The latest installment in the Panini Americana series.
This one has a new design and a lot of new subjects.
Like other Americana releases, this one features a
73 card base set and many different chase sets and
also many levels of parallel cards for everything.
There are 10 packs per box and 5 cards per pack with a
guaranteed 4 hits per box with at least 2 autograph cards

Box 1:

Base cards – 26
Blue foil parallel base cards – 8
Chase sets:
Winner’s Circle – 1
Winner’s Circle Combos – 1
On the Tube, Modern – 2
On the Tube, Vintage – 1
Screen Legends – 2
Screen Legends Co-Stars – 2
Certified Albums – 2
Certified Singles – 2
Freeze Frame – 1
On the Tube, Modern Materials – Patti Stanger #108/199
Silver Screen Co-Stars Materials – Lana Turner/Ingrid Bergman #7/49
Base set Signatures – Laura Prepon
Winner’s Circle Signatures – Chantal Sutherland-Kruse



Box 2:

Base cards – 25
Blue foil parallel base cards – 8
Chase sets:
Winner’s Circle – 1
Winner’s Circle Combos – 1
On the Tube, Modern – 2
On the Tube, Vintage – 1
Screen Legends – 2
Screen Legends Co-Stars – 2
Certified Albums – 2
Certified Singles – 2
Freeze Frame – 1
Double Materials – Al Pacino #72/299
Double Materials – Mickey Rourke #142/299
Base set Signatures – Kelly Rowland
Base set Signatures – DJ Kool
On the Tube Signatures – Terrence Jenkins

This message has been edited. Last edited by: H_Toser,

Opened another box as part of OTB Day...
It broke down real similar to my others

Base cards – 25
Blue foil parallel base cards – 8
Chase sets:
Winner’s Circle – 1
Winner’s Circle Combos – 1
On the Tube, Modern – 2
On the Tube, Vintage – 1
Screen Legends – 2
Screen Legends Co-Stars – 2
Certified Albums – 2
Certified Singles – 2
Freeze Frame – 1
Double Materials – Common #2/25
Base set Signatures – Patti Stanger
Base set Signatures – Tony Sirico
On the Tube Signatures – Jaleel White

Finally found some retail packs of these. Nice cards, no hits for me, but got some of the inserts.

I found some retail packs of these today as well. These have
red foil parallel base cards and the "On-the-tube" and the
"Winners Choice" have gold foil parallels in the retail version.
I got a few regular and parallel inserts and pulled a red foil
autograph from Cody Simpson.

I found some retail pack the other day as well but they looked like they fell off the shelf and someone ran over them with a cart. Sadly, I left without any Americana.

I picked up 4 retail packs of these today. There were two die cut cards One was jockey Mike Smith and the other was a Jimmy Stewart On The Tube card.

Got a couple more boxes today, here's the highlights...
Autographs--
MC Lyte - Blue foil parallel version #40/49
Vanilla Ice
On-The-Tube Autos --
Eliza Dushku
DJ Jazzy Jeff
Tony Sirico

Materials Cards --
On-The-Tube Vintage Prime Ginger Robers #39/99
On-The-Tube Modern Brooke Hogan #38/99
Silver Screen Triple Lillian Gish #75/214

I think that Eliza Dushku is pretty close to being the best pull that I would have liked out of the current Americana.

I like to pick up at least a few of the signatures every release. You can find some gems in these oddball collections of reality TV stars, old TV stars, singers and actors, has beens and never weres. And the occasional star or semi-star, which are limited.

This year my attempts at perusing the listings you-know-where have produced nothing so far. Panini is recycling autographs that weren't exciting the first or second time around and the new ones are a who's who of who?

The material cards are better, but the market is already saturated, so they are not getting the demand that they used to either.

I bought a few packs of the retail edition at the Panini booth. (They didn't have hobby). I got an Eliza Dushku costume and sold that for around $20, about what I spent on the packs, so it was a free look at them basically. After that, I figured I might get one hobby box when they were released.

I don't know what the original retail price was for it, but I finally got the hobby box this week for what seemed like a pretty good price, about $45, and I was pretty well pleased with it, nice autos and well-designed costume cards.




