With the 2023-24 Panini Prizm Basketball set on the horizon, CardLines is here to give you insight into what we can expect to see this year. For now, this article is based on assumptions and hobby news, plus the 2022-23 release.
There are no confirmed details from Panini yet.
Check to see if 2023-24 Prizm Basketball boxes are available on eBay
Right to the point, what is in 2023-24 Prizm Basketball that you need to know?
PSA before we continue: Panini will not have autographs of Wembanyama or Scoot Henderson. They signed an exclusive deal with Fanatics and don’t feature autographs in Panini products.
Prizm is not a product that needs much introduction to many collectors, but here’s a quick background.
Prizm is the most popular sports card product for both basketball and football cards. More than any other product, it combines mass appeal with a reasonable price point for the number of cards per box (144).
While we don’t know what this year’s box will officially release at, we can estimate it to cost about $1,000. Last year it released around $800, but Panini is using “The Wembanyama Effect” to squeeze every last dime out of its 2023-24 product line.
Additionally, Prizm maintains its popularity by reaching the mass market. You can find blaster, hanger and mega boxes at your local Walmart or Target. This allows collectors to get a taste of Prizm without paying four figures can go that route. That is one of the main reasons it’s so popular.
Check to see if 2023-24 Panini Prizm Basketball boxes are available at Walmart.com
Prizm was released in 2012 as part of Panini’s promise to provide innovative improvements to the sports card hobby. As Panini put it, the hobby was long overdue for an upgrade, and Prizm could be the answer.
Turns out, it was. The opti-chrome set introduced the “prizm” card (lowercase “t” for the sake of this article” – the answer to Topps’ trademarked “refractor.” In the early years, the prizm cards came in simple color varieties: mainly silver, green, red, and aqua.
Since then, Panini’s added a few new color options every year and built out an extensive Prizm rainbow, although most of them are available only in hobby boxes.
Still, the silver prizm cards are in all Prizm products and have since become the single most iconic rookie card of any modern player. A PSA 10 silver prizm has become the currency of collecting. And the fact that anybody can go pick up a box of Prizm at Walmart and potentially pull a silver prizm of their favorite star rookie only bolsters the gold rush that the product has created.
While Prizm has been in print for a full decade now, more offshoots from Panini also include “prizm” cards: Select, Optic, Mosaic and many more. In this way, Prizm is sort of the grandfather of all modern opti-chrome cards.
Check to see if 2023-24 Prizm Basketball boxes are available on eBay
Every box of 2023-24 Panini Prizm Basketball is loaded with potential… in both ways. You could hit a monster card, or be left very disappointed.
While there are two autographs per box, most of the magic lies in the potential for prizm parallels of various colors. Especially this year, given the absence of Wemby autographs. You can expect to find 22 prizm per box (including silver).
As always, expect inserts to include both rookie signatures and base rookie autos, plus Champion Signatures, Fireworks, Luck of the Lottery, Prizmatic, and more.
Check to see if 2023-24 Prizm Basketball boxes are available on eBay
Prizm will be released in several formats. Here’s a breakdown of everything we can expect based on what we saw last year.
While we don’t have an official list of all the colors yet this year, we can anticipate the color list will look something like last year:
Check to see if 2023-24 Prizm Basketball boxes are available on eBay
And, don’t worry. If you think that’s too much color, you’re not alone.
Is the 2023-24 Prizm Basketball release worth the dice roll? If so, how should you approach it?
Check to see if 2023-24 Prizm Basketball boxes are available on eBay
Is it a good hold as a sealed product? Considering an estimated $1,000 release day price, let’s look at how that stacks up to years prior.
Here’s the value of the last few years based on recent sales (as of 11/1/2023)
Year of Release | Approximate value |
---|---|
2023-24 | $1,000 (estimated) |
2022-23 | $650 |
2021-22 | $610 |
2020-21 | $800 |
2019-20 | $850 |
2018-19 | $4,000 |
As always, the rookie class can dramatically swing the price of a box, and we see it with Prizm more than most products since Prizm has been around for a while. And, to top it off, the print run of Prizm soared starting in 2019-20 during the sports card pandemic. (We don’t have confirmed numbers but know this to be true.).
The concern here, however, is that if you were to have bought any of the boxes above at the $1000 release day price of 2023-24 Prizm, only one box from the previous five seasons would sell for enough to make that investment profitable – 2018-19, with Luka, Trae, SGA, and more.
And sure, Wemby might be good enough to make the box worth it. But there will be a lot of boxes printed and he doesn’t have an auto in the set, so those two factors should keep the investing down.
I’d think the price drops upon release, especially since we’ve already had Wemby autos thanks to the Bowman U line, but who knows? Wemby mania is real.
Prizm rookie cards are the blue-chip investment of modern Panini rookies. If you’re going to invest in just one card of anybody, Prizm is the way to go.
The silver rookies are actually slightly overvalued considering they’re the most common Prizm insert, as I calculated in this blog article. That said, your best bet for making a guaranteed profit is finding a few silver rookies of players you believe in, buying them raw (after asking for more pictures), then getting them graded.
If you can scoop up silvers of the rookies you like and grade, then you’ll be set for a long-term hold. Collectors go nuts for a silver PSA 10.
But caution: don’t buy the first Prizm cards that appear on eBay for this year. The price will inevitably drop as the supply meets the demand.
With 2023-24 Prizm Basketball, what should you do?
It’s hard to call it a pass. The brand is the poster child of basketball cards, so of course you want to get in on the action in some form.
Ripping is by far the riskiest option, but there’s a chance for a great payoff. There’s also a chance you’re left with a “what did I just do?” feeling afterward, but hey, that’s part of the game.
A long-term hold doesn’t seem worth the risk from the numbers outlined above, so holding singles might be our best bet.
In the end, do what makes the most sense for you and your budget. This is a “hobby,” and while you can make a decent amount of profit off it, hobbies are also about having fun.
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Check back here when the 2023-24 Panini Prizm Basketball Checklist becomes available.
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