2013-14 Panini Totally Certified Basketball NBA Trading Cards Box Break Recap And Review

Totally Certified Basketball has gone through some big changes.  Gone are the HRX video cards, which were the major hits.  Gone is the whole card color for parallels, now going with a more subtitle center color burst.   Gone are the on-card Rookie autographs, now in sticker form.  What remains is foil etching, a simple set configuration and the chance of pulling some nice big name autographs.  In many ways Totally Certified feels a little stripped down this year, almost closer to what you might find in Prizm.  With the major selling points being green parallels and acetate signatures, Panini will have to brainstorm to return some of the excitement to Totally Certified Basketball if it expects to regain some of its former glory.

Totally Certified Basketball falls into our premium cards category. Each hobby box contains 6-5 card packs. Each box contains 3 autographs and 3 memorabilia cards.

Here are some of the cards we pulled.

Base Set

 Michael Carter-Williams, front and back

 Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker, Larry Johnson

 Hakeem Olajuwon, Luigi Oatome, Calvin Natt

 Color Parallels

 Paul Gasol Totally Red #/99, Tyreke Evans Totally Gold #/25

 The Hits

 Nene Totally Silver Memorabilia

 Mo Williams Totally Red Memorabila #/199, Kent Bazemore Totally Blue Memorabila #/49

 Jamaal Franklin Rookie Roll Call Auto, Isaiah Canaan Rookie Roll Call Auto

Overall Look

Lots of shiny here, but mostly in mirror/silver form. Bold colors have been toned down somewhat with this year’s release.

Quality and Variety of Players

The quality is there with a nice mix of rookies, veterans and retired stars.

Do the Hits satisfy?

Rookie autos have returned to stickers unfortunately. Only color parallels for the hits are numbered.  That is the down side.  But the desirable hits are still there to be pulled.

Will you keep coming back for more?

This release comes in a little Plain Jane without a super large hit to be pulled so the motivation to buy in bulk may not be there.  And hit a box like we did that was missing probably the biggest hit can lead collectors to alternative release purchases.

Rating

3 out of 5

While there are still some nice hits to be had, 2013-14 Panini Totally Certified Basketball seems like a step backwards and falls short of the mark. A retool for 2014-15 will have to occur if Panini expects this once lauded release to come back strong.



Review box provided by Panini