2011 Panini Americana

This set by Panini (formerly Donruss) has been around for a few years. I've even bought a few packs before. It never fails to disappoint. Obviously, Panini wouldn't have trotted this out in 2011 unless it has made money in the past. Who buys this set? I only bought 2 packs ($2.99 for 5 cards) so I don't have a good sample, but it looks like other years. The set is a random collection of minor actresses and actors posed in front of a dull gray background. There were two cards featuring former astronauts in my packs to provide a bit of variety. The collection of people on these cards is so random, I wouldn't have been surprised to find a card featuring me.

Last week I showed some Topps American Pie cards. I like those cards a whole lot better than this Panini set. The Panini cards are a bit shiner and have some gold foil on the front. But the American Pie cards are a much nicer design and actually feature people and things I might want to own.

Here are the 10 cards I have.

First up in this Americana set is British (?) actor John Hurt. You may remember him as the Elephant Man. Me, I always confuse him with William Hurt.

My first astronaut. Personally, I think being an astronaut is one of the top five careers in the world. But there have been a lot of astronauts. What is so special about Barbara Morgan? Apparently she is the third most known woman astronaut, which is too far down the list for me to know her. She was a mission specialist on STS-118 in August 2007. She was also the back-up for Christa McAuliffe and it you don't know who she is, look it up.

God help us, it's Pamela Anderson. Are we tired of her yet?

Randal Kleiser is best known as the producer of the movie adaption of Grease. That was in 1978. As in over 30 years ago. Not exactly a household name, unless you last name is Zuko.

Walt Cunningham, my other astronaut. He was the pilot of the Lunar Module on the Apollo 7 mission, the last Apollo mission not to go to the moon. He's now a talk-show host.

It's that super kid from the TV show Heroes! As near as I can tell he hasn't done much since. But he's only 16 years old so he's got plenty of time to learn how to be an ex-child star.

Linda Evans. Wasn't she on the TV show Dallas? No? Oh, she was on that other big 1980s prime time soap opera I also never watched, Dynasty.

James Duval. I was completely stumped until I looked him up on Wikipedia. He played Frank in the 2001 movie Donnie Darko. I happened to see this movie for the first time a few months ago but still didn't recognize him. He has appeared in a remarkably long list of movies that I never heard of since then.

Hey, Hey, I'm a Monkee! Or at least a Monkee's daughter. According to Wikipedia she is a producer and actress with a long string of obscure (at least to me) credits.

This Linda Hamilton card is from an insert set called "Prime Time Stars". This is one unattractive card, not any fault of Linda. All the empty space on the left is for either a relic or an autograph.

I can imagine that there are people out there who might want one of these cards. Perhaps you are just gaga over the space program and you collect anything even remotely having to do with it. Or if you collect Monkees memorabilia, stuff featuring children of the Fabricated Four may be hard to come by. But really, except out of curiosity, why would anyone buy a box of this stuff.