A Panini Peek Shocker: Legendary Timeless Treasures Brand Finally Coming to Football!
Since bursting onto the collectibles landscape in 2003 inside trademark tin boxes, the Timeless Treasures brand has carved out a well-earned following as one of the earliest and most popular high-end brands in the sports card universe.
Football collectors, however, have spent the last eight years watching . . . and waiting . . . and wanting as their baseball and basketball counterparts experienced all those Timeless moments. Timeless Treasures, after all, has never been produced as a stand-alone football set. Until now.
In early September, a phenomenon that started humbly as an insert set in 2001 Classics Football fully comes of age with 2011 Timeless Treasures Football, a unique super-premium collecting experience that should be as well received by collectors as it has been by the folks inside Panini America building it.
“Ask any serious collector and they’ll tell you that ‘Timeless Treasures’ is one of the most beloved high-end set names of all time, bar none,” says Ben Ecklar, Panini America’s Director of Product Development. “But it’s never before been done in football. So this product signifies a history-making opportunity – both for us internally in terms of being able to create from the ground up the first Timeless Treasures Football release, but also for collectors in terms of the opportunity to collect it. And trust me, they will want to collect it.”
Here are just some of the myriad reasons why:
- Every five-card tin will include three autograph (numbered to 499 or less) or memorabilia (numbered to 250 or less) cards, with at least one autograph guaranteed.
- The 225-card base set includes 100 current stars, 25 Legends and 100 Rookies.
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A scintillating roster of case-hit possibilities that features at least one card from a most legendary lineup that includes Jim Thorpe memorabilia cards numbered to 25 or less, Classic Cuts Materials numbered to 25 or less, NFL Shields and NFL Shields Signatures numbered to five or less and on-card Hall of Fame signatures.
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A stellar selection of inserts highlighted by Game Day Souvenirs (featuring actual game-date photography and game-worn memorabilia), Hall of Fame Class of 2011 (featuring on-card signatures from Marshal Faulk and Deion Sanders) and Classic Cuts Materials (combination cut signature memorabilia cards starring the likes of Thorpe, Red Grange and Earl “Dutch” Clark).
“There’s a lot of wow-worthy stuff packed into these tins, which themselves are collectible with four different versions,” Ecklar says. “We’ve really gone above and beyond in attempting to tie historically significant game-worn memorabilia with the years in which it was worn for the MVP Materials, Rookie Year Materials and Game Day Souvenirs inserts. The autograph and cut-autograph checklists are second to none and our special tribute to the legendary Jim Thorpe is spot on in Timeless Treasures.
“I could go on and on, but those are among my favorite things. I hope collectors feel the same way.”
Check out the gallery of drool-inducing preview images below and stay tuned to The Knight’s Lance for complete updates as the release date for the premiere edition of 2011 Timeless Treasures Football nears.