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.

Bowman Platinum 2011 Redemption

I had previously opened a few packs of Bowman Platinum 2011 and discussed it here. In the box was a redemption for a Relic Auto card that I had contacted Topps about in early January. About 3 weeks later the redemption arrived in the mail. This was the first redemption I have ever had through Topps and I have to admit I am pretty happy with the process. Ideally you never want to find a redemption because they are time sensitive (can expire), can take months or longer to arrive in the mail, and because when you buy a box of cards you should expect all the cards promised on the package to be in the box and not contingent on you contacting the company. Redemptions can be an especially painful process because they are often auto or memorabilia cards, where it is that card that holds all the value in the box of cards you just bought. Thus far, the Topps redemption was painless much like my experiences with Uppder-Deck. Panini, however, is horrible. I have been waiting months for a redemption to be fulfilled and am annoyed that I see that some collectors had received their redemptions (for the same card I am requesting) months ago! Furthermore, my e-mails about the redemption have never been asnwered by Panini. Boo Panini! Yay Topps!

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OK, so back to the Bowman Platinum 2011 redemption. The card I received was an autographed memorabilia card from Angels' pitcher, Trevor Bell. The card features a sticker auto signed in blue with a moderate sized memorabilia swatch. The fabric is all white, but that's common for baseball jersey swatches. The card has a great gloss /shiny design that matches with the rest of the base cards. The card is serial numbered out of 1166, which is really high for a card of this sort. 

Overall, the card looks fantastic but the drawbacks are in that it has a sticker auto and the print run is exceptionally high. I greatly appreciated how quickly the card was shipped and that it was nicely /securely packaged. Any concerns I had over Topps' redemptions are now gone, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to be over the moon when I find one because I'd rather have the card inserted in the pack rather than contacting the company for it.

Score 11/12: 1 Box

What makes Score a great product is that it is very affordable and offers autograph /chase cards. Products with a similar price point, such as Victory, do not offer autograph cards nor as many subsets or parallels. A box of Score should cost around $30 and I'd recommend buying it early as last year's product has doubled in cost! The cost is why I picked it up during my boxing day shopping, as it added a bit of volume to my purchase while not depleting my bank account!

Score 11/12 boasts a 500 base card set and a further 50 rookies. In addition, there are another 20 rookie cards that are short-printed -not serial numbered. Beyond the base and rookie sets are 11 subsets to collect, all of which vary in rarity. As for the autographs, there are three different sets of autos! The common set is the autographed version of the base set, followed by the Hot Rookie signatures, the short-printed rookie signatures, and finally the Recollection Collection which is a small list of cards from the original 1990-91 Score set that have been autographed. None of the cards in Score are serial numbered, and the odds of finding the cards is not clearly laid out by Score, if mentioned at all. However, most of the information about rarity and checklists can be found on Panini's website or various blogs such as mine! Follow this link to find a comprehensive list of the Score 11/12 cards.

BASE: The base card design is not as attractive as last years. The front of the cards have a white boarder with red curved lines  along the vertical sides and the player's name at the bottom. The problem is that the white boarders become lost in photos of hockey players that already are dominated by the absence of color. Allowing the image to fade out or to bleed past the boarder would have looked better. What doesn't help either is that the player's name also becomes lost in the image as each text color corresponds to that player's particular team. While colors like black and red work well, silver is completely lost; why would anyone think this was a good idea?! Also, the photos are fairly generic and rarely have well framed shots. Too many of the photos are taken at shoulder or eye level with the player's upper body being lost in the arena's crowd. Here, the image would be improved by blurring the background so that the player would take center stage. Score is out-shot by the Upper-Deck series one base cards! However, the Score product is less than half the price of UD and you do get what you pay for.

PARALLELS: Each pack of Score includes one parallel. These parallels are often the glossy variety, which has been improved upon from last year's product. The front of the cards are identical to the regular set except for it being glossy. In last year's product you could sometimes 'gloss' right over these parallels. New for this year, the glossy cards have the word glossy written around the card number on the back. Simple and effective. I also pulled one Gold Rush parallel, which is identical to the regular base set except for the card has a gold colored border on the front. Nothing too special and not exactly worth collecting; the glossy cards look much better. Gold Rush cards fall one per box.

SUBSETS: There are a ton of subsets in Score. There are two that can only be found in retail jumbo packs and another 9 in hobby packs. There are two die-cut subset cards that I think fall one per box (not one each). The design of the non-die-cut subset cards look OK and are nothing too special. They are printed on the same stock as the regular set and have a similar layout to the base set. Regardless, the cards emphasize important moments throughout the season, such as the first goals from the previous year's rookies, highlights from the Stanley Cup playoffs, or the fan affection and ticker-tape atmosphere when a player enters the arena. All of these cards are fun to look at and read the backs of, which is something too many subset cards forget about -fun! What's also fun is the die-cut card. I pulled a NHL Shield die-cut that features a silhouetted Nicklas Lidstrom with a NHL shield graphic cut out of the card's top. The card just looks cool and has a small blurb on the back that explains why Lidstrom is such a powerful force in the NHL -seven time Norris Trophy winner.

HOT ROOKIES: Perhaps the most attractive aspect of buying a box of Score is that you know you will walk away with a mitt full of rookies and one is likely to be a top draft pick! Score rookies do not tend to be highly valued because they are common but it is because they are so common that at least you can say that you have so-and-so's rookie card unlike other products (UD) where you might have to buy 10 boxes before you find that top rookie card! I pulled 17 regular rookies cards and one double (which is likely an error because I never found doubles in any boxes last year). The design of the rookies follows the same format as last years but adds a bit more drama. The player is silhouetted with thick design borders and bold text. The background behind the player is a water color pattern that can be easily created in Photoshop but nonetheless is used for good affect here. As I said before, it is rewarding to pull a known high-draft rookie in a box, and here I found a Cody Hodgson rookie. 

