Over the last few years, Panini has rightly used the Super Bowl as a platform to clear out the shelves of their online store. The Super Bowl promo provides an encased autograph card in a one pack box when you buy one of the products they have on sale for the game. Its all the usual suspects of crap, products selling at full price despite being offered at less than dealer cost at many other outlets. The kicker is that you get one of these special boxes with each purchase, and the boxes DO have some nice hits in them.

Here are some examples from previous years:

2014 Panini Private Signings Super Bowl Rod Woodson Auto

2014 Panini Private Signings Super Bowl Jim Plunkett Auto

2014 Panini Private Signings Super Bowl Eddie George Auto

Here are this year’s cards:

2015 Panini Super Bowl Private Signings Peyton Manning Auto 1/5

2015 Panini Super Bowl Private Signings Emmitt Smith Auto 1/1

2015 Panini Super Bowl Private Signings Russell Wilson Auto 1/1

2014 Panini Super Bowl Private Signings Marshawn Lynch Auto /5

2015 Panini Super Bowl Johnny Manziel Rookie Patch Auto

Now, as they have been in previous years, the cards are all stickers, some of good players, with some huge duds mixed in. Either way, the 2015 version of these cards are pretty nice, and like last year will command some nice prices INITIALLY. Like many of the Panini promo cards, it is only going to be valuable as long as people are aware to look for them, and that only lasts for a certain amount of time. Once that time expires, the cards will drop significantly. If you are in the market for singles, wait. JUST WAIT.

As for buying boxes, the packs do add a level of allure to purchasing what I will refer to as dead product. Products that even if you pull a great card wont cover even close to the cost of the box. More importantly, if you buy any of the boxes that are still left in the promo, you are definitely going to be left behind in terms of what you are going to pull. Buying Elite at 120 bucks is going to be a bloodbath, even though it was nicer when it was released. These products are just too far past shelf life. When collectors can buy Contenders or National Treasures with this, then ill change my tune. However, with many Panini promos, its about clearing shelves, not helping collectors.

Unlike other promos though, these packs guarantee an autograph, and some of the autographs are really nice. With the National convention packs, and the Fathers day packs, you are more likely to pull shit rather than anything nice. Very much like we should expect, when Panini needs to clear their own shelves, they offer nicer stuff, rather than clearing dealer shelves on a mass scale with the Black Friday promo and the like. Because there is less product to clear, they can offer better stuff.

The 120 bucks you will spend on this, you need to hit a nice card in the promo pack or you will lose. Its pretty simple. Its not that bad of a situation though, and if you were early enough to get other boxes, it might be a better deal. I would maybe buy a box on ebay loose just to check out what you can pull. It wont be a total loss as the cards have been selling nicely. They will calm down though, so get to buying if you are thinking about it. The longer you wait, the more the cards will drop.