Crown Royale 11/12: 2 Pack Break

Crown Royale was the most original product of last year. It was also one of the best selling products and it's prices quickly increased, with the result being that I picked up only a few packs before the prices flew out of my comfort range. This last week the 11/12 product was released and I decided to pick up 2 packs now. 

While I thought highly of last year's product I was left unimpressed by how long Panini (the manufacturer of Crown Royale) took to fulfill redemptions as I had requested a Henrik Karlsson rookie auto back in Sept of last year and have yet to see my redemption arrive! I figured that the redemptions would be the principle problem with the 11/12 product too but had seen that there were significant changes to other Panini products such as Limited. Checking the web for Crown Royale pulls I saw that many of the Scratching the Surface Signatures had blatant errors in that the team logo was incorrect or the image of the player showed a different team jersey than what was presented in the jersey or patch swatch (eg. player wearing a Blues uniform but the jersey /patch was from the Kings). As there were problems such as this and that there had been changes from the previous year's product, I thought I'd begin Crown Royale with only a couple of packs.

Commons: I pulled 6 commons from the 2 packs I bought. The card design is very similar to last years and has the unique die-cut crown with embossed foil motif. The base cards look very sharp and are worth collecting by themselves. Each pack is stated to contain 3 common cards, one subset or parallel, and one auto or memorabilia.

Parallel: I pulled one Ruby parallel from the two packs. This parallel stands out from the base by the foil being red colored and unlike last year the cards are not serial numbered. As a medium priced product I feel very strongly that these cards should be serial numbered, especially since lesser priced products such as Artifacts has serial numbers on everything but their common base cards!

Rookies: I pulled 2 rookies from my 2 packs, with one being autographed. Neither of the cards are serial numbered, which is a big mistake and I find it cheap and lazy by Panini. Nonetheless, the cards do look very sharp and have an almost identical design to the base cards except that the foil is a light blue and there's a block of text instead of stats on the back. A big bonus for these cards is that the auto is prominently displayed and is on the card instead of being a sticker. A big drawback, however, is that the word 'rookie' should be found somewhere on the card!

Memorabilia: I pulled one triple jersey card from the Royal Lineage set. The card features a swatch from Hall, Eberle, and Coffey. This is a nice looking card besides the overly dark design which is not helped by the three jersey swatches being dark in color, however, they are different colors themselves. Again the back does not include a serial number.

Crown Royale again delivers an outstanding product that delivers exactly what you expect for the money you invest in it. The design is wonderfully unique, although can be a little too dark on some cards. The usage of foil is a great touch and I love the on-card autos. The triple jersey card is great because it features three players that make sense together (all play or played for the Oilers). My only complaint is that NONE of the cards were serial numbered. This should never be the case for a medium to high priced product, especially when you are pulling autos, rookies, and memorabilia cards. From checking out other cards on the net it seems that only cards with patches were serial numbered, which is a big let down.