23/24 Donruss Soccer - Numbered Kabooms? Endrick? K-League?
With release season now truly upon us, product announcements are coming thick and fast with Panini & Topps barely letting a week go by without dropping more info on what’s coming next. This week, it was the surprising release of the Panini 23/24 Donruss Soccer checklist, almost a full week before release no less!
There’s a lot to work through on the checklist, with surprises both good and bad, but here are a few things that caught my eye at first glance.
Black & Gold Kabooms!
The hobby is a funny place, try as Panini & Topps might to introduce new SSP “Case Hit” chases in every new set, the collectors cannot get enough of the classic chases and at the top of that list lives the Kaboom!
23/24 marks the 10-year anniversary of the Kaboom after it was introduced in 13/14 Innovation Basketball set and for the 1st time Panini have introduced numbered variants for Soccer. Each of the 25 Kabooms! featured on the checklist have a Gold Parallel /10 and a Black Parallel /1.
Expect to find 1 Kaboom! per case, with the parallels destined to be some of the biggest Soccer cards released in the last few years!
The checklist itself features 25 players, a lot of which have had Kabooms previously, but personally I think the likes of Messi, Jude & Son missing out on Gold/Black Kabooms would have been a bigger injustice.
Easily the stand-out names on the list are Maradona, Lamine Yamal & Endrick. One of the greatest of all time and the two biggest rookies of 23/24. Yes, please, and thank you Panini.
Endrick has arrived!
The latest “Brazilian Wonderkid” announced himself to the world in March against England at Wembley, coming off the bench for Brazil to score the winner. He is just 17 years old and already signed to join Real Madrid in July for a fee that reportedly exceeds £50m!.
Endrick ticks every single box for hobby investors. Big Nation. Big Club. Striker. Flair. Goalscoring Ability & Youth. Since Panini refuse to put Brazil into Donruss (more on that later) they have cleverly picked up licencing for Palmeiras (and River Plate) allowing them to get the young star into 23/24 sets.
He is treated to Rated Rookie Paper/Optic, The Rookies & Rookie Kings inserts as well as an SSP Kaboom! You won’t see him in many other releases this year, so expect pricing to be astronomical, especially on his Kaboom! – The Gold and Black Kabooms will be some of the biggest chases in this product!
Why is/isn’t **insert team/country** in the checklist?
It’s called The World Game for a reason and contrary to the NBA, NFL & MLB releases which only have a set number of teams, Panini has the unenviable job of putting together Soccer checklists based on dozens of teams across the globe.
I do wish that the card manufacturers would offer some insight into why they make the decisions they do. Is it licencing-based? Budget restrictions? Contract requirements? Simply decision-making? It would be great to know.
Most of the big omissions are international teams – Netherlands, Belgium & Brazil to name a few. Brazil has been absent from most non-tournament Panini products for a while, so that most likely is a contractual thing.
I also do believe Panini’s product design teams have budgets they need to work within, meaning they can’t put every single star or team into a product even if they wanted too. Superstar auto’s don’t come cheap and finding a balance of product cost vs quality is going to be a never-ending battle.
That leads into the biggest surprise on the checklist, the appearance of Korean Leagues FC Seoul & Suwon Samsung Bluewings. If I had to guess, I’d say Panini had plenty of left-over auto stickers from last year's K-League Prizm release and had to find a home for them. Or perhaps they were contractually obliged, as a part of obtaining the licence to include them in future products. Either way, they have 10 autos between them so will be popping up more than most would like. There is a big market for the K-League, but I’m not so sure on the amount of cross-over into the hobby.
Overall there is a lot to be excited about with Donruss Soccer. Current release date is scheduled for Friday 10th May (USA) / Saturday 11th May (AU/NZ/Asia). Make sure you have joined the Neon Trading Cards WhatsApp Community in the links below to find out exactly when our first breaks are dropping and to get involved in the discussion!