Chronicling a Group Break - Part 1

It seems logical to move from Rookie Anthology into Chronicles, as it is a set with few cards with the base design per pack, and lots of different looks throughout. Normally, I'd grab the Raptors in a group break of the stuff, but they're pretty threadbare this year, with no variety at all. Just base cards, and an autographed base of Serge Ibaka. With all respect to Serge, that's not enough to get me to grab them.

So, I went the random route. I landed the Knicks, the Grizzlies, and a Heat/Pelicans combo slot in this. The latter had none of the rookie design variants in the set, but still a nice variety among insert autographs. I'm doing this over two posts, so let's split these two up and show off the Eastern teams first with the Knicks and Heat.

The Heat spot didn't bring too much to the table, but the Pelicans side of that combo will more than make up for that. I do like Wade got a nice card to salute his career as it drew to a close.

At least there was a low numbered parallel in there with the Heat position.

The Knicks spot got me my first card of Dennis Smith Jr in Knicks attire, And we get an alternate uniform as well.

For this franchise, blue parallels are pretty appropriate.

I guess you can afford to get a little punny with the 'headlines' used on the chronicle cards when you've got to create write-ups for 700 base cards.

It's about time to finally get into the portion of the sets that chronicle other Panini sets. The top features Playoff, Luminance, and Marquee, with Panini football, and a chrome version of base cards. I like the team colour usage on the Playoff, and the darkened arena look of Luminance. Those would look beautiful with a silver or gold pen autographed version. Maybe next year?

Even numbered cards can be considered part of the base, but for the Plates & Patches portion of the set, the base are actually /249 while this red parallel is /149.

Kevin Knox was a lottery pick last season, going 9th overall. With his base cards, Elite, Studio and Phoenix make their first appearance. I hoped the Studio would take a page from their first baseball releases instead of the recent basketball release to create an interesting card. Alas.

Allonzo Trier was an undrafted player who made the team and got some pretty good reviews of his rookie season. Crusade, which has shown up as both a standalone and insert set in recent Panini releases, gets its first card here. Given my love for Fred VanVleet in Toronto, I always pull for undrafted players.I'll return to Trier shortly.

Hit time! While just doing the last name is only a step up from doing just your initials, I do like how you almost get a star sketch from the H in his name. Sometimes, a little thing can elevate an auto.

And here's a new set to make an appearance. While Timeless Treasures was an insert hit in recent Donruss basketball releases, this one, with an on-card autograph definitely gives more of a vibe of when Timeless Treasures was a upper-mid range standalone set. Camby was the Raptors second first-round draft pick in franchise history. While he had a fine career, that draft also included Kobe Bryant, Ray Allen and Steve Nash.

That's pretty nice. But that's not the big card from the East.

This is!

Gala inserts are the chase cards in the set. It is hard to see the numbering on this, but the Gala cards are limited to 8 each. SSSSPs! They are beautiful, but considering what they're going for on ebay, I'll probably be sending it off to COMC to recover the cost of this break and then some.

Halfway there! I'll shift slightly westward in the next post with cards from the Grizzlies and Pelicans, and if I'm going to sell one of the better cards from this break, I might as well keep a nice one as well.