Black’s Beauties: Panini America Provides a Pre-Autograph Peek at 2012 Black Football

Perhaps more than any other Panini America NFL card design this season, the one I’ve been looking forward to seeing the most — more than even 2012 Contenders Football or 2012 National Treasures Football — is the Rookie Card layout for the new 2012 Panini Black Football.

And judging by the buzz that’s been reverberating throughout the football hobby since we first announced in late August the addition of Black to our 2012 roster, I’m not alone.

Which is why a certain special delivery yesterday — a day we’ll refer to as “Black Tuesday” for the purposes of this post — provided cause for celebration. The Rookie Cards and parallels featuring the 35 young stars who attended the 2012 NFLPA Rookie Premiere arrived safely and soundly at Panini America HQ.

Literally still hot off the presses from the printing facility when they arrived yesterday afternoon, the cards have since been carefully counted, cataloged and prepared for the next leg of their journey — into the safe hands of the players on them to receive their on-card signatures in metallic gold Sharpie.

While I could break out a thesaurus in an attempt to come up with my thoughts on how 2012 Panini Black Football’s RCs turned out. I figured I’d let the cards do the talking for me. After that, we’d love to hear your thoughts, too.

Enjoy.