Panini America will chronicle the NBA’s off-season moves and upcoming special events through its print-to-order trading card program, Instant.
Panini kicked its off-season Instant program Tuesday by offering the first trading card featuring Kevin Durant in his new Golden State Warriors uniform. They’ll also produce a special retirement card featuring Tim Duncan that will go live on Wednesday and plan to feature cards of players who’ve changed teams in recent weeks including Dwyane Wade, Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol and Derrick Rose.
The cards are available for a 24-hour period on Panini’s website. Instant is similar to the Topps Baseball NOW real-time card concept that started this spring. Panini plans to use Instant throughout its exclusive licenses that now include the NBA and NFL.
Panini says it will make Instant cards for the NBA Rookie Photo Shoot and Basketball Hall of Fame inductions scheduled for this fall.
The company is also making some changes to Instant including more variations. In addition to the standard base cards, which are made to order, and others numbered to 1, 5 and 25, Instant will add others numbered to 10 and 50. The lower print runs are sold at higher prices than the base cards, which are available for $10 and less, depending on quantities purchased. In Durant’s case, all of the numbered cards were sold out within a short time after release on Tuesday.
There will also be a facimile autograph option for a slight upcharge.
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