First look: 2013 Panini Hometown Heroes baseball cards
By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor
Panini America is coming home with a new line of retro-styled baseball cards arriving later this year.
It’s 2013 Hometown Heroes and it will include players from the 1950s to today as part of a 300-card base set and six different autographed insert sets packed inside its boxes.
And there will be plenty of nods to the past — via new creations — too.
Each 12-pack box will contain 24 cards and each hobby box will pack three autographs inside along with three Sportdiscs, five State parallels one Zip Code parallel, three Curtain Call, two Defining Moments, two Curtain Call and three other inserts from sets that include Nickname, Rivalry and Homegrown Heroes focuses. There will be 10 boxes per case with a suggested retail price not yet announced.
The Sportdiscs are a nod to the old 7-Eleven discs of the past, while the Nicknames insert will offer a cartoon-style look at some of the memorable monikers of the past and present.
The autograph lineup includes Left Their Marks (notables), Scripted Legacy (Hall of Fame speeches), Hometown Signatures (fan favorites) and more. The Hometown Signatures set will feature all on-card signatures, according to the company, for all 100 cards in the set.
Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball and Beckett Sports Card Monthly magazines. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an email to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.
No license, no logos, not for me.
I would love to know how many people who refuse to purchase any Panini products due to the fact that there are no logos, own any 92 Bowman Chipper Jones or Mariano Rivera cards?
Just curious.
Steve
they look awful , awfully bad
I really enjoy the Panini football and basketball products, but I will not purchase products without logos and not licensed by the league itself. The cards just don’t look right, and I wonder about the values over the long run compared to products with logos and league licensing.
This is total GARBAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
Steve, a lot of them are the same people who complain about Topps. If you want Topps to have competition, ya gotta support other companies so that they can show MLB properties that they deserve a license just as much as Topps does, and so that if the opportunity ever presents itself, they can afford the licensing.
Id have to see whose on the checklist. Ive bought panini before doesn’t really bother me about team logos or uniforms.
I don’t refuse to purchase Panini because no license…I refuse to purchase Panini because its not an American Company..I wonder how many people are fooled by Panini America? I’m betting a lot.
Not feeling this at all. Panini needs to stick to Golden Age, Prizm and Cooperstown with their baseball lineup. I don’t see anything special about this. What’s the hook… the fact that it revolves around towns I’ve never heard of that players came from?
Bring out the next National Treasures Baseball. I’ll buy that ALL DAY LONG. Best high end product of the last few years. I can’t wait for the next Treasures Baseball release. No logos? Who cares. I know I don’t! When it comes to retired players it’s not really about todays teams in any case. It’s about the player and about baseball.
Chris, are you saying you’ve never heard of Washington, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Atlanta? Those are the only towns I see mentioned. on the above cards.
I think Panini might be on to something with retro themed sets. Because they are able to use art instead of photos, they are avoiding having to do bad airbrushing. Also, how many licensed Topps cards from the 60’s had player photos from the neck up with no cap (because they didn’t have a picture with their current team). Panini could do some cool retro product without a license.