Revealed: Panini America Identifies List of 2011-12 Elite Hockey Autographed SPs

Judging by the amount of requests flooding The Knight's Lance and the Panini America Facebook and Twitter feeds in recent weeks, inquiring collecting minds want to know: "When is Panini America going to release the autograph SP list for 2011-12 Elite Hockey. The short answer to that question is "today." Below, you'll find the preliminary list of autograph short prints…

Video & Gallery: The Panini America Team Quality Controls 2011-12 Elite Hockey

It was an all-hands-on-deck kind of afternoon Friday inside the Panini America Production Department conference room as Karvin Cheung, Chris Barr, Alex Carbajal, Tim Trout, Joe Reyes and even NBA brand manager Keith Hower pitched in to scrutinize the second quality control case of 2011-12 Elite Hockey. The QC process started Thursday on-location at the Panini America printing facility but a…

Newest Hockey Arrivals Provide Answers to the Panini America Autograph Contest

In this special, multi-faceted Saturday-morning post, Panini America officials will unveil some of the sweetest new arrivals coming soon to their roster of NHL products (most notably 2011-12 Elite Hockey and 2010-11 Contenders Hockey). In the process, they'll also provide the answers to the "Guess the Autograph" contest they started  earlier this week in conjunction with the start of the…

New Autos from Hockey, Hardball Highlight Panini America's Latest Mail Days

We get the sense that Panini America baseball and hockey collectors are growing restless. After all, while basketball and football collectors are currently enjoying the new-release spoils of such products as 2011 Preferred Basketball and 2011 Totally Certified Football, those waiting patiently for, say, 2011-12 Contenders Hockey, 2011-12 Elite Hockey or 2011 Prime Cuts Baseball are left counting down the…

Panini America Peeks New Hockey Arrivals for 2011-12 Elite, 2011-12 Contenders

With so much hobby attention being heaped recently on the long-awaited fist NBA product of the season (2011-12 NBA Hoops) and the second one hot on its heels (2011 Preferred will be live next Wednesday), we've admittedly been distracted from the flurry of autographic activity surrounding Panini America's next two NHL products: 2011-12 Contenders and 2011-12 Elite. So we took…

Panini America Behind-the-Scenes Gallery: Preparing for an On-Card Onslaught

For once yesterday afternoon, the commotion emanating from the Panini America Acquisitions department had nothing to do with me performing a cross-body splash onto a prone Joe White from atop his cubicle walls. On this particular Tuesday afternoon, the hum of activity audible throughout the building was the furor of seemingly half of Acquisitions and Product Development preparing a stunning…

Panini Peek: 2011-12 Elite Hockey

If this was a normal Panini Peek post, I'd spend the first paragraph or so crafting a flowery and adjective-filled -- but well-earned and accurate -- introduction to herald the coming excitement of a new Panini America product. But this is no normal Panini Peek post because 2011-12 Elite Hockey is no normal hockey product. So instead, I'll quote from the…