Panini's 2013 Black Friday promotion

Ok, I admit it. I got up early Friday morning and drug my turkey-sated, tryptophan-laden carcass out to take part in a Black Friday shopping spree. But, it's not what you think. The only store I visited was RyansCardz, one of my local brick and mortar card stores here in the Des Moines-area.

I found some sweet discounts, picking up a box of Panini Prizm Baseball, a box of Panini Prizm Hockey and some card supplies. What really sealed the deal, however, was the fact Panini helped sweeten the pot by providing dealers 2013 Panini Black Friday promo packs.

The promo set, consisting of baseball, football, basketball and hockey, has an exclusive base set featuring 49 regular cards and 12 Rookie Memorabilia cards, numbered to 99. Parallels include, Cracked Ice, with a reflective background, single-color Progression Proofs, 2013-14 Select Hockey Red prizm parallel cards, and Tools of the Trade cards, with swatches of colorful towels used at the photo shoots. Other memorabilia cards include NBA Championship cards honoring the Miami Heat, Breast Cancer Awareness and Rookie Materials.

Since Ryan noticed packs with memorabilia cards were thicker, he provided a "thick" pack for every box purchased, as well as a regular pack for every $25 spent on Panini products. I was somewhat surprised I didn't pull a single baseball card.

Not that I give a fiddler's fart, but the Black Friday set also includes "musicians" DJ Kool, Tupac, the Notorious B.I.G. and Snoop Dogg. These HRX cards have a QR code that allows you to access an "exclusive video." Unfortuantely, as you can see, I received one of those wastes of cardboard.

As for the "goodies," here's what I pulled...

A couple of the Red Prizm Hocky cards were pulled earlier that morning. I had the "luck" to pull a  Trey Bryan Tools of the Trade card, with a blue/white towel swatch. To me, basketball is a wuss sport, I'll take hockey any day and I'd ratherhave pulled one of those Prizm cards. The Wes Welker card is considered a Lava Flow card, due to its wavy background. The Flacco has a blue swatch.

These promo packs are supposed to have randomly inserted autographs, but according to Ryan, no one had pulled any of those to that point.

All these cards, except for the Stamkos and Crosby are up for trade, if anyone's interested.

Not too bad for a little early Christmas shopping, eh?