Nǐ hǎo, nǐ hǎo ma?

 I hope so. The last several months have been unlike anything any of us have seen before. I think most are longing for something resembling normalcy again. Ah, yes, the familiar. As humans we tend to develop a preference for things that are familiar. There’s a term for that preference. It’s called the mere-exposure effect.

The effect biases our responses to things before they even register cognitively. It applies to sounds, pictures, and even people. Our preference for the familiar has an influence as far reaching as our investment preferences, the items we choose to purchase, and the people we share our lives with. It’s suggested that the bias likely exists because the familiar requires less effort to process cognitively.  Our minds and bodies tend to choose options that are more efficient, it’s a result of millions of years of evolution.

So, why in the world does this article start with something in Mandarin Chinese? Well, to the largest percentage of people on the planet, (over 11%), that is the most familiar language. Although, that’s a good reminder and reference point for many of us, that’s not totally the reason. During the last couple of months I’ve been slowly learning to speak Chinese by listening to an audiobook course. My expectations going into it were that learning a new language, especially one that seems so dissimilar to English, would be exceptionally difficult and nearly impossible. But, it’s funny, the course started off by having me say words that are already familiar but have a slightly different pronunciation in Chinese. For example, I’m sure you’re familiar with the city of Shanghai. As an English speaker, it’s just the name of the largest city in China. But, in Chinese the name of the city means something like “on sea”, which makes sense because Shanghai is geographically located on the east coast of China, next to the sea. Shàng means “on” and hǎi means “sea.” The course continued to have me says other ‘familiar’ words and explained their meaning in Chinese. That method quickly and put some of my doubts to bed and made me much more confident in my own ability to learn. It’s been suggested that one needs to know over 10,000 words to become fluent in a language. That goal is a very long way off, but slowly my vocabulary is building and it all started with something familiar.

Speaking of familiar, I’m guessing that for many basketball card collectors there are few brands more familiar than NBA Hoops. It’s a brand that has been with us since the inaugural 1989-90 release that featured the only rookie card of David Robinson. That card was HUGE at the time and helped propel basketball card collecting more into the mainstream. Over 30 years later it remains one of my favorite sets, even though the print run run was through the roof. 

I remember going to my local grocery store and seeing a wall of NBA Hoops boxes and packs available. It was like the supply was truly endless. Those who had bought enough packs identified that there was a sequence to the cards in a pack. If you wanted another David Robinson rookie or a Michael Jordan card, all you had to do was peek at which card was visible through the translucent white packs. Pick the pack that featured a card that was part of the sequence, buy the pack for $0.99, and you were almost guaranteed to get the card you wanted.

This winter, in our COVID skewed reality, Panini launched one last product for the 2019-20 NBA season. My guess is this product was conceived and developed during the NBA bubble season, as it became obvious the 2020-21 season would come with a delayed start. That delay meant Panini was at risk of not having their big Prizm basketball release at the end of the calendar year. Companies expect revenue to continue no matter what, and Prizm basketball represents significant revenue for Panini, so a product had to be in the works to stock shelves across the country and keep revenue coming in. What was born from this is 2019-20 NBA Hoops Premium Stock.

For me, this is the product I’ve been wanting since Topps lost their license to produce their NBA cards. It’s the simple graphic designs NBA Hoops typically represents, nice (and sometimes spectacular) in-game photography, and a comprehensive base set checklist with minimal filler. Add on top the Chrome technology, and you’ve got a set that is the most similar to the old Topps Chrome releases the collecting community worships. Even the design decision to use the ‘chrome’ color borders, instead of replicating the white borders present in the paper-based set, harkens back to the early days of Topps Chrome. The 1996-97 through 1999-00 releases all featured ‘chrome’ borders. Given these details, this set checks almost all the boxes for me. 

