The 2023-24 Panini Select Premier League Soccer, often hailed as the second most prestigious Premier League Panini release, is a collection that captivates with its rare levels and includes exceptional inserts and parallels.
The rarity of this collection is sure to pique the interest of Premier League fans, making it a pursuit worth considering. We aim to delve into this in our review.
Select debuted under Pinnacle, a smaller American sports card company that left a lasting impression during the junk wax era. With their stunning design, the Select Pinnacle cards were a big hit and remain a fond memory for many collectors.
In 1996, Pinnacle was thriving, and in a moment of optimism, it acquired Donruss when the latter faced tough times. However, in 1998, they were bought by a company named Playoff, and in 2009, that company was acquired by Panini.
This series of ownership changes might seem confusing, but it’s an integral part of the history of sports cards and worth knowing.
Despite the series of ownership changes, Panini emerged with some fantastic rights, including the rights to Pinnacle’s Select.
Their acquisition breathed new life into the series, leading to the successful revival of Select Football in 2013 as a hobby-only release. This successful revival gives hope for the future of the collection.
Select moved to soccer in 2015 and has had quite a few experiences with the sport. Over those years, it owned the rights to most of the big leagues in the world and used that fact to its advantage.
After years of releasing a general soccer product, it first released a purely Premier League version in 2022-23. It has since released a Premier League, La Liga, and Serie A version of Select, all of which have been consistently high-quality products.
The release date is suspect because the season is long over. The last round of matches took place on May 19, 2024. Meanwhile, 2023-24 Panini Select Premier League Soccer drops on July 5, 2024.
That is well into the Euro 2024 tournament that followed the regular season. Everyone is preparing for the next season, so there is no enthusiasm for this product dropping now.
Select started as a hobby-only release but moved to retail to much fanfare during the COVID era. The Premier League Select has also had a retail release.
We don’t have the details for the retail release yet, but there was a blaster and a Mega Box last time. So, I will go with the details for that.
The 2023-24 Panini Select Premier League Soccer hobby boxes are pretty loaded by current standards. You have 14 parallels and 3 hit cards.
If you are lucky, two of them are autos. For a box of less than $300, you could do worse. That is one of the nice things about the lousy time soccer cards have been going through, as they lost popularity after COVID.
The designs in Select are generally excellent, and the first Premier League release was no exception. The new one looks similar but different enough to be acceptable. The markups are attractive.
Stained Glass is one of Select’s most appealing elements. It remains one of the most attractive inserts Panini has ever made. Call me subjective, but the soccer variations are beautiful.
Finally, this release is more generous with its parallels to attract people to Select after Prizm has already emerged.
I bought some Premier League Select last time and enjoyed the product. But it was severely printed, often with entirely off-center cards. That is not uncommon for Panini products, but this was a lot.
We can only hope that the 2023-24 version is somewhat better. However, Panini’s recent conduct hasn’t exactly been inspiring. I didn’t experience this personally, but there were reports that some packs did not include the promised exclusive Prizm.
None of this is all that unexpected, but I do have the impression this release is not taken as seriously as others.
The price is problematic. Ordering a 2023-24 English Premier League Prizm box online will cost $229.95. That is a reasonable $50 less than a new box of Select. That doesn’t seem particularly enticing, especially for a product coming out this late with a history of printing problems. Forgive me for not being thrilled.
I have some reservations about recommending an EPL rookie class. After all, a few rookie cards retain much value in this league. It isn’t a category that retains rookie value as much as American sports, and the releases are generally less popular.
Nonetheless, I can’t ignore all the 2023-24 rookie talent. Class. The two most prominent players are Kobbie Mainoo, who may be the future of Manchester United, and Lewis Miley, a regular at age eighteen.
Both have a good chance of being the next Phil Foden or Bukayo Saka. The trouble is that neither is strictly an attacking player. Nonetheless, they are excellent and probably have value for autos and low-numbered parallels.
There are always too many parallels for every base card in Select. Last year, we saw 17 for each card, seriously watering down the value of the parallels and filling boxes and packs with relatively worthless variations of base cards.
In general, the base card set here is too big. The set is expensive and not that popular. It is not one for set collectors at this price. Yet it has a checklist of 250. Then, add all the parallels. This is a needlessly massive checklist.
The boxes are pretty expensive, especially compared to other soccer offerings. So, how do these cards hold up in terms of value?
We have a reasonably high bar of almost $300 per new box. Unfortunately, we do not have much to compare it with previous releases. But here is the one box we can compare it with and the other recent releases from different leagues.
2022-23 Panini Select Premier League Soccer Hobby Box | $269.95 |
2022-23 Panini Select La Liga Soccer Hobby Box | $324.95 |
2022-23 Panini Select Serie A Soccer Hobby Box | $324.95 |
The Premier League box is worth a bit less than the two others. I don’t think that is because of the rookie classes or anything like that. Instead, it is probably an issue of the existence of the Prizm Premier League product and no equivalent for the other two leagues.
Nonetheless, the prices are pretty encouraging. If a box from last year is this close to the release price for 2023-24, that is better than many other products I am seeing. The smaller market for soccer seems to be good for keeping up the price with lower print runs involved.
As a wax investment, Select Premier League isn’t too bad. How does it hold up for singles?
The answer is not very good. The best Stained Glass cards are going for around the value of a hobby box. They seem very undervalued to me, and picking one up is probably a good idea. But that is not the point. It isn’t easy to earn back the value of a box with the singles here.
The Panini Select soccer releases exist in a weird place. The boxes are worth quite a bit, and the singles very little. We saw that in the Serie A release as well.
However, La Liga and Serie A have more upside because they don’t have a heavyweight rival like Prizm.
And considering that Prizm boxes are currently going for less, and their singles go for more, there is no question: if you plan to invest in Premier League cards, go for Prizm instead.
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