2012 Rookies & Stars Football Hobby Box Break

I went to my LCS on Black Friday hoping to score not only some more hockey cards for my collection, but a few of those special Panini Black Friday packs as well. The packs were the main objective, so whatever I would need to do to obtain them would greatly influence specifically what it was that I would purchase.

Unfortunately for me, there were specific Panini boxes that were good for the Black Friday promotion, and the only hockey product that qualified was 2012-13 Score, which I wasn't really interested in. So, I decided to take a risk on a football product.

I ended up going with a box of 2012 Rookies & Stars, mostly because that box resulted in the most Black Friday packs. Here's a look at what I got.

This is EASILY the coolest card of the box. It features Jaguars rookie Justin Blackmon and is serial numbered 22/50. The card has a slide of Blackmon taken from a photo at the Rookie Premier, and the signature is directly on the slide itself. The card is cut out around the entire side on the front and is cut out on the back side of the card just around the slide image, to let light through and make it more visible. I don't care about Blackmon or the Jaguars a whole lot, but this card might be a keeper, just for the coolness factor.

The next hit was a jersey card of Broncos rookie Ronnie Hillman. The card is from their Crusade relic set, which features a large swatch on the side of the card, and is a purple variation, which carries the low serial number of 28/4.

An auto of Bengals rookie George Iloka serial numbered 170/499. While this card isn't anywhere close to being as cool as the Blackmon, I do like that their are a couple of autographed cards in every box.

My fourth hit is of another rookie, Michael Egnew of the Miami Dolphins. It is serial numbered 109/399 and comes from the True Blue variation of the Rookie Materials insert set.

I got lucky with my Texans content as well. I only plan on buying this one box of Rookies and Stars, so it sure was nice to be able to hit the big 3 (Schaub, Foster, and Johnson) plus four rookies.

Each box also contains one Longevity foil parallel, and I was extremely lucky to have mine be of Texans running back Arian Foster, numbered 12/249.

This product was one of the first releases of the year, so a lot of people who ended up on new teams had not yet played in their new uniforms. Panini made an extra effort, though, to feature two of those players, Peyton Manning and Tim Tebow, in the practice gear for their new teams.

Just some parallels. Nothing too special with these.

More inserts, including a gold parallel of Clay Matthews numbered 279/500

These die-cut pennant cards are pretty cool, too, but none of them are for teams or players that I am remotely interested in.

These are the final group of inserts that carry the biggest star power, and provide me with one final Texan card.

There you have it. Considering I don't buy football all that much, this was a fun box to open. I don't like that all four hits were of rookies, but at least there were some cool ones instead of just the plain white swatches and sticker autos we're all used to (although those were there, too).

Anyway, I'm keeping the Texans cards, but everything else is up for trade, so just let me know if you are interested,