I like giveaways in just about every form they come in. When you look at how much they impact the card industry, its not hard to see why they work. We are spending money on a product with randomized content, most of the time not worth close to the purchase price. Therefore, added value provided in giveaways help, especially when the products turn out to be terrible.

Panini announced special Damian Lillard cards to be given away when collectors buy a big amount of older basketball products, which is both good and bad. Good, because Lillard’s cards are selling like hotcakes now that he has licensed examples. Bad, because many of Panini’s basketball products have been as bad as a lot of their football products. Those are the products you have to spend as much as $1000 to qualify. Included products that are part of the program include Intrigue, Innovation, Elite Series, Signature, and a few others.

Lillard is Panini’s go to guy as long as they have him on loan, for obvious reasons. Check out some of his recent value now that he has licensed cards outside the Leaf exclusive:

2013 Panini Flawless Damian Lillard Auto RC /15

2013 Panini Intrigue Damian Lillard Auto RC

2013 Panini Flawless Damian Lillard Auto Patch

Luckily for collectors, these cards will command a VERY high premium for most of the ones you can pull, especially the National Treasures. If you look at how high ones like Kyrie Irving are selling for, it’s a no brainer that these cards will be quite desirable. However, if you buy into the giveaway and cant get one of the packs, many of the products that are listed are so terrible, that your money will be up in flames.

I think this is a great way to help out the shops that have shelves stuffed with Panini crap, and these cards are a huge incentive for anyone to try to get the points. Lillard had a bunch of cards in Flawless as mentioned above, and im curious to find out why Panini chose this method to deliver the cards instead of potentially adding them to a product that could have used the wow factor in many ways.

Basketball collectors might be the most unusual group of people in the hobby, if not only because of the volatile ways cards can be priced. I am curious to see how this works out, but at the very least, you can spend some money to get boxes, and then sell the Lillard giveaway card to recoup all cost spent. That is a pretty good trade off to me.