2012 Panini Americana Heroes & Legends

Last year I did a post on the 2011 Panini Americana set. I had only bought a few packs, really just to see what they looked like. I sort of liked them but wondered why anyone would buy a box of the stuff. Well, that was last year. This year, I actually bought a box. The set has been renamed Panini Americana Heroes & Legends. The set seems to be a bit re-purposed as well. Last year the cards mainly featured celebrities, some of whom I didn't even know. This year the set is a combination of American Presidents, American women soccer players, American Olympic athletes, astronauts,  and Tuskegee airmen.  Here's a sample.

2012 Panini Americana Heroes & Legends #35 John F. Kennedy

All the cards feature black and white photography. The 125-card set has all the presidents, in chronological order, numbered the same as their presidency. I don't know if they have a second card for presidents who served more than 1 term.

2012 Panini Americana Heroes & Legends #69 Cari Lloyd

The rest of the cards aren't in blocks of similar cards. I don't have a checklist but my sense, based on what I got in the box is that there are roughly the same number of women soccer players, astronauts and Olympians and a lot fewer airmen. The backs of all the cards are the same whereas the bottom border changes depending on the subset.

2012 Panini Americana Heroes & Legends #79 Mark Spitz

 All of the women soccer players and Olympians are action shots.

2012 Panini Americana Heroes & Legends #97 Robert Crippen

  All of the astronauts that I got are retired but sill alive. And almost all of them are astronauts from relatively early in the program, which means they are pretty old today. Crippen, for example, is 75 years old. The youngest astronaut I got was born in 1952.

2012 Panini Americana Heroes & Legends Roscoe Brown

  I only pulled three of these. All feature the airman in flight gear.

There are a number of insert cards, including relic and autographs.

2012 Panini Americana Heroes & Legends USA Women's Soccer #4 Amy Rodriguez/Jill Loyden

 I got one of this 22-card insert set. I don't know anything about insert ratios.

2012 Panini Americana Heroes & Legends Olympics #25 Rowdy Gaines

There are 30 of these, split evenly between summer and winter sports.

2012 Panini Americana Heroes & Legends Relics #45 Alan Bean

The box didn't guarantee a relic card so I was happy to pull this. An astronaut relic would have been my second choice after a President relic. The photo in the front is the same as the Bean card in the base set. There are 45 of these numbered the same as the base set. The card doesn't have anything to say about where this piece of cloth came from, just that it "is guaranteed by Panini". There are also relic and autograph versions of the other insert cards.

2012 Panini Americana Heroes & Legends Military Elite #8 Roscoe Draper

The inserts are all based on the subsets in the base set. Draper is a Tuskegee airman. Don't know anything else about him. I was able to find Wikipedia articles on everyone in the box except Draper and one of the women soccer players.

2012 Panini Americana Heroes & Legends Astronaut #12 Hoot Gibson

Perhaps the only baseball connection in the whole set, Mr. Gibson was born in Cooperstown, NY.