February Product Releases I'm Excited About
February has a bunch of new releases. Here are a few I'm particularly interested in.
Following on from January’s post, here’s a look at a few of the February card release I’m excited about.
This month is kind of quiet for me. I’m not a huge fan of the football releases this month, and baseball is a little quiet outside of some of the high-end, pricier (riskier) releases. Basketball, my favorite to collect, has a couple nice releases, but it definitely feels a bit like the calm before the storm—March currently has three big 2023-24 releases I’m pumped for.
Still, there are a couple I’m watching.
February 7th: Prizm Basketball
This one is a bit of a weird one, because Prizm retail kind of came out of nowhere and started showing up on retail shelves last month, weeks ahead of the official release date. So…there’s a little bit of Prizm fatigue already to be honest. At least for me.
Still, it’s too big of a release not to be at least a little interested.
As usual with Prizm, the base design is a bit drab, so the appeal is in the parallels. The hobby only white in particular is going to look incredible.
I also think the Kaliedoscopic insert could look pretty sweet when seen in real life and I’m disappointed there’s no Wembanyama in that checklist.
As has been the case with all major Panini releases so far this season, there’s an animated/illustrated insert short print to chase. I’m…on the fence about it. I don’t hate it, but I also don’t think it’s as appealing as the Hoops Presentations insert or even the Donruss Animations.
Some people critiqued the large head—that’s not it for me. It’s the background. The long extended letters don’t do anything for me and actually makes the card look cheaper than a SP should look (at least based on pictures…we’ll see if this ends up being like the Donruss Night Moves insert which I was a bit ho-hum on from the scanned images, but are gorgeous once you have them in hand).
No one asked, but so far, here’s my ranking on the three animation style insert releases from 2023-24 basketball:
Hoops Presentations
Donruss Animations
Prizm Prizmania
Overall, I wish the inserts were a bit more aligned with the football release. There’s nothing quite as appealing as Manga or the Color Blasts, at least from what I’ve seen so far.
I’m hoping one of the inserts I haven’t seen images for surprises me, because the retail inserts were pretty uninspired (Deep Space was actually kind of nice, but nothing else was particularly noteworthy).
Rip/Break/Singles?
Prizm, as always, isn’t cheap. There’s a massive floor on ripping and breaking so that’s probably not going to be part of my approach here. I’m going to focus mostly on grabbing singles, focusing on Wembanyama, GG Jackson, Bilal Coulibaly, Brandon Miller and Cam Whitmore in particular.
February 14th: Topps Series 1 Baseball
The first 2024 baseball product release! I’m not a huge baseball guy, but still….it feels notable to get our first 2024 product.
I tend not to go for the straight up Topps paper release, and prefer waiting for the Chrome release, but I do kind of like the design this year.
The big ones for me are the inserts and parallels though. I couldn’t love the True Photo cards more! I'm a sucker for good photography on cards, and I love how these get everything out of the way so you can just appreciate the photo itself.
I also kind of like the Superstar Blueprint inserts. Nothing too flashy, but with paper-based cards, I tend to like inserts that lean into a more retro-y kind of look and feel and these fit the bill.
Rip/Break/Singles?
This is a cheap release and also not the most valuable. I think ripping is an option here—you can actually do it without breaking the bank, you just have to keep in mind the upside is more limited than with other releases.
I may rip a few for fun, but mostly I’ll be targeting singles of some of the inserts and parallels that I enjoy.
February 16th: Court Kings
I already talked about Court Kings last month, when it was originally intended to come out. My take is the same—as boring as I generally find Prizm, Court Kings is the polar opposite. It’s a gorgeous set of cards and I wish there were more products like it.
Rip/Break/Singles?
Last month I said I’d probably focus on singles and maybe some Pick Your Team style breaks if they’re appropriately priced. The only change here is that I ended up getting a great price on a case of these in a pre-sell. I haven’t decided how much of that I will rip and how much of that I will just sell still sealed, but at the price I got it at, it was too good of a deal to pass up and with how much I keep talking up the design of these cards, I don’t mind putting my money where my mouth is.