After Black Friday Box #1: 2012 Panini Golden Age

As I mentioned in my second to last post, I bought four boxes of cards from Steel City Collectibles a couple of days after the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale. I was able to resist the initial temptation, but when I saw that everything was still on sale the following Wednesday, I found myself unable to resist any longer.

Four boxes were the most I had ever gotten at one time (the previous record was two), but I was able to justify the purchase in my mind by saying that I haven't bought a box of anything since early last year (not counting an $8 1990 Pro Set box from about six months ago), and the odds are pretty good that I won't be buying any during the upcoming year.

 First up is my box of 2012 Panini Golden Age. This is the second box of the 2012 edition that I have bought, the other being one of the above mentioned boxes coming from early last year. I can say right away that this newest one wasn't as good as the previous one, but it was going to be pretty hard to top last year's box, considering that box contained the case "hit", in the form of an original 1933 Goudey card.

Before opening this box, I still needed 33 cards to complete the set, and I'm happy to report that I was able to get all 33 of those needed cards. I'm sure at this point, everyone has seen the base cards a million times, but I'm still going to show a few of my favorites from that batch of 33 that were new to me:

Also, even though their not pictured in this post, I'm happy to report that out of the 24 minis in the box, 21 were new to me.

On to the inserts:

I don't know if box toppers are technically considered an insert, or if they just fit in to a stand-alone category, but either way I certainly could've done worse than this Ty Cobb pennant box topper. Very cool!

This is probably a good time to mention that all the images that you will see from the four boxes were taken via cell phone camera, which I usually do with posts like these as it's just easier than scanning for me. A lot of times the pictures come out better than scans do, but the above two are a good example of how poor lighting can really affect the look of the cards. Despite the bad picture, the Batter-Up cards might be my favorite out of all three years worth of Golden Age inserts.

The Titanic was a duplicate.

Rider of Secretariat.

I even got one of the white bordered short print parallels, which according to the Cardboard Connection are limited to 58 copies each.

Now for my memorabilia card:

Normally I would have been very happy to get this card featuring "America's Sweetheart", but unfortunately for me, I just got it during COMC's Black Friday sale. At least this one has a seam though, so that's something. This seems to be one of the more common museum age relic cards in the set, why exactly I don't know. One has to wonder if people just don't know who she was, so when they pull the card it just instantly gets put up on eBay, which would be a shame since when she was in her prime, she was a bigger star in then any currently living celebrity could ever dream of being. Or of course, it could just be that Panini made more of these than some of the others.

And finally my autograph:

Growing up a Mariners fan, I was certainly happy with this auto, since managing the team for all those years is what I associate him with, even though he did manage for other ball clubs and of course had what could be considered a fairly successful career as a player as well.

So that's it for this one. Up next will be a box of 2013 Panini Golden Age.


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