Beyond that, it's hard to tell, but Laura Dern card has a semi-translucent photo slide embedded in it, a terrific find for me as I adore her. (Her "Enlightened" series is one of the best ever seen on HBO, high praise indeed).

The grey bordered base cards are a little bland looking, but the foil-bordered parallels look pretty sharp.

One odd thing though, is the size of the box. It's too big for the 10 packs in there and they just kind of rattle around in there.

As for the autographs in this series, I would like to have any of these:

Al Pacino Ali Larter
Biz Markie Bradley Cooper
DarrylMcDaniels Eliza Dushku Emily Meade
HopeSolo James Earl Jones
Joan Collins
Joe Manganiello
JohnC.McGinley Kevin Hart Laura Dern
Lea Michele Martin Short Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio Mickey Rourke Molly Ringwald
RevRun Roger Moore Rose McGowan Steven Bauer SylvesterStallone

You got a James Bond, Rocky/Rambo, 3 of the 4 main stars of "Scarface", the voice of Darth Vader, and the two surviving members of Run-DMC, so all in all, there's a lot to like here.

Never said that there weren't a limited mix of stars and semi-stars that some people would welcome if they found them, that is true of every hodge-podge set. I was speaking of the average signer and I won't make a list of them, because that would be rude on my part.

Americana has been doing sets for several years starting back when Donruss had the title and Leaf had the similar Pop Century. Panini took over the Americana brand a couple of years ago I think. Anyway, these are sticker autographs and it's easy for the same signatures to be carried set to set. Many of these autographs are from what I would call marginal celebrities and, yes, reality TV stars, people who you haven't heard from since the 80's and people that I have to google fall into that category to me. That doesn't mean that someone wouldn't like to have those cards, it just means that I don't.

My comment is to Panini. Prior products have held better signers in my opinion, and I am talking about the average signer that a buyer will pull, not the "hook" autographs that are prominently listed in the ads. Bring it back to the average level of Donruss 2009 and it would be great.

The saving grace here is that these boxes are not that expensive in comparison to premium boxes so that at least is a plus, although I would avoid retail unless you are just interested in the base and are content with a costume card. Again it is just my opinion based on the prior sets and I have purchased many of the Americana and Pop Century autographs just because they are a strange mix and many of these people don't have certified signature cards in other products.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Raven,

All-true, especially the bit about the goodly percentage of signers that make most go "who"?
All of these sets are like that, though, as are pretty much all autograph sets in all issues, sports and non-sports alike. "They can't all be winners" as Bad Santa famously said.

This year's Leaf Pop Century also has some good stuff in it, but it's dregs are so low, that I couldn't even bring myself to buy one box of it for fear of getting, for instance, the (now deposed) Hot Dog eating champ or the "Yuup!" guy from "Storage Wars" as one of my hits. There are "pop culture" figures all right, but the percentage of people who want autographs of nebulous "stars" like that must be pretty close to zero. Even so, there are some real gems in that set, too, so if, for budgetary concerns, those 2nd-rate signers must be part of the product makeup for it to be financially feasible for Panini or Leaf to produce in the first place, then so be it.

I prefer it to the alternatives, which are:
1. The set is not made, so any good offerings are lost along with the bad, the baby thrown out with the bathwater, as it were.
2. The set is made with "all-killer, no-filler" material and the boxes cost $400 each as a result of the expenses involved in securing such a lofty line-up that would please even the most discriminating autograph collector, from top to bottom.

Luckily for manufacturers making these sets, they don't have to worry about people who don't like them, generally speaking. They won't be buying them anyway. They only have to cater to those who do like them the way they are and have been composed (as, after all, the makeup of these sets is no accident) and hope there are enough of those buyers out there to make the various releases successful. If so, they'll keep making them, and so far, so good for Americana, 8 years or so after Panini's re-launch of the line. Should that change, they'll stop making them.

