Market Watch: 2010 Panini Basketball Hall of Fame

[Hoopography]

Panini's Basketball Hall of Fame product was released early last week. I stayed up late last Tuesday night to checkout the first HOF cards posted to eBay and was a bit sticker shocked. It seemed a few sellers wanted to capitalize on the collectors who need to be the first to add a new product to their collections. I've been watching the HOF prices over the past week and feel that many of the cards will be relatively affordable. In fact, many of the cards should come down in price over the next few weeks. That's definitely a good thing for collectors, and there's a couple of reasons why.

The first is that the NFL and MLB seasons are in full swing. Many collectors tend to focus on a particular sport when that sport is in season. The NBA is still several weeks away from even getting started. I know the Dr. James Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony was last month, but mid September is really a weird time to release a basketball product.


Other than a questionable product release date, the biggest reason why many of the prices (of singles) should go down or at least stay reasonable for the HOF product is print runs. Many collectors prize rare 1 of 1's or 5 of 5's, but this product features relatively high print runs of 399 and 499 for auto's and jersey swatches of Hall of Fame players. There are Panini Prime swatches that are more limited. For example, the Dream Team Game Prime Threads have a print run of 99. Although considerably more limited than the non-Prime Dream Team Threads (print runs just above or below 1,000 depending on player), a print run of 99 for a multi-color piece of one of the Dream Team jerseys is actually pretty generous. There are a number of other insert and parallel sets, and many of them also have jersey swatches or auto's of Hall of Famers with fairly high print runs.


There certainly are a few cards with extremely short print runs like the cut signatures that feature a few 1 of 1's and 5 of 5's, but this is a product that offers many auto's and relics of great players. I've been waiting for Hall of Fame to come out for a long time. I like the look of many of the cards. The biggest plus, beside the large print runs, all on-card auto's. I almost think Hall of Fame should have just been included in Panini's National Treasure basketball product that came out last month. On-card auto's and jersey swatches of hall of fame and Dream Team players would have really strengthened the disappointing National Treasure product.


So what do you think, is Panini's latest basketball offering something that has caught your interest? Do you think the large quantity of jersey and auto'd cards will help to make the singles on the secondary market become even more affordable? Finally, do you like the large print runs or is this flood of Hall of Famers going to ultimately hurt the overall basketball trading card market?



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