Rookies & Stars is a nice blend of veterans and rookies. The 300-card base set is split with 200 veterans and 100 rookies. A blaster box, which I opened, contains seven packs, with 10 cards to a pack. Panini is promising one memorabilia card per blaster box, on average.
The box I opened yielded 48 base cards and seven rookies – one first-year player per pack. The card design is a strong vertical, with the player’s photo set to the left side. The photograph takes up approximately two-thirds of the card front, and the background gives the player a speedy look. The player’s name is placed on the far right-hand side of the card, perpendicular to the photograph. The name is shown in block capital letters, in one of the primary colors of the team. The team logo appears in the upper left-hand corner of the card.
The card back showcases the same photo as the front, albeit cropped to a more horizontal look. A six-line biography includes highlights from the 2016 season and fun facts about the player. A statistics box details the player’s 2016 efforts and his lifetime numbers.
The rookie cards’ design is slightly different than the veterans’. The player’s photograph covers more than 75 percent of the card front, with the team logo at the bottom left and his name in the other corner. The bottom 25 percent of the card uses the player’s team colors as the primary color.
The rookie card backs are like the veterans’, except the bubble that contains the card number is in the upper left-hand corner of the card, instead of the right side for the established players.
The rookie card backs are like the veterans’, except the bubble that contains the card number is in the upper left-hand corner of the card, instead of the right side for the established players.
The blaster box I opened yielded 14 inserts. There were three Action Packed cards (there are 20 in the subset), with horizontal designs and action photographs. The cards I pulled were three running backs — Marshall Faulk, Bo Jackson and LaDanian Tomlinson.
There also were three inserts from the 20-card Airborne subset, which is making its debut this year. This insert shows an action shot of the player in a vertical format, with red foil stamped underneath the team logo. The players I pulled were Faulk, Rob Gronkowski and Todd Gurley.
Some of the best passers in NFL are featured in the 20-card Precision Passers insert (another first-year subset), and I pulled three legendary quarterbacks — Troy Aikman, Peyton Manning and Dan Marino. These cards are generously sprinkled with red foil, with the player’s team primary colors used to nice effect.
Even bigger names make up the 40-card Great American Heroes insert set. This is the nicest, most colorful of all the inserts in this product, relying on a patriotic red, white and blue border. The chrome card I pulled was former Chiefs quarterback Len Dawson.
The big hit in the blaster box was a Star Search relic card of Steelers running back James Conner. The card features a black uniform swatch, a gold background and red foil stamping.
The Rookies & Stars football set sports a clean look, and casual collectors can still hope to get some sizzle out of a blaster box. The rookies are tough to collect, but not impossible.