However, there are a few misses here. First, let’s take away some points from the design team for adding the giant Premium Stock badge to each card. It’s out of place and an afterthought. Assuming this release continues into the future, let’s find a way to tweak the NBA Hoops logo a bit to accommodate the new brand. It should be more like the logo difference between “Topps” and “Topps Chrome” rather than a big round badge on each card. The name Premium Stock also over complicates things. I know Panini likes to recycle familiar brands, but the Premium Stock one is a bit of a stretch. I can only recall it being used along with the Select Certified brand in the 90s. Couldn’t we have something new here? How about we go back and use a shiny metal reference? Maybe Hoops Noble (i.e. noble metals) would have been appropriate? The third shortcoming is the seeming absence of quality control. Surface scratches, gouges, rough edges, and wildly variable centering are highly prevalent. If you’re into grading, or just want flawless cards in your collection, you may come away a bit disappointed if you’re opening packs.

In doing research for this post, I have watched a lot of box breaks. It has been a seriously unhealthy number of breaks. Panini, in typical fashion, released this product in a wide array of formats. So, to understand the total print run of the product you have to collect a sufficient number of samples to get a read on how frequently certain types of cards occur. For the sake of clarity, I’ll do a quick break down on the product by format and then add each one up for an estimated total print run for each of the Prizm-style parallels. You can see a good rundown and visual of all the base card parallels here.

Here is a table showing the number of boxes and packs of each format that have been viewed on YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, etc. to build this analysis.

Let’s start our analysis with Hobby Hybrid.

Hobby Hybrid

• Exclusive source of Flash parallels

• Just 24 cards in a hobby box at current price of $459 per box (1/21/21)

• Most boxes will have one serial numbered card inside. Every 4th box or so will contain two.

• Aesthetically, I don’t care for the Flash parallels. The phrase ‘flash is trash’ kept coming to mind.

• In this format, you get minimal return on anything other than serial numbered cards. Just 2 Silver Prizms per box at this price point is laughable, especially with a set size of 300 cards. You’ve got to be in love with the base Flash or Red Flash cards here. Having so few cards at such a high price takes away some opportunity to recover even a bit of your purchase price should you hit a Thaddeus Young Green Flash /99 as your lone serial numbered card. It’s not even like the price you’ve got to pay to obtain a serial numbered card is a good deal.

• Very high confidence in pack odds and print run shown. Easy to calculate based upon serial numbered cards.

Blasters

• Exclusive source of Red Prizm, Red Wave, Silver Mojo, Blue Mojo (/99), Gold Mojo (/10) and Black Mojo (/1) parallels.

• Boxes come in blue and red versions. No difference found based on box color.

• Red Prizm parallels of base cards are about 1 in every 2 boxes.

• Red Wave parallels of base cards are super short prints (SSP). Witnessed 3 pulled in videos of over 100 blasters. The small number witnessed means there is more uncertainty in the actual pack odds for Red Wave cards. Best estimate for print run right now is somewhere between 10 and 40. Could be less than 10, based upon the proportion seen on eBay of Red Wave compared to Gold Mojo (/10) … (~24 Red Wave vs ~64 Gold Mojo)

• Red Prizms of insert cards are relatively short printed. Seem to be the most rare of the un-numbered insert card parallels.

• Dang, Red Prizm insert parallels are most often cursed with terrible centering.

• High confidence in pack odds and print run estimate shown, based on frequency serial numbered cards appeared in the boxes observed.

Cello (aka Multi Pack)

• Exclusive source of Blue Prizm, Blue Wave, Silver Laser, Blue Laser (/99), Gold Laser (/10) and Black Laser (/1) parallels.

• The serial numbered cards always show up in the larger “blue” pack inside the Cello. The smaller “black” pack will only contain Silver Laser cards.

• In watching breaks over the last couple of weeks, I have noticed a shift in the frequency certain types of parallels are coming out of packs. It’s like there are two variations of packs, an ‘early’ print and a ‘late’ print. Here’s the data that suggests that might be so.

• Going from 0 Scope parallels in over 273 ‘early’ packs to 12 Scope parallels in 136 ‘late’ packs is a great indicator. If the packs were all the same, the odds of having this difference occur is approximately 1 in 100 billion.

