Sunday, January 7, 2018

2017 Black Friday Boxes #3: 2014 Panini Golden Age

Today's box of 2014 Golden Age is the second to last in this break, and without giving anything away, is a box that I can honestly say... I will never forget.

Of all the three years worth of Golden Age box toppers, the oversized base card out from the 2014 edition is my least favorite. They are really thick, and heavy (like four pounds), which makes them a real to try and store. I keep hoping to get one of the giant memorabilia toppers, but as you can see, I get no respect!

Before opening this box, I needed ten base cards to complete the set...

... and after opening the box, I still need five!

Both of the Headlines were duplicates.

Both of the Star Stamps were duplicates as well. If the Patron Saint of bloggers sees this, he needs to let me know if he wants the Russell/Hondo stamp before I make it available to anyone else.

I didn't need either of the Fan Craze's either. I feel like I'm starting to sound like a broken record.

Ah, Farrah, prrrrrrrrrr! And she was actually a set need!
In case you can't tell by first glance, this is a First Fifty parallel, it even says so at the top.

This is my third one of these parallels, and I'm really not too fond of them. Their basically just a base card with a serial number, I tend to like my parallels to be, you know... more parallely (is that a word?).

Some decent names here for my two 1913 The National Game inserts, I initially thought that I needed them both, but apparently I already had the Josh Gibson.

The good news that this a semi-uncommon relic, but if you've read the previous couple of posts, then you should know that if I start a sentence off with the good news, that there will be bad news following it... and this time is no different as the bad news would be that I got this card on COMC early last year. The even worse news was that I opened this box one day after putting in my COMC shipping request (Cyber Monday, aka the last for free shipping), and of course this card just happened to be among those cards to get shipped. Had I opened this box the day before, I could have held this one out and tried to recoup what I had spent on it, but I guess that would've been just too easy.

Now that we've seen the one promised memorabilia card per box, it's time for that promised autograph:

No, I didn't forget too add the picture, and no, Blogger didn't have some sort of technical difficulty. This empty space represents the non-existent autograph that was within this box. Yep, you read that right, no promised autograph for me!

After doing some checking online, Panini is apparently very good about making things right when something like this occurs, even when it comes to an older box like this. So far though, I haven't seen any evidence of that, as they seemingly never answer their phones, and still haven't replied to messages that were left over a month ago. Normally I probably wouldn't let this go easily, but if you remember the first post in this series, I mentioned a "saving grace" coming out of the last box (tomorrow) -- which, after you see and hear about -- might make my decision to forget about this missing auto a little more understandable.

Since I started with the topper, I might as well finish by showing the box bottom panel, which by the way, I actually needed. Panini bringing back box bottom cards was a fun idea, I just wish they would have done them for the 2012 and 2013 editions as well.

As bad as this box was, I still can't say that it's the worst box that I've ever opened, as that designation is still reserved for a box of 1999 Skybox Premium football that I opened way back when, which was so disappointing at the time, that it may have actually been partially responsible for making me leave the hobby for over a decade.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

10 comments:

  1. Try getting a hold of Panini on Twitter. They are usually pretty good answering questions. https://twitter.com/PaniniCSM

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    1. Matt, thank you for the tip, I didn't even think of trying to reach them via Twitter.

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  2. And keep calling. When they finally answer, they will make things right. It took me 5 phone calls to finally get a live person on the line, but a Golden Age redemption exchange turned into a pretty sweet card.

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    1. I guess I will keep trying. By the by, what is it that you ended up getting?

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  3. I'll gladly take the basketball stamp if Mark doesn't want it. A local shop has some of these or did shortly before Christmas. I picked up some for my collection. Haven't gotten them scanned yet. If you post which five you need I will check if he still has them.

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    1. Will do on the stamp.

      I have my Golden Age needs in the baseball list at the top of the page, but since you asked, the five 2014's I need are 77, 120, 125, 131, and 140. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

      Are there any particular cards that you were looking for?

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    2. I didn't think to look there, I consider this a multi sport set. I will write down the numbers and see what I can do. I'm mostly after the basketball base cards, not sure if they have any hockey...or NASCAR beyond Junior Johnson who I have already. Probably be a little while before I can get there though.

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    3. I too consider a multisport set, but it was released as a baseball set, so that's where I put the list. There are a couple of NASCAR guys, and for hockey, there's at least Bobby Hull and Gordie Howe. I'll go through my extras and pull those out for you. Do you have any of the basketball player's yet?

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  4. That Sparky, the Gaedel, and the box bottom panel are all pretty cool, but overall... I like the 2013 stuff more. I hope there's two autographs in your next box.

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    1. The 2013 base card design and inserts are better than the 2014's, at least in my opinion, although personally, the 2012 base card design was my favorite of the three.

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