Cheap Wax Wednesday Box Breaks: 1997 Pinnacle Certified Football
Another football season has wrapped up, with the Chiefs taking the championship. It turned out to be a pretty good football game. With the end of the football season, this week’s post will be the end of football product breaks for a while. Next week, Cheap Wax Wednesday switches back to baseball.
With this being the last football break of the season I figured I would showcase a product with some serious potential — 1997 Pinnacle Certified Football.
1997 Pinnacle Certified features a slick chrome design, including the plastic peel off protection sheets made famous by Topps Finest. The set features 150 premium base cards, but the real chase in this product is the parallels, with some of them being extremely tough pulls.
In every box you can expect to find about four Certified Red parallels. After that, the higher tier parallels become scarce. Mirror Red parallels are found one in every 99 packs, Mirror Blue cards are found once in every 199 packs, and the mythical Mirror Gold parallels are found just once in every 299 packs.
Upon release this product had a box price of around $100. Obviously I didn’t pay that much, with the maximum price to be featured here being $50. Let’s hope we find something rare.
1997 Pinnacle Certified Box Break
Cards per pack: 6
Packs per box: 20
Price paid: $39
Shop for 1997 Pinnacle Certified Football boxes on eBay.
Pack 1 highlights:
Marcus Allen, Trent Dilfer, Tony Gonzalez & Marvin Harrison. Two of these guys (Gonzalez & Harrison) were featured on the NFL’s Top 100 players of all-time highlight before the game on Sunday.
Pack 2:
Rod Woodson, Mark Brunell, Isaac Bruce & Kordell Stewart Certified Team (1:19 packs)
Pack 3:
Rashaan Salaam & Irving Fryar
Pack 4:
Emmitt Smith, Tiki Barber RC & Ki-Jana Carter Certified Red (1:5 packs)
Pack 5:
Barry Sanders & Herschel Walker
Pack 6:
Carl Pickens & Robert Brooks
Pack 7:
Terry Glenn & Warren Moon
Pack 8:
Dorsey Levens & Andre Reed
Pack 9:
John Elway & Drew Bledsoe
Pack 10:
1991 Heisman Trophy winner Desmond Howard & Jeff Hostetler Certified Red (1:5 packs)
Pack 11:
Amani Toomer, Thurman Thomas & Troy Aikman Epix (1:15 packs)
Pack 12:
Terrell Davis (I distinctly remember watching the Super Bowl in 1998, as a 12-year-old, and looking through football cards. I remember finding a couple of Terrell Davis Rookie Cards in my junk box and that night Davis won Super Bowl MVP honors after rushing for 157 yards and three touchdowns), Jim Harbaugh & Jerome Bettis
Pack 13:
Kerry Collins & Antowain Smith RC. Smith went on to win two Super Bowl titles with the New England Patriots.
Pack 14:
Jamal Anderson, Dan Marino, Troy Aikman & Steve Young. Nice trio of QBs in this pack!
Pack 15:
Terrell Owens, Andre Rison, Marshall Faulk & Errict Rhett Certified Red (1:5 packs)
Pack 16:
Joey Galloway, Curtis Martin & Junior Seau
Pack 17:
John Elway, Drew Bledsoe, Brett Favre & Pat Barnes Certified Red RC (1:5 packs)
Pack 18:
Deion Sanders & Jeff George
Pack 19:
Corey Dillon RC. Dillon is another RB that went on to win a championship with the Patriots.
Pack 20:
Ricky Watters, Steve McNair & Cris Carter
Lastly, the Cris Carter card back. Interesting way to show Carter’s 1996 stats. It’s an attractive card back, nonetheless.
Unfortunately I didn’t pull any of the hard-to-find Mirror parallels.
It is always fun opening an old product when there are possible big cards to be found. The base set alone makes this one worth the box price with its really sharp looking cards. While it would have been great to pull some of the tough parallels, this time it just wasn’t in the cards…
Next week, baseball!
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Want more installments of Shane Salmonson’s Cheap Wax Wednesday? Check out his other breaks in the archives.
I always enjoy these box breaks. Thanks!