I also pulled a short-printed and an autographed rookie. Short printed rookies are identical to the regular rookies. These cards are numbered 551 to 570, being the additional 20 cards to the regular rookie set. The one I pulled was of Gabriel Landeskog, someone definitely making an impact in the NHL. The autographed rookie was of Erik Condra and this card is from the regular set of rookies. The autograph is signed in blue ink over top a sticker. I am not a fan of sticker autos but I know they are cheaper to produce and hence more commonly used in cheaper products. Overall, my luck was definitely running high with picking up a sp and auto rookie in one box!

The verdict for Score 11/12 is that it is a certified sweet pickle of a winner. There are many short-comings with this set and there is a lot to improve upon. However, there are noticeable improvements over last year's product so it would seem this would be a product that will continually evolve and improve. The most important aspect of the Score product is it's price! At $30 a box, this is a very affordable set to build and it is a set that is not too large like the 800 card OPC sets that are very difficult to build and who's boxes cost roughly $70 a pop. I also really appreciate the number of subsets and the restrained amount of parallels. The inclusion of autographs and short prints also adds that extra layer of icing to this cake.

Crown Royale 2010-11: 2 Packs

Crown Royale is one of my favorite products of the 2010-11 season, and definitely the best product yet produced by Paninini. This is one of my favorites because the design is excellent, the photos spot on, it has on-card autographs, produces two hits per reasonably priced pack, and the base cards (while not serial numbered) have die-cut and foil trimmed tops in the shape of a crown. Beautifully designed set.

Enough gushing. Awhile back I picked up two packs of Crown Royale (on two separate occasions). As I know I will receive two hits per pack (one material or auto and one serial numbered non mat /auto), I like to pick up one pack when I am buying individual packs of a cheaper product such as Upper Deck srs 1 or 2. This way I know I will have one pack when leaving the card store that will definitely have a great card. However, I have found I have much better luck pulling the big rookies and case breaks when purchasing say 8-10 packs of UD than I do buying a box.

The Hits:

In Harm's Way: This is a non-mat /auto subset card numbered out of 299. It is the first of this subset I have pulled, and it is also numbered 1 out of the set. The front of the card features a dynamic photo with very little flash compared to other cards in this product (flash being foil or die-cut). Nonetheless, this is a pretty neat concept for a subset where the back tells the story of one instance where the featured player was injured, or came into 'Harm's Way'. Not something you typically see on a sport card.

Regents: This is another non-mat /auto card but this time it is not a subset card but instead belongs to the set, fitting somewhere between the base cards and rookies. The card is numbered on the back to out of 499. Also on the back is one year of stats and small blurb about the featured player; in this case I pulled a Mario Lemieux. Regents is pretty much the same as the 'Legends' featured in Upper Deck products like Artifacts and O-Pee-Chee. Regardless, it is still fun to pull a classic player especially when it's Lemieux.

Rookies: I pulled a rookie in each of the 2 packs I had picked up. The first was of Robin Lehner of the Ottawa Senators. The auto is on card and signed with a blue marker. Really sharp looking as the background behind the auto is whitened while the rest o the card is fairly dark, making the auto really pop. The rookie cards have a low numbering (Lehner was 135/499) which is perfect for autographed cards, and it is a pet peeve of mine when autographed rookies are given high print runs as they were in SPA 10-11. The second rookie I pulled was of Brandon Yip of the Colorado Avalanche. The card was actually a redemption and was the first redemption I had pulled from any Paninini product. Going by UD standards, I figured I'd be waiting between 6 months and a year for the redemption but instead Paninini had that card in my hands within a month.


After another couple of packs, I am continued to be enthralled by the Crown Royale 2010-11 product. The cards look great in every aspect! Definitely a sweet pickle of a product that I will be reaching back into the jar for more of!

Crown Royale 2010-11: Pack Break

Saw some good cards coming out of the Crown Royale packs from online posts and thought I'd try my hand. I prefer Upper Deck products to some of the new Panini products that have come out this year, but thought one pack wouldn't hurt!


Crown Royale 2011: Pickled!

A box of Crown Royale contains 3 packs, with 5 cards per pack and each pack has at least one hit: autograph or memorabilia! The packs are reasonably priced and is a nice alternative to the much pricier Upper Deck products that offer a guaranteed 'hit' per pack. Upon opening the pack I was immediately satisfied. In the pack were three base cards that were die-cut with a shiny crown at the top. Base cards are not numbered but there are parallel base cards that are. In addition to the base cards was one subset card: Royal Pains. This subset has a silver embossed area on the card that matches the base set, which is nice that the team behind Crown Royale had put some thought into making a unified set. The Royal Pains cards are also serial numbered out of 499, which is not a bad run as many subsets from other products are numbered at 999 or more. Finally, the hit of the pack was truly OUT OF THE PARK, or I guess rink might be a more appropriate word! What I pulled was a Royal Lineage patch card numbered out of 25! The card featured three pickled (!) patches, one from each: Kyle Okposo, Evander Kane, and Wayne Simmonds. A great collection of young players!

Crown Royale 2011 pack

Now, while I pulled a great pack there is one con to this product. One is that the awesome patch card is slightly curved because (I think) of the size patches. In my experience, Upper Deck patch cards do not warp from their thicknesses. Because of this I do wonder about the quality behind Panini's manufacturing. There may be more cons to this product, but as the one pack I picked up treated me so well I will definitely try my hand again!