2023-24 Panini Prizm Premier League is here to kick off the 2023-24 Panini soccer card release schedule. The product is pretty much the same as the past few years with a 300 card checklist and lots of inserts. If you have opened or bought Prizm Premier League in the past you pretty much know what you are getting into. Take a look at the review below and the rookie breakdown to see what you are chasing.
2023-24 Panini Prizm Premier League Breakdown
Checklist – HERE
Box Makeup – Hobby (Search On Ebay) – 12 cards per pack, 12 packs per box. 1 Auto, 4 Silver Prizm base, 5 numbered, 8 other parallels, 6 Inserts.
First Off The Line (FOTL) (Search On Ebay) – 1 Blue Shimmer or Black Shimmer base and auto, 5 numbered, 4 Silver Prizm, 7 other parallels, 6 Inserts.
Breakaway (Search On Ebay) – 9 cards per pack. 10 packs per box. 8 exclusive Prizm, 3 Silver Prizm base, 6 Inserts, Auto 1:2 boxes
Choice (Search On Ebay) – 1 pack of 8 cards. 1 Auto, 3 Silver Prizm, 3 Choice Prizm, 1 insert or base.
Print Runs ~4500 hobby cases
Rookies – Check out the 2023-24 Panini Rookie Breakdown
2023-24 Panini Prizm Premier League Review
SCHQ Review – 2023-24 Panini Prizm Premier League is here to mark the beginning of the premium soccer card hobby release year. One of the premier hobby soccer card products from the best domestic league in the world. Yet here we are again feeling a bit underwhelmed going into the release. Panini may have at least done buyers of FOTL boxes (Search On Ebay) a favor but we will get into that later. The box makeup is mostly the same this year with the addition of a couple new inserts, Manga and Prizm Flashbacks. The hobby print run is up over 10% and there are 52 parallels across the entire product with 28 of those being numbered. The last thing Prizm EPL needed after the past couple years was a print run increase, yet here we are.
A lot of the disappointment usually centers around the lack of rookies, but Panini did a decent job getting in rookies this year as you can see in the rookie breakdown above. The huge miss most will complain about is Oscar Bobb. I haven’t heard his name much, but I think Ethan Nwaneri is quite a miss as well considering he made his EPL debut last year if only for a minute. Ryan Oné, Ben Parkinson and Jamie Donley are others that could’ve made it but didn’t. Doubt any of them would have moved the needle though. It seems like Miley, Doak, Buonanotte and Mainoo since he got the RC will lead the way for now. The 2nd tear of forwards and wingers could provide some cheaper options. The ultimate problem is if they are making it in this release, they are probably going to be in every Panini EPL release and those that qualify for Topps will be flooded. None of the 2023-24 rookies are yet on the hobby level of Alejandro Garnacho and Julian Alvarez and we see what the huge number of different rookies have done to their prices. When comparing this to a Topps UEFA product the % of the checklist that is rookies is so much lower. Some of that is just because the Premier League is not a rookie league.
The auto checklist has none of the rookies which is another problem Prizm Premier League usually has. It’s a lot of the same vets that make their way into way too many products and they are sticker autos. They broke the two main auto checklists into Signatures and Penmanship this year. Panini did up the dual autos from 5 cards to 9 this year, although they are numbered to 10. Card #4 is missing for some reason. They added a few teams that don’t usually get duals so that will be cool for the collectors of those teams. The biggest dual is Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry which is cool, but we have seen it before. It will be interesting to see if they flood the product with Erling Haaland autos again this year like they did last year.
If you haven’t seen yet there are vertical Color Blasts (Search On Ebay) this year which there have never been in soccer before. Prizm usually has a shorter print of Color Blasts than other Panini products and this year is no different. What the exact numbers is hard to pin down since there are no pack odds. The Color Blast checklist is missing Haaland and De Bruyne, but I think Panini did a pretty good job getting some new faces in. Lewis Miley having a rookie Color Blast is cool. Dennis Bergkamp, Alan Shearer and Steven Gerrard get their first Color Blasts so that will give their collectors something fun to chase. Panini could help this product greatly by bringing back Color Blast parallels, but they don’t seem to want to. Just makes those 2019-20 Prizm Premier League Gold Power Color Blasts that much more epic.
Panini has put Manga (Search On Ebay) in 2023-24 Panini Prizm Premier League. This is the second Panini soccer product to have them. 2022 Panini Prizm World Cup was the first. Based on where those World Cup Mangas started and where they are now, I wouldn’t rush out to buy one of these Prizm Premier League Mangas. The Fireworks inserts have the team logos in the background this year which helps them a little bit. Still there are so many you will probably need to hit a low number or color match to see a real benefit. Groovy, Sublime and Kaleidoscopic come back for those that liked those. The few Kaleidoscopic I’ve seen look better than last year. The Prizm Flashback 2012 insert pays homage to the first year of Prizm. For those that collected those in other sports they will be cool. Since that is not many soccer collectors, I am not sure how much respect they will get. When Topps tries to do that, it usually falls pretty flat.
I think the biggest problem with 2023-24 Panini Prizm Premier Leagues, and most of the years, is that the checklist is too big and there just aren’t enough players to get excited about as a percentage of it. That means there is a lot of skunking if you open boxes. In NFL and NBA where Prizm is king the checklist is the same as every other product so there is no backlash. In soccer Topps and the UEFA products are just so much better because you get all the stars in a checklist that is 100 cards less. When you add that to no rookie autos and just less rookies in general it’s hard to compare. That combined with the fact that the price of Prizm, at least at release, is higher it just doesn’t make much sense. It’s looking like 2023-24 Panini Prizm Premier League is going to release at $275+. That is just ridiculous. FOTL is a far better product this year as it seems like Panini may have screwed up, in a good way, with the pack out. It looks like Panini may have not stuck to 2 Blue Shimmers (1 auto and 1 non auto), but in fact put more so not only do you get more than 2 in some cases but the chances of hitting a 1/1 are even better. Since the print runs aren’t exactly known I can’t say for sure how much better the chances of hitting a 1/1 are but I’m willing to say at least 15x better. Granted Black Shimmer 1/1s likely wont fetch what hobby true black 1/1 get but they will still do well. I just don’t see how the hobby box prices have any justification to stay anywhere near $275. You can buy 2022 Prizm World Cup hobby boxes for $425-450 (Search On Ebay) and 2022-23 Prizm Premier League right now for $175-$200. At the very least it would seem that this should drop to that range if not lower. Last year had Garnacho and Alvarez rookies plus a ton of Haaland autos. At the current prices if you have to get involved I would go with FOTL although those prices could go up once more info is out there about the box makeups which seems to be quite favorable to hobby.
On the other hand, when I see 2023 Topps Chrome and Finest MLS boxes going over $200 it makes me wonder what is going on. Just feels like with the lull in the release schedule people have an itch to rip anything new while older much better products sit out there cheaper. I guess that is the nature of the beast. I do have one thing to leave you with. Topps Dynasty Soccer is coming so spend wisely!
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