At least one each: Gifted Grinders Scraps, Rookie Roll Call Materials, Epix Materials, Z-Team, Team Logo Die-Cuts and many more!
HIGHLIGHTS
Dare to Tear is back! The classic 90s chase element has been upgraded for a new generation of collectors! Inside each oversized card is a hidden collectible…will it be a card from the base set, or a spectacular exclusive signed Rookie Card from National Treasures, Donruss Elite or other Panini program! One Dare to Tear jumbo tops every box of Zenith!
Yours Truly Autographs feature on-card sigs from the hobby’s most popular stars including Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Steven Stamkos, Ray Bourque and many more!
Chase Autographed Rookies SPs limited to just 199 copies and featuring the hobby’s hottest first-year players, including Taylor Hall, Jeff Skinner, Cam Fowler and more!
A brief Q&A on Zenith Hockey with Al Muir,
Panini America’s Hockey Brand Manager:
Q: Of all the legendary brands at your disposal, why Zenith?
A: Couple of reasons, actually. First, I was a big fan of Zenith back in the old days. Like a lot of collectors, I have fond memories of the technologies, the hot RCs of Vinnie Lecavalier and Roberto Luongo and yeah, the Dare to Tear cards. It just seemed like a program that offered both a nostalgic tug as well as an opportunity to update it to make it compelling for modern hobbyists.
Q: You’re bringing back the Dare To Tear element that was such a phenomenon in the hockey market back in the day. What’s the hook this time around?
A: The key to making this work is to force collectors to make a tough decision. Each Dare to Tear Jumbo will feature either a true RC or one of hockey greatest legends and it will be fairly limited. If you tear one, you’re destroying a sure thing…but what you find inside might just make it all worthwhile. Along with base cards and Epix inserts, we’re seeding in RCs you won’t find anywhere else, including National Treasures and Donruss Elite cards of Taylor Hall, Jeff Skinner and many more. We also have autographed versions of the unsigned RCs that are inserted in base packs, along with a number of other surprises.
RCs seem to be the biggest draw of the program. What can you tell us about the staggering amount of freshman content?
A: Obviously rookies have to be a compelling part of any modern program, but Zenith just developed into something else in a really organic way. We originally planned for 50 RCs, but there was a tremendous influx of first-year talent in December and January that forced us to reconsider the possibilities. We know collectors want to see these players and as quickly as possible, so Zenith provided the proverbial window of opportunity. As more rookies made their debuts, we reconfigured the product to add more and more of them. Eventually, we ended up with three tiers of RCs, both signed and unsigned, within the base set. Then we added more RCs as part of the Dare to Tear program, both as jumbos and as some of the elements that collectors will pursue within the jumbos. We knew we weren’t going to make National Treasures or Elite as full-on hockey programs this year, so we created mini-versions of these almost as extensions to our basketball or football programs of the same name. It’s a unique approach that’s really in keeping with the experimental nature of the original Zenith.
So, in a way, Zenith can almost be seen as a pilot for potential future releases of National Treasures and Donruss Elite hockey?
A: We’ll definitely gauge how collectors respond to these in the secondary market. If the demand is there, we could certainly spin them off into their own entities as we move forward.
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