2013 Panini Cooperstown Box Break,Review, Boxes for Sale

We recently wrote about the Panini Perennial Draft Picks which is a prospect product. On the other hand of the collecting spectrum is the new 2013 Panini Cooperstown box which features only Hall of Famers. Panini launched Cooperstown last year, a product made possible through its exclusive contract with the Baseball Hall of Fame.

It was pretty well received and the black and white photos were attractive when a bright blue Sharpie autograph was on the front. However, many of the less famous stars’ autographs were very cheap on the secondary market.

One aspect rings true tor Panini on either of these sets, which is they cannot feature uniform logos or other identifying parts on the photos. Thus the fronts of the brown bordered cards feature a Cooperstown name on the top along with the player’s position, city name and Hall of Fame logo. The middle of the card has a player photo and the player’s name is on the bottom. The backs feature player career information, a box score from a key game in that player’s career as well as an informational blurb about that game.

These cards were issued in 24 pack boxes with six cards per pack and each box says there is one on-card autograph card per box.

There are six different parallels and several different inserts in this year’s Cooperstown issue including the Colgan’s Chips redux which pays homage to the century-old tobacco issue. There are 100 base cards plus an additional 10 color base short prints.

Since this is a few months after release, leading on-line hobby dealers are between $50-60 per box right now while my local card store (Triple Cards, Plano TX) reported selling less than one case at $99 per box.

Here’s what I pulled:

Base Cards: 88 different out of 100

Short Prints (101-110); Eddie Murray, Gaylord Perry

Green Crystal Shard Parallels: Johnny Bench, Reggie Jackson, Hal Newhouser, Jim Palmer, Arky Vaughan, Hack Wilson

Blue Crystal Shard Parallel (#d to 499): Tony Lazzeri, Al Lopez, Bruce Sutter

Red Crystal Shard Parallel (#d to 399): Al Barlick, Al Lopez

Gold Crystal Shard Parallel (d to 299): Johnny Bench Colgan’s Chips: Luis Aparicio, Yogi Berra, Jim Bottomley, Jim Bunning, Carl Hubbell, Doug Harvey, Al Kaline, Ralph Kiner, Tommy Lasorda, Freddie Lindstrom, Eddie Mathews, Tony Perez, Jim Rice, Sam Rice, Phil Rizzuto, George Sisler, Warren Spahn, Bill Terry, George Wright

Historic Tickets: 1924 World Series Game 7, 1931 US-Japan tour; 1939 Lou Gehrig’s Final Game; 1948 Jackie Robinson steals home

Inductions: Paul Molitor, Joe Morgan, Eddie Murray, Warren Spahn

International Play: Rod Carew, Orlando Cepeda Lumberjacks: King Kelly, Honus Wagner

Museum Pieces: Johnny Evers Glove, Reggie Jackson Bat, Nolan Ryan Spikes Numbers Game: Tris Spaker, Ed Walsh

Signatures: Whitey Herzog (# to 699)

While we did get exactly what we were supposed to out of our box, we can understand why collectors who shelled out over $100 with tax may not have been interested in procuring more than one box. With one autograph per box (we do understand that HOF subject autographs can be prohibitive to procure because of a limited population many of whom do not need autograph income), and not a ton of other great inserts the current on-line valuation seems to be much more accurate and a reasonable value for collectors than the $99 at my LCS.

Perhaps a second autograph or relic card or even some lower printed parallels or parallel inserts would have kept this box closer to the original retail sale level.

You can pick up some deals on eBay right now by clicking here.

Rich Klein can be reached at [email protected].