2015 Panini Immaculate Baseball Details
More — that’s one word that might describe what’s in store for the second edition of one of Panini America‘s high-end baseball card brands.
The brand is Immaculate Collection and the 2015 installment is coming on Aug. 26 with five memorabilia or autograph cards and one base card per box — a selection that the company promises will have “more jumbo cleats, jerseys, batting gloves and fielding gloves of the game’s hottest players from the past to present.”
Last year’s introduction of Immaculate to baseball came on the heels of successes in basketball and football. For baseball collectors, there will be even more to be found this time around and biggest of them all might be a game-used memorabilia presence for Babe Ruth.
Jumbo memorabilia cards might be the biggest draw here — literally — with jumbo prime jersey patches joining Immaculate Cleats cards and even jumbo batting and fielding glove cards. Panini promises a checklist of jerseys that includes Clayton Kershaw, Buster Posey, Mike Trout, Matt Harvey, Madison Bumgarner, Yasiel Puig, Mark McGwire and Rickey Henderson to name a few. For the cleat cards there will be 25 players on the checklist this time around — there were just six last year — a crop that includes Trout, Kris Bryant, Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols and Jose Abreu.
For the more-standard hits, there will be Rookie Material autos — cards that will showcase young stars such as Yasmany Tomas, Bryant and Addison Russell. These will have button and laundry tag versions that will be quite scarce. There also will be autographed jersey cards pairing stars from the past and present as well as quad material autos where notable signatures are found alongside multiple game-used pieces.
New this year will be Shadowbox cards that combine acetate layers with game-used material — a high-end set that will have an even higher-end 1/1 parallel. The traditional bat knob and bat nameplate cards also will be found with the company stating that a total of 70 cards of this type will be found in the product. That’s up from 10 last year.
Accolades Material will be one home for Ruth — he will also be found in six other insert sets with parts of game-used pants, jersey and bat in the cards. Also new this year will be Immaculate Nine cards that showcase nine players and nine pieces of memorabilia on a single card. There will be no more than 50 of these cards made in the product as it’s a five-card checklist with nothing higher than 10 copies.
Until the COA on the card explicitly warrants that the material is game used by Babe Ruth rather than
continuing to use verbiage that is effectively meaningless, I will assume that it’s not game used material
or even anything actually associated with Babe Ruth.
There is a reason why the older game used material cards sell for more despite not being as rare in many
cases.
Not really impressed at all
If only Panini had the MLB rights, this would be an awesome set, still is cool, but without the logos and stuff, just not the same.
It looks funny not have the mlb logo or team symbol. Can buy other cool stuff . Not this.
When Panini America says memorabilia is Game-Used, that is all I need to know. When Panini America took over The Donruss Company and it’s inventory, that inventory included a Babe Ruth Game Used Jersey bought directly from Babe Ruth’s daughter.
Panini America pays top dollar to develop its products, including buying the memorabilia included in their products. They only buy from hobby recognized reputable sources. As for as not having MLB rights to logos and team symbols, Panini America would if they could. However, that is the business side of this STILL GREAT hobby, exclusives won’t go away for the foreseeable future.
Even without the Logos, this is a great looking and highly desirable product. At $180 a box (internet retail), this product is a real bargain. My customers love Immaculate Baseball.
Not a fan of it and haven’t been since the first release.Every year I can buy the same amount of cards as a box yields,be happy with those cards,no bums,and spend less than a box price.However,people will buy it to try to hit Bryant.
Like the look of the cards but still have a hard time liking the overall imagery without the logos. All Panini cards look so strange with a blank helmet and jerseys. Come on MLB get your act together and stop this monopoly. We the collectors deserve to be treated better.
Brian
I can understand your frustration that MLB hasn’t issued more than one license but I also don’t want a return to the days when there was so many sets that you didn’t know which ones to get because it was so confusing
Brian what are you talking about? That time you mentioned you didn’t want to happen, has been happening. Mlb license or not they are all way overproducing