Basketball cards: Grading and opening Panini Contenders Draft Picks 2020

What a Panini Contenders Draft Picks rip looks like

As mentioned earlier, this box had 108 cards with 18 cards in 6 different packs. Each pack has an auto, usually in the middle of the pack for max protection. It’ll be flipped the inverse way almost always.

You’ll get a lot of veteran base cards and some lesser-sought after rookie cards like School Colors and By the Numbers in each pack. Fun cards, but nothing too crazy. Most of them, at least for me, were established stars. Not too many bottom-feeder veterans in this pack at all.

I got two Klay Thompsons, Steph Currys, Ja Morants, Rui Hachimuras, and Zion Williamsons. Lucky, or maybe there are a lot of those. We may very well see a lot of Morant and Williamson after the surge of popularity surrounding their rookie cards.

The Campus Ticket veterans look really great with some holographic trim. The Prospect Tickets are a bit more “stock” but extremely clean.

I got, as promised, six autos. Five autos were stickers, and one was on-card, numbered to five (Variation B) — Nico Mannion.

I think most collectors would be excited if they were to pull this card. It looks great, has a low print run, and features the type of prospect who has reasonable expectations and the potential to perform well. Mannion’s lack of a wingspan and athleticism has been questioned already, but because of that, he won’t have the same day-1 expectations as say, LaMelo Ball.

My other autos were not quite as hot, which is reasonable, no one wants all loaded boxes. The highlight of the other five was Cassius Stanley. I also got a sophomore Tournament Ticket numbered to 49.

Basketball cards: Grading NBA Panini Contenders Draft Picks 2020

• Look: B+
• Raw quantity: A
• Big hit quantity: B-
• Unpackaging thrill: A

When it comes to look, some may like these cards more than others. The idea of a ticket stub is fun and ambitious, but a bit noisy with the numbers, logos, barcode, and photos, especially when it comes to the incoming draftee tickets. That said, Panini shifted those to be portrait orientation this year, a much-welcomed change from last year when they were landscape. The Campus Ticket and Prospect Tickets for veterans have a greater emphasis on the player image and better symmetry, but these cards aren’t the big deal when it comes to this pack. The school colors, though, that really is huge here. I was a bit disappointed that some of the international inserts like Playing the Numbers Game were grey and without colors where the domestic cards feature school colors.

In terms of raw quantity, it doesn’t get better than this. 108 cards in a box is major.

Big hit quantity is potentially high if you get a loaded box (if there is such a thing), but more often than not, it’s going to be low. You’ll get six autos, but with so many prospects, chances are only one or two of those are going to be major low print-run cards, and they might not be big, top-10 pick names. The good news here is that Panini doesn’t know who might impress just like you and I don’t know, and what is perceived as a subpar auto hit today could be huge in a few years.

The unpackaging thrill, as I hope was conveyed in this article, is the best part about this box. No, you’re not sweating bullets with every new card, but the rapid-fire ripping and hits in every pack is the best way to start off a new collecting season.

Note: Panini was kind enough to provide a box for us to review. Thank you!