2013 Panini Cooperstown - First Look

I picked up 5, 6-card packs of 2013 Panini Cooperstown the other day, since I had liked last year's set. Here's what I said last year. The cards were a bit more expensive this year ($0.72/card vs $0.62/card) and I don't like them as much. They are a bit dark for my taste. I do like the new feature in the back. Last's years cards featured a short player bio, this year's have a line score from a game in which the player made a significant contribution. Pretty much all the inserts are different and there are a lot more parallel cards this year. Not necessarily a good thing. There are relic and auto cards as well which I didn't expect to find in loose packs, and I didn't.

Here's card #2

The fronts are glossy but the backs are not. There are 110 cards in the base set, with cards 101-110 being short prints. Good luck with trying to complete this set by buying packs. In the 30 cards I got, only 19 were base cards. At least there were no duplicates. Here are a few more.

"Big Dan" played from 1879 to 1904. He was 6"2' and weighed 207 pounds. He was a feared slugger. This photo is from an early baseball card which you can see on his Wikipedia page.

I always like getting old Phillies in these kinds of sets.

One more , this terrifying photo of Bob Gibson.

There are several different colored "crystal" parallels. I got this red one (numbered to 399) and a green one which is unnumbered.

The finish reminds me a little of the "cognac' cards from 2011 Topps.

Here's an Orange parallel which looks a little like Topps Chrome. These are numbered to 325.  All of the parallel sets have only 100 cards.

Every pack has one of these in it. Colgin's Chips.

 And good luck getting all of these. There are 165 disks in the set at one per pack.

A new insert this year is "Historic Tickets".

 

I pulled one of this 25-card set.

Panini Cooperstown Induction is the one insert returning from last year.

And finally the last insert I pulled, Panini Cooperstown International Play

Lots of sets over the years have had similar ideas for subsets but does it make sense to call a player from Puerto Rico an 'international player'?