Cracking packs- 2020 Panini Chronicles Football

 Over the course of the pandemic, and into the summer of 2021 as the Covid crisis seems to be ebbing, a peculiar thing happened.  Sports card collecting went through the roof, forcing "flippers" to buy all the sealed retail product they could find and sell it on Ebay for two, three, and four times the actual cost.  This led to kerfuffles in stores like Target and Walmart, with guns being drawn and fights ensuing.  Into this bedlam I have fallen, being drawn to a hobby I partook in as a kid and early teen.  You've seen on this very blog some of the finds I have made in stores, with it all starting I believe in May 2020 when I found a box of 2017 Panini Diamond Kings sitting on a shelf at Target.  I bought that box on a whim because I thought it looked cool and ended up opening a David Wright signed "Limited Lithos" card numbered to 15.  Reminisce with me about that day by clicking here.  Needless to say, so began my pursuit of carboard, which just happened to coincide with a huge influx of collectors wanting this very thing.  As the weeks passed I started noticing less and less product on shelves anywhere, to the point where I began lining up at Targets before they opened, which I did to some success.  There was the weekend in May of this year when I was in Orange County for a buddy's wedding and woke up early specifically to go to Target, in which case I found a Panini Select football hanger box, forked over $15 on my limit of one per customer, and opened up two Justin Herbert rookie cards (out of 20 cards).  That was a good box.  

Now that Target has resigned itself to only allowing purchases online, I thought I would wake up insanely early last Friday and try to buy cards as they are released online.  When I say early, I woke up at 3:15 am pacific time to get my butt onto a computer and try to refresh a page over and over until I saw sports cards available to purchase.  It turned out that Target released specific products one at a time, so I was able to mostly have some luck.  I missed out on the Panini Select blaster boxes and mega boxes, which incidentally sold out in six or seven seconds.  The bots are that fast.  I had some in my cart and by the time I clicked purchase (literally within seven seconds) they were gone.  I got lucky with the 2020 Panini Chronicles football though, and was able to snag two mega boxes before they too were gone with the speed of a finger snap.  It was a successful morning as I purchased two Score football blaster boxes, two Bowman baseball mega boxes, and these two Chronicles boxes.

Today, the shipment came in. I plan on posting each one of the openings separately. One of my two boxes did have an auto hit, and in my opinion, it was a good one.  The value might not be super high, but this is a definite future Hall of Famer and the card is numbered to 99.  I hit a Luke Kuechly Donruss Signature Series. 

I also was able to land three more Justin Herbert rookie cards to my personal collection, though none of these is probably more than $10 or so.  These are pretty basic cards, so the value isn't going to be there unless he continues on his trajectory. 

Here is an assortment of some of the other cool cards.  I did get a couple of Joe Burrow rookies.  My Panini Prizm black cards weren't anything to write home about, though the Higgins silver version is probably a $20 card for now.  I was hoping to hit a rookie QB on one of those inserts.  Overall, I cannot complain about my purchase.  Even if the Kuechly auto and the rest of the cards don't return value on the $40 per box retail price, I'm always excited to hit an auto.  The fact that it's a future HOF member and the preeminent player at his position for a few season stretch, AND it's numbered to 99?  That's all a bonus.   

Bonus picture of the short print Justin Herbert Panini select light blue club level die cut I pulled in that Panini Select hanger I mentioned above.  This was pulled back in April on the day of the wedding I attended.  This is probably the most valuable card in this entire post.  

Thank you for reading and stay tuned as I will be posting about what I opened in the Bowman baseball boxes I opened today as well.  Was there an auto hit?  In a blaster box?  Why yes there was!