1997 Pinnacle X-Press / 2020 Panini Diamond Kings & Select Group Break Results

This weekend's group break was a little different as Friday was my birthday and I had to take the break on the road as I was celebrating both my birthday and Father's Day at the beach. This caused the break to get started later than planned and my set up wasn't ideal, but hey when life gives you lemons you make lemonade. We still had some good cards pulled from the boxes so if you weren't able to make the live break Friday evening, below is the video as well as a recap of the highlights.

We'll start off with the box of 1997 Pinnacle X-Press. I actually picked up a lot of these boxes last fall and have been sitting on them for awhile now. I thought this was a fun set even though it must not have sold well for Pinnacle and it was rebranded for it's second release and then ended after that. Made up of mainly horizontal oriented cards, this was meant I believe as a low end entry.

Men of Summer was a gold foil parallel set. These look much nicer in hand than when photographed. There was an interactive game called Swing for the Fences where you could guess the home run leader for each respective league. These game cards also doubled as a insert set. The only other insert we really had a chance of pulling was Far & Away as the Melting Pot inserts were 1:288 packs.

These Men of Summer parallels fell 1:7 packs and as I said earlier, these look much nicer in hand. The McGwire Peak Performer card especially looks really nice.

Far & Away fell 1:18 packs so we beat the odds by pulling two of these. I thought these cards featured Pinnacle's patented Dufex technology, but the silver background is more or less etching. Still nice looking, just not what I expected.

I thought we had fun last week with the hobby box of 2020 Diamond Kings, so I grabbed another box from my LCS while they were still in stock. Then the next day I found two blasters of 2020 Select so I grabbed them. I had already heard the moans and groans regarding the blasters only containing 3 packs so I was hoping people would want to try their hand without having to invest too much money. The break sold out quickly so I guess I was right.

3 more framed parallels, one gray and 2 plum this time. Despite what you may think about Pete Rose, I thought it was cool seeing him included in the checklist.

The Aficionado inserts are very colorful and look great...even the Altuve looks good.

Par the course from the first box, we pulled another 6 of the All Time Diamond Kings inserts, including Trout this time around.

I still think these Artist's Palette inserts are some of the brightest uses of color I've seen on a baseball card.

Love 'em or hate 'em, two more DK206 inserts pulled. This time we got Pete Alonso and Yordan Alvarez.

The DK Originals yielded a pair of players from different points in the game - Rendon for the Angels and Ty Cobb for the Tigers. I know Paul from the Scribbled Ink blog was happy to see this Cobb.

From the days of Donruss Triple Play comes a new version of Gallery of Stars...beautiful!!

The last of the regular inserts are The 3000. Twitter user @jmswyo was very happy to see this George Brett pulled.

The last box yielded an auto of a youngster from San Diego and this time we get a youngster from San Francisco...but this time with two pieces of jersey included. Not serially numbered this time around, but not a bad hit.

Happy birthday to me! I don't always like it when my Braves get a hit as I like for the other participants be the ones to take home the good cards, but I won't lie...pulling such a beautiful card of a Braves player on my birthday was pretty cool. I like bat cards and this is one the best looking game used bat cards I now have in my collection.

Up next we opened two blasters of 2020 Panini Select. I had opened one of these previously for myself and while the cards are absolutely beautiful, I can see why some people say the "value" just isn't there in these $20 blasters. 

None the less we did pull 5 of the retail exclusive Scope Prizm parallels. The more and more I looked at these the more my eyes started hurting with the swirling little circle patterns in the background.

Both of these are regular Prizm parallels, just of different "levels" in the base set. The Realmuto is a beautiful red Prizm and numbered to /199.

A sampling of some of the other inserts: Hot Rookies, Moon Shots, Sensations and this Trout insert (the name of the set escapes me, sorry)

Probably my favorite cards pulled from the blasters were these two Select Stars. I should have photographed the back of the card as it features the green and gold (yellow) from the initial 1992 Select set. The Vladimir Guerrero Jr. card obviously is the Prizm parallel.

Overall this was a another fun break and I'm glad the guys that made the break Friday night seemed to have fun as well. We will be doing some more new product soon (ordered two hobby boxes of 2020 Big League tonight), but next week's break will be going back 24 years and will have a LASER focus on the card design. Look for the next sign up post Monday, 06/22/20.