• To further support the early and late cello pack scenario, look at the quantity of Insert Blue Prizm cards pulled in the ‘early’ packs as compared to the late packs. For a card variation that occurred at such a high frequency early in the print, they become substantially more difficult to pull. Going from 1 in 2 ‘early’ packs to 1 in 5 ‘late’ packs indicates this shift.

• I’m not sure how one might differentiate between the ‘early’ and ‘late’ pack types without opening the packs. Perhaps there are dates or numbering printed on the boxes or cases that give some indication. Feel free to share in the comments if you find a way.

• Given the two different print runs, it makes estimating print run less precise. For now, I have grouped all cello breaks together and used the entire set of observed packs opened, it’s an average of all the packs observed.

• Blue Wave parallels are SSP. Observed none in over 400 packs. We know they do actually exist because of sales on eBay. Print run and pack odds unknown. For now, it appears to be greater than 1 because there have been 2 Charles Barkley Retro cards show up on eBay. Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s 10 or less, based upon proportion of Blue Waves to Gold Laser (/10) that have appeared for sale on eBay … (11 Blue Wave vs 25 Gold Laser)

• Don’t be fooled into thinking Blue Prizm insert parallels are rare. They’re plentiful in ‘early’ packs. Showing up way more frequently than the Silver Prizm inserts.

• For me the best looking card in the entire set is the Ja Morant RC Blue Prizm. Epic photo and a color matched Prizm rookie card. Simply beautiful, Panini. Thank you for bringing this card into existence. Feel like this one has peak potential to become an iconic card, depending upon what becomes of Morant.

• Second place for iconic card potential is the color matched Zion Williamson RC Blue Prizm. The photo is totally uninspiring for someone that plays above the rim so much. But, a jersey color matched Prizm and in game action photo rookie card give it some push. Ahhh, what could have been. If only we had been given this photo instead.

• If I were buying one box type in order to have a decent chance of pulling a great looking card with some potential value, Cello would be the one I would choose. Especially if I could guarantee I could find some of the ‘early’ packs, as it seems they might hold more potential hits. 15 total cards per pack, so getting at least some marginal value is very obtainable. Lasers look nice. Serial numbered lasers are not impossible to pull. A Silver Prizm per pack. Plus, the aforementioned Blue Prizms. The current price is about $24 per pack.

• Medium confidence in pack odds and print run estimate shown, based on the frequency serial numbered cards appeared in the boxes observed. It’s complicated by the apparent pack variations.

Hanger Packs

• Exclusive home of the quirky, but attractive, Purple Disco Prizm cards. Also, exclusive Orange Prizm inserts are in Hangers.

• There are 4 Purple Disco, 1 Silver Prizm, and either a Green or Scope Prizm per Hanger. So, that’s a lot of shiny stuff in each pack.

• There are no serial numbered base card parallels in Hangers. The insert cards are available as either Gold (/10) or Black (/1). But, they aren’t even exclusive to Hangers. That means they’re nearly impossible to pull. So, a handful of people will be lucky and pull one, but I wouldn’t factor that into consideration when buying these. These Hangers are about getting a lot of cards with relatively low “big hit” potential.

• The LeBron James Purple Disco looks great. It may never be a super valuable card, but it’s a very attractive card that can be had for less than $30 right now.

• Not having format exclusive serial numbered cards makes estimating the print run challenging. There are no shortage of Purple Disco Prizms, so these aren’t exactly rare. I have used comparative data between eBay listings to create an estimate of the print run. Confidence in the magnitude of the print run is relatively high, but confidence in the precision of the estimate is low.

Mega Boxes

• There are 3 different styles of Mega boxes.

• One version is available from Walmart. They are the exclusive box for Blue Cracked Ice base card parallels. These boxes are blue, contain 80 cards, and say on the front they contain Blue Cracked Ice Prizms.

• A second version is available from Target. They are the exclusive box for Red Cracked Ice base card parallels. These boxes are blue, contain 80 cards, and say on the front they contain Red Cracked Ice Prizms.

