Best Football Boxes for all budgets (Panini & Topps)
As a beginner entering the hobby of card collecting, seeing all these price tags may be very daunting, and potentially put you off the idea of purchasing products. You may not know which products are good value and if you're looking to make your first purchase, unsure of which box to buy. So, to save you guys the hassle, I've compiled three products from the two major trading card companies,Topps and Panini, with a sealed box for a low budget, medium budget and high budget.
Panini:
Low Range: For the low budget for Panini, I've chosen the score retail box. Coming in at around £60 (or £3 a pack) this is the lower end box on the market for beginners. There are 10 cards per pack, with 20 packs in the box. You can collect your favourite players from all 20 premier league teams. Each box contains 3
numbered parallels, 5 red parallels and 12 inserts. You are guaranteed 3 numbered cards, ranging from 1/1, 1/5, 1/10/, 1/15,1/25,1/49, 1/99 which would be a nice addition to your starter collection. These boxes are available to buy on eBay or your local Smyths Toys Superstore. With a box containing the possibility of autos and guaranteed numbered cards what can go wrong? In this set, we believe that these are the 3 rookies you should keep an eye on: Olise, Martinelli and Livramento. To see how good the packs actually are, we went ahead and bought 2 boxes, and in the process we managed to pull a Raphinha auto /99! Big fans? definitely!
Mid Range: For the mid budget, I've chosen the 2021/22 Panini Prizm Premier League Soccer Breakaway Box. You can pick one of these boxes up for around £135. Make sure to be on the lookout for all the youngest stars who are lighting up the Premier League at the moment, like Saka, Foden, Harvey Elliot etc. The one autograph card makes this box a very fun rip and at a reasonable price tag, definitely a product you should consider. Prizms, 8 additional hobby-exclusive base Prizms, and 6 insert cards per box on average. The set even includes cards of the greatest Premier League stars, as well as dual autographs! The one autograph card every 2 boxes and guaranteed numbered cards makes this box a very fun rip, and at a reasonable price tag,
definitely a product you should consider.
High Range: For the high end of a Panini product, We've chosen the Panini obsidian soccer hobby box. You can pick this box up for around £375, making it quite a pricey product. In this set we believe that these are the Top 3 rookies : Joe Gelhardt base /105, Armando Broja base /105, Devyne Rensch /105. Be sure to keep your eye on these three cards in the set! Overall we absolutely love the designs and it is an excellent set. There are 3 autograph card sets, 3 memorabilia card sets, and 4 autograph and memorabilia card sets. There are one pack per box, with 7 cards in the singular pack. You'll uncover 4 autographs or memorabilia
cards. This box is a high-risk high reward product, with potential to pull an amazing card with lots of value.One negative about the set is in regards to the patches. Patches and Autos for us are like heaven. Pulling a player's auto or something they wore is an amazing feeling that we were hoping to see again in Obsidian. It's safe to say our expectations were cut short. With the recurring theme of non associated patches, is it something you like? For us its a big no.
Topps:
Low Range: Another set that certainly won the hearts of many collectors with its simple yet sleek design. Despite it being a Spain exclusive, it is an amazing set we'd have hoped had been released worldwide.Printed through Topps On Demand service, this release was marketed to only be on sale for just 7 days but sold out in a matter of hours. For the low budget we've chosen the Topps simplicidad box, which offers 25 cards per box, and 1 in 3 boxes will contain an autograph. These boxes come in around £70 on eBay, making it very affordable. When opening these boxes, you'll be on the hunt for all the young rookies such as Bellingham, Pedri, Ansu Fati. Are we fans of its simplicity and photography? Big yes!
Mid Range: For the Mid range budget, We've chosen the Merlin 97 product by Topps. At retail, this box was released at £100, but after quickly selling out on release, you'll have to be paying around £175 for the resell price.You'll uncover 2 numbered card, and one numbered autograph card per box, including lots of inserts and rookies. There are Rookies, Graffiti inserts, Legend cards,Captains and Action cards printed on retro foils. The cards have an amazing retro like design, and look amazing, and are a nice collection to start collecting when first buying. In regards to this set, we love the checklist with the possibility of dual autos such as Camavinga and Vinicius Jr. We've opened a few of these and pulled some incredible autos, one of our favourite products of the year in our opinon!
High Range: For the high budget of Topps products, I've gone with the 2021-22 Topps Museum Collection UEFA Champions League. The original price of this box was £240 on the Topps website but sold out on release. So, if you wanted to pick one up now from eBay, you'd have to pay a price tag of around £280. There are 8 cards per pack, with one pack per box. The most common autographs are archival autographs and rookie reverence autographs. Archival Dual Autographs (/25) come with a pair of
signatures. You can also pull framed autographs, numbered from /50, /25 and /1. You can also pull memorabilia cards, with patches and match worn cards. Overall, we are big fans of the museum set and the huge card to watch out for was the 1/1 Ronaldo and Messi auto which was pulled on China. What a card!
We hope you've enjoyed reading this and we'd be happy to get your thoughts!