Back to this year's Pop Century, seeing those "iffy" names in the lineup, I decided to instead spend what a couple of boxes would have cost on singles, and I've done very well that way and am very happy with what I've got for the same money. I'm almost done with that effort and will shortly post my results, basically what my "custom" boxes contain. Sure, this method is never as fun as opening packs, but it eliminates the chance of getting some (or worse, all) signers that one may find particularly odious in their box(es).

quote:

Originally posted by chesspieceface:
All-true, especially the bit about the goodly percentage of signers that make most go "who"?
All of these sets are like that, though, as are pretty much all autograph sets in all issues, sports and non-sports alike. "They can't all be winners" as Bad Santa famously said.

This year's Leaf Pop Century also has some good stuff in it, but it's dregs are so low, that I couldn't even bring myself to buy one box of it for fear of getting, for instance, the (now deposed) Hot Dog eating champ . . .

Oh come on, who wouldn't want Joey Chestnut's signature to top off their autograph card collection.

Looking at the cards, I really prefer the Pop Century 2015 signatures over the Americana 2015 line up, which is why I commented that Panini needs to up that lower level so that collectors can chance opening blind boxes and packs. Pop Century 2015 has tons of repeat signers. Many are from old TV shows, but at least they are generally people that you can remember. And there are some good/decent autographs in the mix, so for myself I can still find individual cards that I want in Pop Century.

These type of products are a lot of fun just because you don't know what to expect when you pull an autograph or relic card. Yet as you rightly say, if you get especially "odious" celebrity autographs (great word by the way) it feels like you threw your money away and you will be reluctant to do it again. That's what Americana needs to avoid.

The Americana 2015 set also offers a really nice subset (including "hit" versions) for fans of Horse Racing and the Golden Age movies related stuff is gorgeous. There's also a one-of-king Three Stooges Triple cut autograph booklet.

I was also a fan of Panini Golden Age, but that seems to have wrapped up its three year run last year as there doesn't appear to be a set for 2015, a shame.

Golden Age, a hybrid sports and non-sports set, is a lot like the set that kicked off the modern era of these kinds of issues, Topps 2001 American Pie (two more of those were made, in 2002 and 2011, with Topps 75th Anniversary being a sort of cousin to those). I really like the vintage type designs in all of these sets.

Somewhere, someone has gotten tired of keeping these boxes from last year. I found hobby boxes discounted to a price where any 4 hits would probably not cause enough loss to cry about. It was fun to open my 3 boxes, even though I got no autograph that I would have bought myself. The base cards themselves look rather cheap and the mix of "celebrities" is all over the place. I would not recommend it at it's SRP, but if you find it slashed, it's at least unpredictable, and there are some decent names involved. I just didn't find any signatures I really needed. Swatches are nice.

Here are the 12 hits in my 3 boxes:

Biz Markie (Who?)
Tony Sirico
Emily Meade (Who?)
Ingrid Bergman Dual Swatch 256/299

DJ Kool (Who?)
Tiffani Thiessen 14/25
Slade Smiley (Who?)
Common - On the Tube - Swatch 4/49

Biz Markie (Who again?)
Shannon Elizabeth 31/49
Gabrielle Reece Dual Swatch 168/199
Jimmy Stewart - On the Tube - Swatch 123/499

These are really cheap now so worth a gamble for the long odds of a top signature. I got a 10 box inner case. Collation on the base and chase cards was terrible, I could not make a single base set of 73 cards out of the ten boxes, missing numbers 1,9,17, and 25 . Chase sets were just as bad with multiple duplicates meaning I was no close to making up any of them. Anyone wanting to trade let me know, I have many duplicates.

In terms of value I cannot complain as I got 23 autographs and 17 costumes with only one duplicate costume.

I've always liked those sets. I remember doing a couple boxes once and immediately giving up on finding anything approaching a complete set.

I bought quite a few of these boxes from my LHS early last year. They found them discounted somewhere and it got to be like candy for me every time I went in. This product reminds me of those cheap envelope games dealers used to play at shows, where you paid $5 for a chance at the one good autograph card in 100 white envelopes. Most of the time you got a $1 uncertified autograph card that they couldn't get rid of.

Still its a small investment and even common certified autographs, which you will get in abundance, will beat the envelope game.

Nice break, I like to pick these up too, but oddly the two or three inner cases I've opened had basically the same main autographs you hit (Cooper, Hogan, Solo and Brewster).

I really wish collation was better, I'd definitely be a buyer.