General Forum

I haven't bought any racing cards since the mid 90's and don't know much about the newer stuff.

I was in Target a few weeks ago and they had a 2016 Panini Torque box marked down. So I bought it and once I got it home there was only 1 pack in the box. Is this normal for Racing cards today, or just one of the high priced sets?

Also for those that do collect these what are the best sets to go after? I see Maxx isn't around anymore and I liked them back in the 90s.

For most of Panini's blasters you don't get much. Torque and Absolute Racing have only one pack per box. Select has three. Donruss has 6 per blaster and has an actual, collectible set. Torque and Absolute Racing both have sets, but you get only two or three per box, not really collectible. Both are 100 cards in the base set. Select is decent but is all chrome- think of it as Finest for NASCAR.

Donruss came out first this year, so you might not be able to find it at retail easily anymore. (I did a hobby box in March 2017, and it wasn't brand new)  But if you want to build a set, that't the one...although it will probably frustrate you. The first 30 something cards are short printed, and the last 30something are also short printed. What are normally inserts in the other sports, like (Whatever) Kings...in basketball Rebound Kings is an insert. In NASCAR Race Kings is a short printed part of the base set.

There is also National Treasures which is $400 for 5 cards, but it's really not a set. It's a memorabilia delivery system. It's the only Panini NASCAR set that does not go to retail.

Panini considers Donruss to be the flagship set, by the way.

Select is sort of buildable as a set- the first 100 cards are normal printed. #101-140 are short printed enough that I've done three blasters of the set, and got one of them out of all three blasters combined. I don't know if it's better in hobby, because I can't afford that anymore...and if I did I would probably buy hockey instead these days anyway.

Although this may sound negative, I actually do like what Panini is doing with NASCAR. They really don't care about set collectors, and seem to go out of their way to make it impossible to collect that way, but they actually put out cards of cars, which is something Press Pass could never figure out should be done.

Maxx went out of business in mid-1996. Press Pass had the exclusive license from 2001-2015, when they went out of buisness. They put themselves out, by the way, by focusing solely on high end sets and getting rid of the sets that got them a fan base in the first place. Maxx was my favorite NASCAR brand, by the way. If you're interested, I have thousands of NASCAR cards available to trade, about double what I have listed...my tradelist has not had anything new added since January 2015.

Thanks Billy.

I might look at your 1994 Maxx Premier Plus, I think I need around 15 cards to complete that set.

Billy pretty much covered everything. Blasters with only 1 pack became normal in 2013-14. I don't think any blasters have had 10+ packs in them since maybe 2010.

I have a few thousand NASCAR cards listed FT here, ranging from late-80's to present.

Living near the NC VA line throughout the 80s and 90s it was common for someone to show up at work on Thrusday or Friday and say I have an extra ticket to race on Sunday. Then for me to just rop everything and go. But in 2001 I took my wife to Daytona for her first race there and seeing how both of us were Earnhardt fans it has put a damper on the amount of races I go to or watch on TV anymore. I basically have 4 sets from the 90s and 3 of them are complete. I do need 16 cards from the 1994 Maxx Premier Plus set. I could be interested in looking at some of them, but I have not made any trades on this site and am kind of hesitant on doing any.

If it makes you feel any better about trading, Billy is without a doubt one of the best members I've ever dealt with in general, let alone just trading. While I've never personally traded with spazmatastic, he is also a very upstanding and kind member as well. If there were two members from this site that you could trust  (although there's countless more) they are two of the best.

Thanks Jason

I am a huge racing fan, but I will only buy cards on the secondary market. The value just isnt there in the boxes in my opinion.

That was certainly a tough situation for the 1st live race at Daytona. That race really hurt the sport a lot (as well as the card hobby). Lots of fans left the sport after Dale passed. I still remember that race well. I haven't missed a race on TV or radio since about 1999 with 2 exceptions. I missed some races in 2006 when I was working in MS after Hurricane Katrina. The other races I didn't see/listen to on TV/radio were the past 2 October races at Martinsville, VA b/c I was at the track. Actually, I did listen to them on the radio while I was there. You can't hear the announcers at all when the cars are full speed, so I brought a pocket radio to both races and listened to MRN while I watched the race from my seat.

Have you traded cards on any other sites? Between this site, Beckett and the Nascard Underground Trading Society, I've done over 500 trades and never had a problem with any of them. I don't think I have any Maxx Premier Plus from '94 to trade, but I might.

Thanks Jason! That means a lot to me that people I've yet to deal with know I am trustworthy.