Today we take a look at a couple of case hits from Panini and Topps. Panini has put Color Blasts (Search on eBay) and Kabooms (Search on eBay) throughout their soccer product line in since 2018. Topps started putting Prized Football Fusions in their Topps Finest UEFA releases starting in 2019-20. Let’s dig deeper into the cards and see if the current market value makes sense for each.
Panini Color Blast and Kaboom
Two of the most sought after inserts in the soccer card hobby are Kabooms and Color Blasts. Both come out of Panini products and are considered at least case hits and sometimes rarer depending on the product. Of course, Panini does not provide pack odds so we don’t know the true count for these. So far for soccer we have had 3 Color Blast release. The 1st coming in 2019-2020 Prizm Premier League. The supposed rate on these was 1 in every 8-10 cases depending who you believe. That is definitely rare by today’s standards. It seems that the following years benefitted from that rarity. Color Blasts supposedly become case hits in 2020-2021 Prizm Premier League. For 2021-22 the rumor is they became more rare and you needed to open multiple hobby cases to hit one. They also have been in Obsidian Soccer since 2020. This is where we know for sure the print run went up. There should be about 160 of these black Color Blasts. In 2021 Obsidian there are 175 Color Blasts of each player. While still short print certainly not short short print like its predecessors. Remember this print run for later.
Now onto Kabooms. Kabooms first showed up for soccer in 2017-2018 Select. We don’t know the exact print on Kabooms as they showed up in hobby boxes as well as retail hanger boxes. We do know based on graded pop counts that they are over 70 graded. If we had to guess the print run is in the 150-200 range. The next Kabooms were actually courtesy of the Panini Rewards multi sport packs in 2018. This is where we find the 1st Mbappe Kaboom. We know based on pop counts at least 140 of these were graded. That means there were sure over 150 printed of each. The next installment of Kabooms came in 2019/2020 Prizm Premier League. Based on the graded pops we know at least 60 have been graded. Compared to the Color Blasts from this set the Kabooms aren’t nearly as rare. 2020-2021 Prizm Premier League was the next installment of Kaboom. So far the highest number of graded for a single player in there is 30. That is likely to do a relatively weak checklist and the fact that so much is still unopened due to the product not being much in demand. The print runs on those is likely at the same level if not higher than the years before.
Topps Finest Prized Footballers Fusion
Now let’s talk about Topps case hits. Did you even know that there are Topps case hits? It seems most people don’t. Topps is nice enough to give us pack odds unlike Panini so figuring out these print runs is much easier. Could it be this lack of knowledge is the reason for the price discrepancy? Let’s dig into the numbers.
The first hit we will talk about is Prized Footballers Fusion which first arrived in 2019-2020 Topps Finest UEFA Champions League. Unlike Color Blasts and Kabooms the fusion version of the Prized Footballers is not a stand alone insert. There are regular Prized Footballers which are much more plentiful. Maybe that is part of the problem in the misunderstanding of how rare the fusions are. Here are the Fusion print runs for this set; 40 red/blue (not numbered), 20 red/green (numbered), 10 pink/red (not numbered), 1 black/gold (not numbered, 1 gold/gold (numbered). That puts us at a total print fun for each player of 72. (Check Ebay Listings)
The next installment of Fusion came in 2020-2021 Topps Finest UCL. The design on these were much more colorful with the colors going all the way to the edge of the card and not contained within a border like the previous edition. This made it much easier to tell the difference between the base Prized Footballers and the Fusions. They did increase the print run as they printed more of the product overall. Here is the breakdown by colors; 55 yellow/red, 45 blue/red (numbered), 35 orange/red, 25 green/red (numbered), 10 pink/red, 5 red/red (numbered), 2 black/gold (unnumbered and they are not evenly distributed among players because of production issues) and 1 rose/gold. Since the numbers didn’t break out exact there could be 1 extra for instance the yellow/red is 44.1 to the exact number. That would give us a total print run 173 per player. (Search 2021 Fusions on Ebay)
Updating for 2021-22 Prized Football Fusions which are Blue/Gold ~80, Yellow/Red ~60, Blue/Red ~50, Orange/Red ~40, Green/Red ~30, Pink/Red ~20, Red/Red 5, Black/Gold 1, Rose/Gold 1 (Search On Ebay)
Why The Price Difference?
Outside of the 2019-2020 Panini Color Blasts the print runs on Kabooms, Color Blasts, and Prized Football Fusions are about the same. The prices do not reflect this at all. Let’s look at Ronaldo for a comparison since he has recent sales of all 3. His 2020-2021 Color Blast last sold raw PSA 9 few days ago for $1300. His new 2021/2022 Kaboom last sold raw for $1900. It was the first sale of a new product so it will likely fall a little bit but with the popularity of Kabooms not too much. His most recent Prized Footballer Fusion sale was a yellow/red SGC 10 for $220. The raw version of the same card sold for $90 just before that. There are only 55 of that card. The black/gold Fusion BGS 9.5 sold for $625 in October. Yes someone bought a 1/1 Ronaldo for $625. Think about that. Prized Footballer Fusions sell on average for roughly about 1/10 (Check Ebay listings) of what the comparable case hit print run Kabooms and Color Blasts sell for.
Why is this the case? Can it be simply that enough people don’t know that the print runs are the same? Have influencers done a better job pumping Kaboom and Color Blasts? Do people hate the design on the Fusions that much more than Color Blasts? Fusions and Color Blasts have the same sort of design effect and Color Blasts are horizontal while Fusions are vertical. vertical cards usually outsell horizontal cards. Will you look differently at Fusions now or is this a case of the market has already decided what each is worth? Only time will tell.
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