2010 Press Pass Football
Set Features;
Configuration: 28 packs per box. 4 cards per pack.
Final Press Pass Series Features:
5 Autographs per box, 1 Relic Card every 3 boxes, 2 Power Pick inserts per box, 7 Banner Season inserts per box, and #'d Reflectors with no guarantee per box.
BASE CARDS (100 TOTAL CARDS) - 1-50 are straight player cards. 51-60 are Trophy Club Cards. 61-76 are National Leader Cards. 77-92 are All-Conference Cards. 93-100 are Teammates Cards (featuring 2 rookies from the same college team.)
REFLECTORS (100 TOTAL CARDS) - No guarantees, this box yielded 3.
- Parallel #'d to 500
- Hobby-only Proof Edition #'d to only 100!
- "Solo" 1 of 1's!!!
AUTOGRAPH CARDS - 5 AUTOGRAPH CARDS PER BOX!
- Bronze, not #'d
- Silver, #'d to 199
- Gold, #'d to 99
- Blue, #'d to 50
- There are also randomly inserted "red ink" autos and "nickname" auto versions.
POWER PICK AUTOGRAPHS - Will be included in the 5 per box, but are more rare!
- Power Pick Autos, #'d to 250 or less
- Power Pick Showbound Parallel #'d to 25!!
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Here's what I pulled in our box of 2010 Press Pass Football.
BASE AND BASE SUBSETS
While I realize that the secondary market for Press Pass is not exactly vital, I've always liked the set. I like to see the players in their college uniforms. The photography is top notch and the design is nice and simple. Too often, card companies will fall in love with foil and crazy designs. This year's set is a very basic layout and I mean that in the best way possible. The cards direct you to the player, which is what sports cards are supposed to be about.
The subsets are:
Trophy Club - These will feature the players that won major awards during their college career.
National Leaders - This subset focuses on the statistical leaders in several of the major categories throughout the 2009 season.
All Conference - Just as they sound, different photos of the players voted to their All-Conference teams.
Teammates - A nice 8 card set that focuses on the schools that have 2 major players coming to the NFL in 2010.
POWER PICKS
The Power Picks is a small 5 card set tacked on to the end of the base set. They are set up to be 1 in every 14 packs or 2 per box. As you can see, the two we got were Sam Bradford and Dez Bryant. These are nice action shots with the player taken out of the game and put on a team colored background. The auto'd version of these cards are VERY nice, but I only know that from pictures as this box didn't have one.
REFLECTORS
Reflectors are a nice parallel set that hasn't changed much over the years. They basically chrome out the background, leaving the player as they are on the regular card. It really makes the players jump off the cards. In our box, we scored the Jimmy Clausen and and a Trophy Club Rolando McClain. We also scored the Rolando McClain Proof Edition #'s to 100.
BANNER SEASON
The final Insert Set is the Banner Season set. This is a 15 card set that is set to appear on a 1:4 basis. This should have netted us 7 Banner Seasons and it did. This is a nice looking horizontal set that has the player's action shot and a closeup version of the same shot tinted the school's color.
AUTOGRAPHS
Let's get to what everyone is really interested in though, and that's the autos. The best thing about the Press Pass sets is the fact that their autos are On-The-Card autos. Like many collectors, I'm not a fan of sticker autos and I will always prefer the OTC auto. These cards have nice action shots on the left hand side with a large white space left open for the signature. The school's logo, or the players number will be lightly in the background. The box itself advertises 5 autos per box and this box lived up to those expectations. As you see above, we scored a Danario Alexander and an Anthony McCoy Bronze auto. We also got a Dan LeFevour Silver #'d to 199. Mardy Gilyard rounds out the autos and he is a Silver #'d to only 175.
THE BIG HIT
No kidding...the first card in the first pack I opened was this beauty. It's a Sam Bradford Blue auto # 37/50. While getting this card in the very first pack left the box with no where to go but down, I would call this a very successful break !!
Final Thoughts on 2010 Press Pass Football
Press Pass football has done this year what they do every year. And that's create a very nice looking set that gives you a lot of bang for your buck. They feature excellent photography and a nice simple design that seems set up to really emphasize the player. You can never go wrong with on the card autos either.
The base set is 100 cards. Out of this box we pulled 95 of them with no duplicates. The Power Picks set is 5 cards with 2 per box and we got our 2 and they were also not duplicates. The Banner Season Insert set consists of 15 cards with 7 per box and again, we got the 7 and none of them were duplicates.
In fact, out of 112 total cards in this box, the only duplicates were the Reflector Parallels. For me, that's the mark of a fine product produced by a company that wants to help collectors build rather than rip them off with multiples of the same card. With the Bradford pull, normally, this product would have had a '5' rebuy value, but I knocked it down a point simply because, with no dups, we nearly have a full set. At this point, we're only 16 cards away from the base and insert full set. It'd be easier to buy singles than another box...though I admit, I'd have just as much fun ripping a second box.
Here's how I would rate this product;
- Value = 4
- Innovation = 5
- Fun and Experience = 4
- Rebuy Value = 4
I rate this product "B+" for Press Pass.
I'd like to thank Press Pass for supplying the box for this review and I would also like to thank Trader Retreat for giving me the chance to review this new product. This was my first review for Trader Retreat and I would love any feedback that you may have for me.
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