Product Review: 2013-14 Panini Score Hockey Jumbo Hobby Box

Panini provided us with their first 2013-14 Hockey product a couple of weeks ago now, Score. This is their lower-end product which comes in two formats; a 36 packs with 12 box or a 10 pack 52 cards per pack jumbo box. I always prefer the Jumbo's over the retail/hobby boxes as you will always be receiving more for your value. This year is no different in the Jumbo box land, but will be a first that Score Hockey will guarantee two Autographs and a Relic in each box. This is great news for any hockey collector.

The basics around this years set is a 550 card strong set features all the rookies you missed out on with the strike shorten hobby season. 60 rookies in total make up part of the 550 cards along with 30 Team leaders and 10 Highlight cards.
As mentioned above, this years product comes along with Autographs and Relics. The Autographs range from Hot Rookies, Recollection Collection and Score Signatures. You will find 2 of these in each Jumbo box. The Relics are pretty cool for this type of product and should be a mainstay going forward. Each Relic is a Team 8 Relic, meaning 4 players on each side with a piece of their jersey swatch. there are 48 of these to search for and can be 8 players from one team, four and four, or even two players on four teams. Along with the Autographs some of these are Short Printed. You will find 1 Relic in each Jumbo Box.

There are 7 inserts to collect as well in this packed product including Check-It, First Goal, Net Cam, Team Score, Future Team, The Franchise and The Future Franchise. All with distinct designs and more players to hunt down for your PC.

So lets get down to business, we picked up a Jumbo Box since it had the most value for your money and we were very happy with our results:

Base Cards: 337 (6 doubles)
Base Card Team Leaders: 20
Base Card Highlight: 10
Base Card Hot Rookies: 40
Gold Base Card: 60
Gold Base Card Team Leaders: 6
Gold Base Card Highlights: 2
Gold Base Card Hot Rookies: 12
Check-It: 1 - Eric Lindros
First Goal: 2 - Mika Zibanejad, Brandon Saad
Net Cam: 1 - Carey Price
Team Score: 1 - Jonathan Quick
Black Base Card: 2 - Tuukka Rask, Tim Gleason
Alternative Back Base Card: 1 - Ryan McDonagh
Autographs: 2 - Nathan Beaulieu (Hot Rookie), Stephan Gionta
8 Piece Relic: 1 - Bruins/Leafs/RedWings/Canadiens (Hamilton/Seguin, Komarov/Kessel, Mrazek/Datsyuk, Price/Galchenyuk)

Needless to say this is a very loaded product and provides you more than you might expect. The Base Card designs are simple and very Score like. Nothing too fancy but they do the job. The one thing I noticed was the photography is excellent on almost each card. The goalies I find to have the best overall pictures and look great in the action shots taken. The Hot Rookies design is also nothing too fancy, but does incorporate the new Dual Rookie symbol on each one.

The Gold Parallel cards are not numbered but are a nice touch to the product. The Hot Rookies should do well in the secondary markets with the set being so large and Golds not easily found. The Black Parallel is nice as well and same as the Golds are not numbered but less found per box. We found two in ours so these will be on the hunt list for PC collectors. Also rare are the Alternative Red Backs, we were able to find 1 in our box but have found this is not the case in each box. The front of the cards are the same and we found ours in the middle of the pack within the inserts so it was easy to tell.

The Autographs we pulled were not the best pulls but still Autographs to say the least. Both were Sticker Autographs but at least we pulled a Canadien Hot Rookie for our PC. With a box in this price range providing two Autographs and a Relic you can't complain.  

The best part of the box was finding the relic. Knowing it was an 8 piece swatch was exciting and not knowing which team or players on the card was even more exciting to find it. Needless to say we pulled a very cool card for the PC again. This card features the 4 top teams in the North East and 4 of the Original 6 teams! Super happy to pull this one out of the box, the Datsyuk has a little bit of stick or puck mark on it which is rare to find on hockey swatches. It also has a rookie from each of the teams including Galchenyuk for Montreal. 

So overall we are very pleased with our box. Not only did it provide some nice PC needs but it gave us a sense of true value spent on the product. You don't find that in every product and Panini did a great job giving back to the collectors on this one. This is a highly recommended product to break and would suggest the Jumbo Box if you have the option. Very affordable and very giving which is the way you would always like it to be as a collector.

Most cards/hits pulled in our breaks end up on our site storefront www.packgambler.com, our COMC account ThePackGambler, or our eBay account thepackgambler. If you are interested in any of the cards we have mentioned please send us an e-mail at packgambler@gmail.com

Gambler Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Cost: 5/5
Autographs: 3.5/5
Relics: 5/5
Parallels: 4/5
Concept: 4.5/5
Fun Aspect: 5/5