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I had to make a run to Target this morning and pick up some soap to wash off the filth from a comment that I made on Retro-Set Addict's blog. While I was there, I picked up a couple of Donruss basketball rack packs and a few packs of Press Pass Element 2011 racing cards.I think it's easy to say that these are the two best designed cards of the year. I'll post about the Donruss later, but I wanted to share my thoughts on Element 2011.
The base cards of the drivers are simply perfect. They found a way to fit a nice picture of the driver, his car, his name, number and the series he races in without making if feel crowded. Everything is nice and clean looking and they even fit a classy looking Element 2011 logo in the top left. Nice white borders around the cards ( sorry, my scanner kind of chops that off). I love that they use the car colors in the design, too. Each card looks different and keeps things interesting.
Overall, the base cards are somewhat retro looking and very classy.
Some of the better Sprint Cup cars have there own cards in here, which is interesting.
No info about any kind of human driver here. This one's all about the car. I like the technical info, even though I have no idea what it means. Oh, and notice the color on the back of the card? That's right, they are made out of real cardboard! This is how I like my cards.
Out of the 4 packs I bought I managed to pull an insert and a red bordered parallel of my favorite driver, Tony Stewart. I'm not exactly sure why he's my favorite, but when I first really started to get in to racing, he was the guy I followed. I still think of him as the Home Depot driver. Seems a little more badass than Office Depot, I guess.
This scan is horrible, but it's a cool insert set I wanted to show. It's a shiny set called High Octane Vehicles, or HOF for you Twitterers. It's a 2002 Ford Taurus. Funny story. I dated a girl who drove a '02 Taurus. She broke my heart. I guess that wasn't really so much funny as sad. I'm sad now.
More brightly colored cards will make me happy!
There are also some great auto's and relics in this set that I wasn't fortunate to pull today, but I know that I'm going to be picking up a few more packs of these. Maybe even after the race today.
I'm generally not one to gush over a card set, but this one seems just about perfect to me. It's not too expensive, it looks great and most importantly, it's fun. Even if you aren't into the sport and you don't collect anything outside of baseball, basketball, football or hockey, you have to appreciate what Press Pass did here.
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