Panini previews 2012 Certified football

Posted Jun 27, 2012 by Bob D'Angelo

Updated Jun 27, 2012 at 10:33 PM

Prestige Football hit the shelves today, but Panini America continues to look forward. Certainly, there will be a nice buzz with Prestige, but Panini is already excited about its Sept. 12 release of 2012 Certified Football.

After looking at some of the mock-up cards, it’s easy to see why.

The set will coincide with the beginning of the 2012 NFL season, and there will be 350 cards in the base set. That breaks down to 150 current NFL stars, 50 Immortals, 50 Immortals Materials, 65 New Generation rookie cards, and 35 Freshman Fabric autograph memorabilia cards numbered to 499 or less.

A hobby box will contain four autograph or memorabilia cards, three Mirror parallels, one Immortal, a New Generation rookie card and one other insert or parallel card.

Certified Skills and Fabric of the Game inserts return with some nice twists. For example, Fabric of the Game will include die-cuts, larger memorabilia versions and autograph cards, and there will scarcer versions of each.

A new insert will be Essential Signatures, which will be signature cards of 15 “must-collect players” for 2012.

Mirror Material will contain gold, emerald and black inserts, featuring swatches of material or autographs. These cards will be numbered to 25 or less.

Dipping into the vaults, Panini is showcasing the John Elway Collection. For the first time since 1999 Rookies & Stars, this insert will honor some of Elway’s greatest performances and achievements. This will include large swatches of game-worn memorabilia and autograph versions of these cards numbered to 10 or less.

An example of the Elway Collection is included in this post, and you can see how large the swatch is. All of the usual 2012 NFL draft icons will be showcased in this product — Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III, Ryan Tannehill and Trent Richardson, to name a few.

These players will also be featured in an insert set called Rookie Combo NFL Shields. That insert looks a little bit redundant — each player is featured above an NFL logo in the shape of a shield — but it is certain to be a coveted collectible due to the players featured on the card.

Certified looks like it will be a very interesting product to collect. I am particularly interested in the Immortals cards; game-used or autographs of some of the NFL’s greats would be nice cards to pull. Panini is promising more information as the release date draws closer, so look for more updates.