We managed to secure a few cases of the brand new 2020 Illusions Football hobby and decided to see for ourselves what this year’s product offered.
Right off the bat, many folks in our neck of the woods are happy with the graphics and box art as it features Pittsburgh Steelers rookie quarterback Kenny Pickett and recently retired signal caller Ben Roethlisberger.
This year’s version offers three autographs and two memorabilia per box, on an average. The hobby boxes consists of five 10 card packs for grand total 50 cards.
We felt pretty good with our very first card out of the box: a sharp looking micro-etched Operation Detonation gold foil raised card of Rams all-time great Aaron Donald. Just below that was our first autograph, a nice Rookie Endorsements of New Orleans Saints wide receiver Chris Olave, numbered to just 50 copies.
The second pack didn’t offer much other than a Calvin Austin insert and a numbered card of JuJu Smith-Shuster.
In the third pack, we scored a nice black ice Devante Adams numbered to 50. The card following that was one that got our blood going. We pulled an Illusionist insert of Pickett.
Upon flipping it over, we saw that it was numbered 5 of 10. We will definitely take that.
The first card in the next pack was a Shining Stars insert of San Francisco 49ers shining star Debo Samuel. At first glance, this set quickly became one of my favorite inserts of the season so far.
I love the gold foil, the big swooping letters, the well placed star and the array of background colors and design work. It was followed by another solid autograph that of Atlanta Falcons rookie running back Tyler Allgeier numbered to 99.
The next pack saw the first Amazing card featuring Atlanta Falcons rookie wideout Drake London. We also got our first (quite large) mem in a huge, teal circular piece of Carolina Panthers rookie quarterback Matt Corral in an insert set called Instant Impact, with this one numbered to 99.
We also saw our first base RC,Chiefs receiver Skyy Moore, in that pack. The base set is only 100 cards with a heavy population of rookies. Later, we landed Seahawks running back Kenneth Walker III.
We found a nice Christian Watson base RC in the next pack (but a better Watson card was coming–stick with me). George Clinton will be proud of our first Funkadelic insert pull, that of San Francisco TE George Kittle.
We saw a nice gold Kyle Pitts, out of 299, within the next wrapper as well as a Mystique of Patriots rookie running back Pierre Strong, Jr.
We then hit yet another nice auto of a skill position rookie as Watson popped up again. The Packers rookie really came on over the last several weeks of the season and had he not missed several games with an injury, may have been a candidate for Rookie of the Year.
The card is numbered to 199 and from the same Rookie Endorsements subset where we found Olave at the start of the break.
There’s no Brock Purdy base card on the checklist but he does have some autographed cards in Illusions. Unfortunately, we didn’t get one.
The next to last pack held a yellow diamond #/299 Dionte Johnson from the same parallel set as the Kyle Pitts. We also scored a nice Dan Marino out of the acetate Funkadelic set, this one numbered out of 299.
Or last pack had another operation detonation cool insert this of Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert. We also snagged our final piece of huge, circular memorabilia from the Instant Impact set, this time the large mem featured Tennessee Titans rookie QB Malik Willis. This particular card was not numbered.
Here’s a look at everything that came out of the box. Some pretty eye-catching stuff.
While it’s hard to truly assess a box without seeing how the rookies fare in the years to come, the cards we’ve seen are attractive and colorful. Sticker autographs are always a bit of a letdown, but expected in pretty much all but the higher end products now.
Boxes are currently selling in the $330-$375 range, so 2022 Illusions seems like a reasonable roll of the dice if you can find one on the lower end of that scale and have some luck on your side.
Check out sports card boxes in Sports Zone’s online store here.
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