First Look: 2014 Panini Hall of Fame 75 Years baseball cards
By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor
Panini America‘s annual Hall of Fame baseball card set is going high-end.
The company formally revealed the basic product inclusions and images for 2014 Panini Hall of Fame 75 Years on Tuesday, and it’s a single-pack box that includes twice as many autographs per box than its predecessor, Cooperstown.
This time around, Hall of Fame will include 12 cards in a box with two Hall of Famer autographs, four cards numbered to 75 or fewer copies and six other cards — one Elite Series, one Dominator, one Crusade, one Diamond King and two other cards — per box. It is set to arrive on Oct. 8.
New this time will be several of the insert sets mentioned above. Four of the cards in boxes will be limited to 75 or fewer copies, while there will be more than 500 buyback autograph cards from the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial and Ted Williams. There will be an average of one cut autograph in every 15-box case. Players there will include Ty Cobb, DiMaggio, Honus Wagner, Jackie Robinson and others.
For living Hall of Famers, there will be the Hall of Fame Signatures set with every player having five parallels. There will be 50 or fewer copies for these cards. Also to be found are Dual Signatures cards that pair more current players.
The base set will feature three designs per player with each card limited to only 75 copies. Each of those cards will have five parallels with those numbered to 50 or fewer copies.
The Diamond Kings cards will showcase 100 players with canvas stock printing. There will be five parallels here, too, with 75 or fewer copies per card. Crusades will have six parallel versions limited to no more than 75 copies per card. Diecuts will be found one per case.
The diamond cards of Flawless arrive here with the Hall of Fame 75th Anniversary Gems, cards limited to 15, 10 and a single copy per player per gem type. There will be sapphires, emeralds and diamonds to be found and they should be found one per case.
A preliminary checklist was not released.
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.
Another High-End product for the company set on destroying the Hobby once and for good. Nice work Panini!
Destroying the hobby how. A Hall of Fame set. Don’t tell me you want Upper Deck to release a product like this then it would be okay.
This product looks pretty damn good to me and most likely is one high end product I would buy. HOFers, how could you go wrong.
Interesting. I tend to have no problem with the current crop of players not having logos, if creatively done.
But for some reason it just feels “wrong” to not have it for a HOF set.
Two autos per box might be an improvement only if the box price is not increased over last year’s price, although if they are stickers that will not be true.
Awesome comment Joe. You must have a lot of money to drop it on a product that is not MLB endorsed. Love to see HOF guys with airbrushed hats, or better yet Joe ,half of their heads cut off. Maybe Tracy Hackler has a cameo spot for you!
yeah, Id have to pass on it. Looks pretty plain and boring Cut autos look good but thats about it. yawnnn
Though I’m not a fan of Panini’s other releases (Golden Age, Hometown Heroes), they manage to get this Cooperstown release right. But they took it up to a whole new level of excellence.
I would agree it sucks that these cards aren’t MLB endorsed, but when your main competitor tries to monopolize the industry, you must get creative.
The one thing that people tend to overlook is that these cooperstown releases tend to include nearly every living hall of famer in the set. While Topps has trouble getting past twenty HOFs in their autograph lineups, Panini normally lands around 60 hall of famers in these sets. I also love how they included Diamond Kings in here too and increased the amount of autos per box.
Lately I think card companies have gotten lazy with it comes to quality control and creativity, but this set might convince Topps that the competition is serious, and they need to get serious as well.
It’s true that hacked off team names and insignias are not pretty. It’s also true that we need an option other than Topps! Hall of famers are always welcome. What I find most discouraging is that we can’t have both. As consumers we should. Why isn’t more being done to eliminate Topps monopoly on the market. Does anyone out there, other than Topps lackeys, think collectors are in any way be thought of in this process. No, we are being screwed, no argument. I love baseball, loved collecting (anyone want a couple hundred thousand cards). Now Ebay is getting anything good I have left. Just keeping nice pictures of great players, enjoying my nostalgia and dreaming of the days when it was fun and exciting to tear what I wanted from whom I wanted it. But I’m an old fart now. Card collecting, like everything else, is for the young and, unfortunately, the wealthy. Yes, Panini, you’re not pretty but thanks for at least trying to bring us the game when it was a game! It was a good run.
Great looking stuff…however, my budget doesn’t allow for the purchase of boxes. Oh well, another product where I will be picking up individual cards and not breaking any.
Dave, your complaint should be with MLB Properties not with Panini. I don’t like the lack of logos but….This set looks great. The autograph line up is great. A little to expensive for me to buy multople boxes but I will buy one and get the autos of my favorite HOFers.
It’s not Tops you should blame for the monopoly. And all the other sports leagues will be doing that too.
The photo cropping on these are bad! Rather have an airbrushed helmet than half of a guy’s head missing.
It’s not Panini’s fault that they don’t have a MLB license. Good for them for making an effort to give us an alternative, I’d take an autographed HOF card with a cropped or airbrushed photo over a cut sig with no picture whatsoever. I think these cards look nice. Unfortunately they will be priced out of my budget so I won’t be able to bust any. Maybe if I’m lucky I can pick some up in trade or on the secondary market which is kind of too bad since I collect Hall of Famers. This product was made for a wealthier version of me.
I really don’t blame topps for the monopoly considering the glut that ended up on the market. Quality control sucked and damaged the hobby extensively. It’s going to take a few years for things blow over, but if someone wants to create a product that is actually worth owning, this is the way to do it.