[peabody]

And we do mean FIRST. Press Pass was in town today for the pack out of 2008 Press Pass Football. This box was pulled off the production line at the printing facility north of Dallas. The product will ship next week. Stated odds were pretty true to form. Dan Hitt (left) and David Lee cracked the packs.

Buy 2008 Press Pass Football HERE!


2008 Press Pass Review


What We Pulled

Packs per box: 28
Cards per pack: 4
Cards per box: 112
Base set completion w/o SPs: 93 percent (93 of 100)
Duplicates: 1

SPs/Parallels: 5
Power Pick SPs (2) – Matt Ryan, Malcolm Kelly (1:14); Reflectors Parallel (2) – Joe Flacco, Matt Ryan (#’d to 500); Reflectors Proof Edition Parallel (1) – Fred Davis (#’d to 100)

Autographs: 5
Autographs Bronze (5) – Dantrell Savage (x2), Kevin Smith, Devin Thomas, Steve Smith

Memorabilia: 1
Gridiron Gamers (1) – Matt Ryan (#’d to 150)

Inserts: 7
Primetime Players (7) – Mario Manningham, Early Doucet, Jonathan Stewart, Malcolm Kelly, DeSean Jackson, Darren McFadden, Glenn Dorsey (1:4)

What We Think:
Announced to release the week of the NFL draft, 2008 Press Pass is ahead of schedule and will now release Friday, April 18. Benefiting from being just a few miles from the printing facility north of Dallas, we got our hands on a couple of the first boxes of the production line.

Press Pass surprised us by bolstering its number of autographed cards per box from four (which was announced) to five. At $4 per pack, that’s a great value. All the top rookies have autographs, including Darren McFadden, Matt Ryan, Malcolm Kelly and Chris Long. Jersey cards still fall one per three boxes. We pulled the five autographs, although we got two Dantrell Savage Bronze Autographs, and scored one Matt Ryan jersey card.

The autographs again look clean and are on-card, which really sets them apart. Although we didn’t pull any, Press Pass again included random red ink and inscriptions signatures. The base set is 100 cards deep, including a few subsets such as Teamamates, All-Americans, College Leaders, Trophy Club, and of course, the always-popular Power Picks cards. The base set design is attractive with impressive, crisp photography. Press Pass always does a good job of incorporating team colors to provide a good college feel. You’re going to pull a lot of cards of the same players. We’d like to see more combo cards such as rivals or conference leaders.

The 2008 football card season is off to a good start. Press Pass is a great value and the addition of an extra autographed card per box is a big plus. This is likely an answer to SAGE HIT including six autographs per box and Upper Deck Draft Edition including five autos per box. All three products release before or at draft time.


Final Score
Rookie Cards: N/A
Inserts/Parallels: **
Memorabilia: **
Autographs: ****
Design: ***
Box Value: ****