto, Auto/Relic, Relic) — so you can expect 3 hits per box. You can grab a box for about $140 (Product Page Here) across major retailers. Simple enough.
Here is where this product makes it’s mark. They have taken 10 — Yes, 10 previously retired products and combined them with Chronicles to make a massive combo repurposed product. You have unreleased 17/18 cards from the following products:
- Gold Standard
- Gala
- Titanium
- Marquee
- Pinnacle
- Panini (Base)
- Majestic
- Momentum
- Brilliance
- Limited
And on top of these you have the case Chronicles set.
It’s a LOT to take in…and frankly, if you aren’t paying attention it’s easy to get lost. Take a deep breath, Panini did us all a favor and approached this splendidly.
It’s hard to look at this as one massive set, but Panini has designed this product to be ONE COMPLETE set. The base Chronicles set is 150 cards (100 vets + 50 RC’s). The other products add another 250 “base” cards which make a COMPLETE set 400 cards. The best part is that Panini #’d cards sequentially from 1 to 400 so that set collectors don’t have to pull out that Cryptogram Insert reference sheet. It’s extremely straight forward…..
What to Like
The initial Knight’s Lance preview images don’t do this set justice. When you see these cards in-hand you’ll be impressed. Yes, the Chronicles base cards aren’t visually appealing and they are on thin card stock (ala Base NBA Hoops). As you look past the base 150 Chronicle cards you’ll find a very diverse set of 250 cards…with a familiar if not nostalgic attractiveness to them. Most of them are on thick card stock (like their originals) and have some AWESOME designs.
As you explore the different brands in the set you quickly get sucked into the idea of putting together all the pieces. I’m already thinking about how I can somehow get to a complete 400-card set. That’s where it gets tricky.
Some of these subsets/brands are REALLY hard to pull…but yet remain within the “set.” In an entire case I pulled ONE Gold Standard (/99) and NO Gala (/8). I pulled 2 Titanium (#’d less than /20) and 3 Marquee (/99). Let me just make this easy, here is my case breakdown.
CASE #2:
(Case #2 was missing a hit, instead had a 900 Panini Points card)
CASE #3:
(Case #3 was missing a hit, instead got a 600 Panini Points card)
As you can see, this is going to be one heck of a journey to 400. I didn’t even get half-way to a base RC set (after duplicates were removed). But I’ll stand by this statement.
I don’t know if there would be a more intriguing and fun basketball set to chase.
In terms of SET COMPLETION. In our case we completed 128 of 150 of BASE Chronicles. We completed 57 of 250 remaining 10 subsets. Overall we completed 175 of the 400 card set.
After 3 cases, we completed 233 of the 250 non-numbered cards in the set.
The base element of this product makes this a great product in itself… but there is more.
HITS
As of today (Jan 23) we don’t have a checklist from Panini but it’s safe to assume most RC’s have their Auto’s in the product. You’ll see many of the big names from our case break. What was surprising was seeing a few nice vets come out of the product. We were lucky enough to pull a Kobe Bryant redemption Auto. By no means is it Kobe Eminence 😉 — but it’s nice to see some big vet names in the product.
We pulled a nice smattering of Auto’s, here is a gallery of our hits.
CASE #1
CASE #2
Case #3:
Overall, the variety of hits were pleasantly refreshing.
The parallels can be a bit redundant. It definitely has that NBA HOOPS or DONRUSS feel to is with the sheer amount of parallels. Here is a breakdown of the types of parallels and a picture of the back of the box.
Red (/299), Blue (/199), Purple (/149), Pink (/99), Gold (/10), Holo Gold (1/1)
The brand/subsets alter the numbering slightly…but for the most part they hold true to the parallel #’s.
Here is a picture of the back of the box.
What NOT to like
The base cards are very uneventful. I wouldn’t say they are horrid…but they are pretty close. It’s very easy to skip right past the first 150 cards, which is not a good thing for a set oriented product. The base (first 150 cards) look as if the designers went to Minted.com and found a good post card template for the players. They are also printed on thin card stock to boot.
Sticker-Auto’s. Unfortunately this product could have been STELLAR with at least some ON-CARD Auto’s. The catch here would be that price tag… so I’m okay with the sticker auto’s for most of the product. But for crying out loud give us a Gala or Gold Standard On-Card Auto.
No checklist at realease. Seriously Panini…. help us out here. We want to know what we are chasing and who is worth investing in. I think the product is worthy enough of a checklist.
ROI
This will be an interesting ROI study to track over the next few days. I don’t think it would come close to the 70-80% of Revolution or the 95% of Prizm Retail, but if the parallels hold any value then this might be a sleeper ROI product. The downside is it will take much more time, which if truly measured would eat into the potential ROI. But it’s all good, as I’ll be keeping this updated over the next week to show you potential ROI for your box/cases.
Total Cost: $4,000
Expected ROI: 50%
Route to ROI: Single Auctions for all Autos, Low #’d Parallels, Player lots for Top 15 RC’s, Lots of all remaining SP’s.
Sales Tracking:
- Jan 26th: TBD
- Jan 27th: TBD
- Jan 28th: TBD
- Jan 29th: TBD
- Jan 30th: TBD
All of our eBay Auctions are LISTED RIGHT HERE.
Overall
I’m sold. I’d give this product a solid 8. There is room to improve and absolutely things to excited about. For $140 a box, you can’t ask for much more.
Here is a summary video to help with your decision:
Top Chronicles eBay Singles Here:
Thank you for tuning in! Comment below if you have any questions!
Great review! I was leaning away from Chronicles until reading this. I hate the sticker autos and not a big fan of the Base cards.