Don’t look for baseball’s current stars or past greats inside 2018 Panini Elite Extra Edition baseball. As usual, Extra Edition is all about the prospects. The annual release returns on Wednesday, offering some of the first cards of 2017 draft picks and others who someday hope to have a home in the big leagues. While it’s not an MLB-licensed product, Extra has had some staying power, largely because of its promise of 7-8 autographed cards per box at a fairly reasonable price point.
Each box will have five packs and each pack will have five cards. That limited nature means Elite offers a base set in which each cad is numbered to 999 or less. There will be ten parallel versions of each base card, all numbered to 100 or less.
Among the top hits will be the Future Threads Silhouette autographs, with one in each box, all numbered to 149 or less. Dual Silhouette autographs are also in the mix.
2017 Elite Extra Edition offers on-card autographs of the players who were picked in last June’s draft along with other prospects including special cards devoted to the Dominican Prospects League.
Other autograph content will come from members of the 2017 USA National teams, which will be found through the inclusion of another Panini brand: Contenders. Just as with the flagship Contenders set, look for Championship, Playoff, Cracked Ice and Printing Plate Tickets cards for prospects.
Among the memorabilia cards are dual, triple and quad material cards of some of the top young players.
Each box will have 2-3 memorabilia cards in addition to the aforementioned autographs. Boxes are currently available online for $90-$100.
Click here to see 2017 Elite Extra Edition on eBay.