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Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ranking the five best insert sets of the ultra-modern era
Though the sports card hobby has recently been dominated by record sales for high-end patches and autographs, future collectors might look back on the ultra-modern era as a time when iconic inserts reimagined how cards are designed. From old designs that were revived to fresh ideas that spawned a number of spinoffs, here are five inserts that have defined the era. 1. Kaboom Considered arguably the most important insert of the ultra-modern era, no insert set has performed as well on the secondary market and influenced as many spin-offs as Kaboom. Advertisement First designed for Panini's 2013-14 Innovation Basketball, the players were hand-drawn by illustrator Gyula Nemeth to resemble comic-book superheroes. The concept immediately captivated collectors and has since become one of the hobby's most coveted chases. In addition to selling extremely well on the secondary market, the comic-style design has inspired a number of insert sets in the years since, including Manga, Presentations and Prizmania. In 2025, the set made its debut in Revolution Basketball with the athletes again hand-drawn by Nemeth following an extended period with more photo-realistic player designs. To date, the highest public record for any Kaboom card is the $225,000 paid in a private sale for a 2018 Panini LeBron James Kaboom Gold /10 BGS 9.5 in 2024. 2. Downtown While insert sets such as Color Blast and Blank Slate thrive on simplicity, the iconic Downtown cards have been anything but. Advertisement First introduced in 2016-17 Panini Studio Basketball as 'From Downtown,' the set has always featured backgrounds unique to the city of the featured player. The set moved to Panini Cornerstones for 2017 before finally appearing in 2018 Optic Football. Downtown has been a beloved chase for the Optic brand since and is now highly coveted among football and basketball collectors. Downtown will make its debut with the WNBA as part of 2025 Donruss WNBA. According to public records, the highest sale for any Downtown card to date is the $108,000 paid for the 2020 Optic Joe Burrow Downtown Gold Vinyl 1/1 BGS 7.5 at Goldin in 2022. 3. Color Blast Since debuting in 2019 Prizm Baseball, Color Blast has quickly become one of the standout chases from the era. Advertisement The design is simple but effective, and features a basic player action shot over a colorful backdrop. The design of the blast itself varies from set to set. In the years since its launch, Color Blast has expanded to feature more sports and more sets, and has now been spread across basketball, football and soccer as well as the Obsidian, Spectra and Select sets. Originally featuring a white background, the Color Blast Black design debuted with 2023-24 Obsidian Basketball and has since expanded to Obsidian Football and Select WNBA. The highest public sale for any card from the set is the $40,000 paid for a 2019-2020 Panini Spectra LeBron James Color Blast BGS 10 Black Label in 2020. 4. Stained Glass Often associated with the Topps Gallery 'Gallery of Heroes' insert set, the stained glass design was revived during the ultra-modern era by Panini America for 2012-13 Innovation Basketball. Like its predecessor, the cards featured a transparent design and were created using acetate rather than the traditional paperstock. Advertisement The set later earned more widespread appeal when it landed in 2019-20 Panini Mosaic Basketball with an updated design, and it has since thrived as part of multiple Prizm Football releases. To date, the highest public sale for any Stained Glass insert, according to Card Ladder's records, is the $48,000 paid for the 2018 Prizm Josh Allen Stained Glass Black Finite 1/1 in 2024. Overall, Card Ladder's records have tracked at least nine sales for Stained Glass cards of $20,000 or more and more than 50 sales of $10,000 or more. 5. Blank Slate Sometimes simple is better, and Blank Slate has carried that theme since its introduction to the hobby in 2017-18 Panini Court Kings Basketball. Advertisement The design is anchored by a simple action shot over a bare background. Blank Slate long featured exclusively a white background, but Panini later introduced black and gold backgrounds. Though most associated with Court Kings Basketball, Blank Slate has expanded to reach the NFL and WNBA under the Origins brand. One lesser-known fact about Blank Slate has been the card's long history of exceptionally high gem rates, possibly due to the card's textured surface and white background. The card has been less likely to gem when featuring black and gold backgrounds. According to Card Ladder, the highest public sale for a Blank Slate card to date is the $17,520 paid for a 2017 Court Kings LeBron James Blank Slate BGS 10 Black Label in 2025. Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture. He was previously the Collectibles Editor at Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on X and Instagram @benmburrows.
Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Five innovations that changed sports cards: From refractors to inserts to autos
The sports and trading card hobby has experienced hundreds of changes and innovations since the earliest issues arrived in the 1800s. And though Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin recently placed his company's introduction of the Rookie Debut Patch Autograph card at the top of that hierarchy, there are a number of innovations that have arguments for changing the course of collecting. Advertisement Here are five sports card innovations that cllct believes reshaped the hobby for good. 1. Pack-inserted autographs Upper Deck's 1989 "Find the Reggie" campaign placed 2,500 signed Reggie Jackson cards into packs. (Credit: eBay) Autograph chasing has long been part of the hobby, but Upper Deck changed collecting entirely when it delivered the first pack-inserted autographs in 1990. Just a year after revolutionizing the hobby with the first premium baseball card product in 1989, Upper Deck's 'Find the Reggie' campaign saw the company place 2,500 autographed Reggie Jackson cards into 1990 Upper Deck Baseball High Series packs. Those first pack-inserted Reggie Jackson autographs are credited by many as the hobby's first 'chase' cards, and decades later, pack-pulled autographs are often key parts of many of the most important products. Advertisement In the ultra-modern era of collecting, on-card autographs are among the most coveted chases while sticker autographs, which are signed in bulk and placed on the card at a later date, are popular but less desirable. 2. Game-used memorabilia Cards featuring game-used jerseys and memorabilia have changed the game. (Credit: eBay) Though the Rookie Debut Patch has a good argument as one of the hobby's greatest innovations, it's hard to ignore the earliest iterations of memorabilia and jersey cards that came before it. Press Pass started the game-used memorabilia trend — or in this case, race-used — when it included race-used NASCAR tires in the 1996 Press Pass Burning Rubber set. Upper Deck then introduced game-used jerseys into cards with 1996-97 Upper Deck Hockey, and the hobby has been chasing swatches of fabric ever since. Advertisement Where the Rookie Debut Patch does deserve credit is how it links the card's patch to a specific moment in time. The ultra-modern era of collecting has been plagued by ambiguous language to describe memorabilia, with descriptions ranging from game-used and player-worn to the dreaded 'not associated with any player, team or event' language. Collectors want to know when and where the patches were worn, and no program has done a better job at connecting a card to a moment than the RDPA. 3. Refractors and parallels Considered one of the most influential and important sets of all time, 1993 Topps Finest Baseball arrived as an ultra-premium product with chromium stock and the hobby's first refractors. Advertisement Featuring a rainbow-like finish, refractors easily stand out compared to their base counterparts, and are now among the most important chases in the hobby. The success of 1993 Finest not only led to expanded chrome offerings across various manufacturers, the introduction of the refractor laid the foundation for the 'rainbow' chase. Though Topps' basic 'Refractor' and Panini America's 'Silver Prizm' are highly coveted, the ultra-modern era of collecting now features hundreds of different refractors and parallel variations that range from popular colors such as Red, Green, Blue, Black and Gold to geometric patterns such as Prism, RayWave, X-Fractor, Mojo, Shock and Cracked Ice. There are even animal-themed parallels such as Zebra, Tiger, Snakeskin and Elephant. Advertisement For some hobbyists, collecting the entire 'rainbow' of parallels for a player or team is a key part of the experience. The concept of 'color-matching,' which pairs the colors on a team's jersey with the color of a parallel, has also become extremely popular during the era. 4. Super short-printed inserts Depending on one's preferred definition, insert cards can be dated back to some of the hobby's most influential early sets. There's little doubt interest exploded in the 1990s, however, and the hobby hasn't been the same since. Featuring their own themes and designs separate from the base set, insert cards have become some of the most coveted chases in recent decades — super short-printed inserts can even eclipse key rookie cards on the secondary market. Advertisement Originating in the '90s, inserts such as Precious Metal Gems, Scoring Kings, Jambalaya and Big Man on Court have resonated with collectors years later. Today, the ultra-modern era of collecting has been dominated by inserts such as Kaboom, Color Blast, Downtown and Stained Glass. 5. Print-to-demand Topps NOW ties a specific moment to an instant card. (Credit: Topps) The current marketplace for print-to-demand cards was first introduced with Panini Instant and Topps NOW in 2016, and though it took years to catch on, the concept has carved out a significant place in the hobby during the ultra-modern era. Hoping to capture important moments as they happen, the Instant and NOW programs design cards that are available a la carte during a limited release window. Collectors can purchase as many cards as they desire, and the companies print the cards needed to fulfill all orders. Advertisement Interest in print-to-demand cards was relatively light to start, but has since exploded as Panini has included more autographs and parallels, and Topps has added random chases that can be included with orders of the base card. The print-to-demand market experienced its biggest moment when Topps released a NOW card celebrating Team USA's gold medal in the 2024 Olympic Games. Topps added a number of 1/1 chase cards to the drop, including a triple autograph of LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. The chase for the triple autograph resulted in collectors purchasing 588,035 base cards — a then-record for the NOW program. The triple autograph remains one of the most important cards that has yet to surface publicly. Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture. He was previously the Collectibles Editor at Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on X and Instagram @benmburrows.
