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Product Spotlight: 2012 Panini Elite Extra Edition

Posted by on 24 March 2013 Comments Off on Product Spotlight: 2012 Panini Elite Extra Edition

Sharper cuts, fewer stickers, and a double dose of Koch

Still slightly chronologically challenged, Elite Extra Edition’s 2012 product is out with everything you would expect.  If you’re familiar with last year’s product, you already know what’s in here.  Lots of prospect autographs, die-cut parallels, and no team names or logos (except for the Under Armor logo for Cecchini).  That’s the price you pay when you go up against the Topps monopoly.

Autographs

The autographs look just like the base cards, so let’s just skip the base cards and go straight to the autos. The base autographs are split into two subsets: the first 100 are Franchise Futures sticker autographs and the last 100 are Prospects on-card autographs.  Aside from the type of autograph, the only real difference between the two subsets is that the Prospects cards tend to feature earlier round draft picks.  Numbering on these varies between 299 and 795 copies.

Mets featured in the Franchse Futures subset include Matt Koch (3rd round), Branden Kaupe (4th round), and Logan Taylor (11th round).

Not shown: Kevin Plawecki (redemption)

Mets featured in the Prospects subset include Gavin Cecchini (1st round), Kevin Plawecki (1st round supplemental, redemption cards only), Matt Reynolds (2nd round), and, again, Matt Koch (3rd round).  That’s right, Matt Koch has both sticker and on-card autographs in this product for some reason.  I guess Panini just really likes Koch.  Redemptions for Plawecki is a bit disappointing, especially considering that Topps featured his autographs in Bowman Draft and Bowman Sterling (they did however resort to redemptions for Matt Reynolds, while Panini has his autos here on-card, the first of his pro career).

Parallels

Once again, Panini has ink color and die-cut parallels of the base autographs.  Ink colors include red (#d/25) and green (#d/10).  Autographs are on stickers for Franchise Futures and are on-card for Prospects.

Not Shown: Aspirations, Black Status

Die-cuts include Aspirations (#d/100), Blue Status (#d/50), Green Status (#d/25), Orange Status (#d/10), Gold Status (#d/5), and Black Status (#d/1).  This year’s die-cuts are more interesting than last year’s and the on-card autos continue through all of the Prospects parallels (unlike last year, when stickers were used for some).  All Franchise Futures parallels continue to be sticker autos.

Inserts

Two Mets prospects are featured on insert autographs, both on stickers.  Matt Reynolds is featured in the Elite Series (#d/199), while Logan Verrett returns as the only member of the 2011 draft class with an autograph in this product in the Back to the Future insert set (#d/48).

Verdict

It’s hard to find much improvement here over last year’s EEE.  The die-cut pattern is a bit more dramatic and there are a lot more on-card autographs, but the rest of the product is more of the same.  It certainly gets points for featuring six members of the Mets’ 2012 draft class, particularly with on-card in-product autographs from Matt Reynolds and the first autographs from Matt Koch, Branden Kaupe, and Logan Taylor.  However, the first round picks were starting to get boring when Bowman Sterling was released in December, so the big names weren’t much of a draw by the time January came around.  Add in the lack of an MLB license and it’s hard to see this as anything but second-rate.  I love this product for its supply of cheap prospect autographs, but it doesn’t seem to aspire to be anything more.

2012 Mets Draft Class Autographs

Posted by on 19 June 2012 1 comment

Bowman signs the firsts, Panini fills in the rest

Full list of 2012 Mets draft picks

With 2012 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects and 2012 Panini Elite Extra Edition now out, six of the 2012 draft picks have new autographs. Gavin Cecchini and Kevin Plawecki made their debuts with Bowman, while Matt Reynolds, Matt Koch, Branden Kaupe, and Logan Taylor had to wait for Panini’s clock to strike 2012 in January 2013. Reynolds did have redemption cards for Bowman Black autographs, but those have yet to ship. Panini had to settle for redemptions for Kevin Plawecki in Elite Extra Edition, leaving Gavin Cecchini as the only player with live autographs in both products.

1 Gavin Cecchini 1S Kevin Plawecki 2 Matt Reynolds 2 Teddy Stankiewicz (DNS)
3 Matt Koch 4 Branden Kaupe 5 Brandon Welch 6 Jayce Boyd
7 Corey Oswalt 8 Tomas Nido 9 Richie Rodriguez 10 Paul Sewald
11 Logan Taylor 12 Robert Whalen 14 Chris Flexen 17 Stefan Sabol

Previous Entries:

Gavin Cecchini leads off the era of capped draft spending

With new rules limiting spending and a rather unspectacular draft class, it was anyone’s guess how this draft would play out. Would the top talent fall to late in the first round or beyond? Would teams risk losing future picks to sign this year’s picks? Would signability dominate the early picks in the absence of a consensus top pick? Will players opt for college or football over the diminished bonus pot? The results won’t be known for a few years, but for now it looks the Mets are playing it safe with signable known quantities over signing, injury, or talent risks. You can’t really fault them for that approach in this draft. And Cecchini looked pretty damn good in Mets pinstripes while getting giddy over the thought of playing alongside David Wright.

When it comes to cards, you can’t really expect much from draftees on draft day, especially high schoolers. It was a surprise seeing three players in this year’s draft class who already had Team USA certified autograph and game-used memorabilia cards (first-rounder Gavin Cecchini, second-rounder Matt Reynolds, and 34th round pick Mikey White), plus two more with cards from the AFLAC/Perfect Game All-American game (Corey Oswalt and Stefan Sabol) that may show up signed in packs of future products (and are available now without certified autographs). Of those listed, only Stankiewicz and White remain unsigned (White is said to have declined to sign in favor of college). The early signings resulting from the earlier signing deadline mean that several of this year’s draft picks are already playing with Kingsport and Brooklyn.

Previous Editions:

2011 Mets Draft Class Autographs