Is Absolute Basketball Returning? Absolutely

October 9, 2012 By Editor

The NBA’s trading card partner is making up for last year’s lockout-induced dearth of product by unleashing several new issues as a new 82-game season tips off this fall. On Tuesday, Panini America offered some preview images and key information for 2012-13 Absolute Basketball, due out just before the holidays.

Absolute will return after sitting out last season. It’s a higher end product that will include three autographs in every four-pack box. Collectors should also be happy to know that none all 100 rookie cards in Absolute will be on stickers.

The interesting thing about this product is that it’s not just ‘hit driven’. The base set includes 250 cards which should give collectors a fairly intelligent sampling of the new season with (one would hope) players who’ve changed teams in their new uniforms.

That base set will feature the 100 rookie cards (last year's and this year's, remember?), three base set parallels (Gold, Platinum and Black), seven different memorabilia card insert sets and five different autograph sets.

Among the inserts:

Every Player Every Game Patches memorabilia insert that includes the complete serial-number patch from each player’s game-worn jersey.
Autograph sets include Frequent Flyer Autographs, Iconic Autographs, Marks of Fame Autographs, Hoopla Autographs and Heroes Autographs (Frequent Flyer and Iconic also include memorabilia versions).
Every memorabilia card in the set will be limited to 99 copies or less, but the majority of memorabilia cards will be limited to 25 or less.

2012-13 Panini Absolute Basketball is due out in mid-December. Check out the photo gallery below.

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