• The third version was available from Target as well as some other retailers. They are the exclusive box for Red Cracked Ice base card parallels. These boxes are red, contain 64 cards, and say on the front they contain Green Cracked Ice Prizms.

• All three box types are the exclusive format for Teal and Teal Wave Prizm base card parallels. Also, exclusive insert card parallels include Silver and Purple.

• This is where things start to get tricky. All three box types state there are serial numbered base card parallels, Purple Cracked Ice (/25), Gold Cracked Ice (/10), and Black Cracked Ice (/1) in these boxes.

• However, the break data and eBay sales data suggests that not all 3 types of Mega boxes actually contain these serial numbered parallels.

• The Green Ice Mega boxes were released before the Walmart and Target versions. The first Green Ice parallel was listed on eBay on 12/15/20. The first Red Ice (Target) was listed on 12/31/20. The first Blue Ice (Walmart) was listed on 1/7/21. The first serial numbered Cracked Ice parallel was listed on eBay on 1/9/21, some 25 days after the first Green Cracked Ice cards started hitting the market. The serial numbered cards only surfaced after Target and Walmart boxes came on the market.

• Across almost 47 of the Green Ice Mega boxes, I have not observed a single serial numbered base card. Across a combined 55 Blue Ice and Red Ice boxes, I have observed 7 serial numbered cards. If there were serial numbered Cracked Ice cards in the Green Ice boxes, assuming a similar set of odds, I would have reasonably expected to have observed at least one pulled or one to show up on eBay earlier.

• To calculate print run, I’m using the assumption then that all Cracked Ice serial numbered parallels are in Blue Ice and Red Ice Mega boxes.

• My second assumption is that the serial numbered cards appear at the same frequency in Blue Ice and Red Ice boxes. The break data suggests that it’s a reasonable approximation.

• Finally, I am using some other data to further estimate the ratio of boxes between Blue Ice and Red Ice. First, I used the ratio of PSA graded Walmart and Target exclusive cards from 2019-20 Prizm basketball. I assumed the ratio of graded cards would be somewhat similar to the ratio of the total population. I also assumed for this release the ratio would be similar to Prizm basketball. Secondly. I simply used the ratio of number of Walmart stores and Target stores in the US. It turns out both of these estimates yielded a result that suggests approximately 70% of the boxes would be Walmart (Blue Ice) and 30% Target (Red Ice).

• Amongst the plain color Prizm parallels of base cards, the Teal version appears to have the lowest print run.

• Teal Wave parallels are SSP. Like with the other Wave parallels it’s hard to be exact in estimating print run when there are so few available. I have observed just 2 pulled from 925 packs. Best estimate for print run right now is somewhere between 10 and 40. There is some potential also be less than 10, based upon the proportion seen on eBay of Teal Wave compared to Gold Cracked Ice (/10)… (~42 Teal Wave vs ~32 Gold Cracked Ice) … and the fact Teal Wave cards were available in all 3 Mega formats but Gold Ice were only in Target and Walmart Megas. I could imagine it’s possible Panini might have made all 3 color Wave parallels with the same print run.

Alright, given all the information above, here is a summary of the print run estimates for base cards in 2019-20 NBA Hoops Premium Stock basketball.

Also, here are best estimates for print run on some of the different insert cards and their parallels.

What do these print run numbers mean for the collectibility of these cards? It’s definitely hard to say. A year ago we didn’t know we would be in a market where pre-sale prices of 2020-21 NBA Hoops would be hitting $475 a box. I know for me, regardless, there are a lot of cards and parallels here that I really like. This set is both familiar and new. I’m hoping this isn’t a one and done for NBA Hoops Premium Stock. Hopefully the success of this set pushes out some other releases that feel like they’re only purpose is to fill gaps in the release calendar.

By the way, I plan to continue to add some to the data set for this release. Although, I could use a break from watching break videos for a while.

Til Nex Time – Jeff