It’s been more than nine months since the tragic and untimely passing of Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant. Even now, fans across the globe — including all of us inside Panini America — are struggling to comprehend and cope with the loss. Panini America’s internal process of developing a detailed plan for addressing those fans and collectors with outstanding Bryant autograph redemptions has been completed.
It’s been a difficult and somewhat unprecedented situation in the hobby, because for many of those outstanding redemptions, they will unfortunately never be signed.
For those situations where live Bryant autographs are available, and beginning this week, Panini America will send Bryant autographs to waiting collectors with existing and active redemption cards in the system. Best efforts will be made to honor the exact redemption, but unfortunately there will be instances in which comparable Bryant autographs will be sent instead.
In view of these circumstances, expired redemptions are not subject to redemption. For those collectors who entered expired Bryant redemption cards after the expiration date, they will be given 50 percent of current Beckett value in Panini Rewards points.
To address customers who have Bryant autograph redemptions in the system but will not be receiving them because there are none remaining, Panini America has created special six-card Kobe Bryant Redemption Packs incorporating five exclusive parallels from the 2019-20 Mosaic Basketball set (featuring current NBA stars and rookies such as Luka Doncic, Steph Curry, Zion Williamson, Ja Morant, Tyler Herro and more) but featuring exclusive Purple Snakeskin (numbered to 24), Purple & Gold Snakeskin (numbered to 20), Gold Snakeskin (numbered to eight) and Black Snakeskin (1/1) parallels.
The sixth card in these packs will be from a new commemorative 48-card Kobe Career Highlights subset (printed on Optichrome) honoring the top moments from his career. The Kobe Career Highlights set will feature a Purple base level (numbered to 24), a Purple & Gold parallel (numbered to 20), a Gold parallel (numbered to eight), a Black 1/1 parallel and a special Snakeskin Gold version numbered to 10.
Kobe Bryant Redemption Packs likely will begin shipping in early December. Panini America is proud to be able to deliver the Kobe Bryant Redemption Packs which will honor the career, life and legacy of Kobe Bryant.
Those are sharp and a great tribute!
I have a few questions because I have a redemption for a Kobe autograph that I’m waiting on. So I understand the situation but how many packs would you be getting and how do you consider what is fair value for Kobe autograph redemption? I guess from my perspective is I pulled a very tough redemption to get especially an autograph from a hall of fame legend and in return I’ll be receiving a pack.
So your telling me my $1200+ kobe auto instead of getting the card I will be getting 1 pack that will most likely not be any good unless I get lucky and hit a top rc. It cost yall basically NOTHING to print more cards so I know why your doing this. Also I have about 100 other redemptions dating all the way back to 2006 I have asked for replacements tons of times I still have not received anything. At the rate yall redeem cards I will be well over 1000 years old by the time I get half of them.
I feel much the same as Ryan Newman. Been waiting for over 200 redemptions, some for more than 12 years. You have to realize Panini doesn’t care abut the collectors in the market any longer. They use to, but now all they care abut is raking in as much money as they can before they collapse the market. They are well on their way to doing that.
As a card shop owner, I have witnessed their greed in taking away from distributors and thus hobby shops most of our allocations of products. They now sell the majority of releases themselves instead of sending it to the market. After 30+ years of running a shop, I can no longer fight for new product as they demand. Just way too tiring. We watched card producers kill the market in the early 90’s by being greedy and now we are seeing it again.
Your not kidding they just keep printing as fast as they can then they got that blockchain crap let’s not forget FOTL where they make 100% of the profits then the whole points is such bullshit. Then back to the over printing gold snakeskin black and gold snakeskin pink SS red SS black SS real snakeskin hell does it ever end. I get that demand is high right now but making more and more is not a solution. If yall can keep printing stuff like yall do then why not make some special packs to replace all the 100+ redemption cards I been waiting on for over 14 years now. Funny thing is some of the cards I’m waiting . on have been like for 10 years.
I can guarantee these packs will be going well over a grand
So after waiting 4 years for my Kobe Redemption, I’m likely to get a single Kobe out of a 48- card set that is supposed to replace the value of my Kobe Auto?! We should get the full 48-card Kobe set and a couple of the redemption packs. Do the right thing! You only have one chance to get this right, but you can do it. Out of respect for your customers, out of respect for Kobe Bryant. What do you think he would want you to do?