2024-25 Panini Noir Soccer is here almost 9 years after the first and so far only Noir set was released. Noir has been used as a subset in Chronicles a few times in that 9-year absence. The 2016 set was iconic because of it’s on-card autos and at the time unique design. The original set also contained one of the most iconic auto sets of all time, Spotlight Signatures (Search On Ebay), which were limited to 25 only. A Lionel Messi sold earlier this year for $122,000. Needless to say there was a lot of hype coming into this release. Did Panini deliver or drop the ball? Find out in the review below.
*All Search on eBay links are Ebay affiliate links
2024-25 Panini Noir Soccer Checklist and Review
Checklist – HERE
Box Makeup – The stated makeup was 3 autographs, 2 base cards, 3 parallels/insters and 2 patch cards per hobby box. That does not seem to be the case. There’s at least 3 autos and 2 base cards but the rest has varied. Each FOTL box has a Gold Frame 1/1. (Search On Ebay)
Print Run – With the uneven box makeup this isn’t definitive but as long as Panini didn’t lie in their checklist this should be close. ~7500 hobby box (2,500 cases), ~200 FOTL boxes
Soccer Cards HQ Review –
2024-25 Panini Noir Soccer hobby boxes are not officially released yet but thankfully enough breakers have opened FOTL that we have a decent idea of what to expect. Panini positioned, and more importantly priced, 2024-25 Noir to be a high-end premium set much like the original. What we have seen opened so far is proving to be quite disappointing. The biggest issue is the presence of sticker autos. It is not just a few either. It appears to be roughly half of them. More importantly two of the biggest players in the auto checklist, Lionel Messi (Search On Ebay) and Lamine Yamal (Search On Ebay), have sticker autos. I can’t say for sure that every one of their autos are stickers as there are some auto subsets that seem to be on card that Messi is in. I guess the good news is Messi has 190 total autos and Yamal has 596 so you should get one of them 1 in every 3-4 cases. I will be fascinated to see where the Yamal sticker auto resale prices land with their being so many.
Another big problem is that 99% of the patches seem to non-associated. I say 99% because I haven’t seen an associated one but have been told that someone has. If Panini is going to charge thousands per box, the least they could do is buy a couple game worn jerseys. Sticker autos still seem to be getting somewhat of a pass in the hobby, but non associated patches are not. I would imagine that is because more collectors have lots of money tied up in sticker autos so there is some price protecting going on. I have seen some amazing patches on low numbered Prequel cards but they were non associated. Brand Logos, Iconic Materials, Team Logos and Tremendous Tags should all have great looking patches if Panini followed what they usually do in Noir.
The base set in Noir is not going to be all that desired in Noir since all the cards will look roughly the same just with different numbers. The font will be a different color, but that such a small design element of the card it doesn’t matter much. You can see that if you look at the prices for 2016 Noir cards. There are Framed cards of the base checklist. We have seen them since the Gold Frame 1/1 are the FOTL exclusives. The Frame will help but if it’s anything like say Topps Museum it won’t be enough to garner high end 1/1 value the way a Superfractor or Gold Vinyl would.
Since Noir is all about the autos let’s get into the designs. There are some cool auto subset designs. When those designs also have on-card autos it is a cool card. I was very much looking forward to seeing what the Spotlight Signatures (Search On Ebay) looked like. I was hoping they kept the simple design that was so key, along with the rarity, to the iconic 2016 version. in 2016 it was the player and a nice space for a big gold auto. In this year’s version they put NOIR big across the card and the players signed over their images which makes them not stick out as much. I am not a fan of the business so I will be interested to see how the market responds.
The Shadow Signatures (Search On Ebay) on the other hand are nice and clean on white backgrounds with an easy to see auto. The design may not be for everyone, but I like them. Interestingly it’s the Shadow Signatures design that Panini used in 2023-24 NBA while using an entirely different one for 2024-25 which is the same season as this soccer set. Panini did a good job of leaving space for autos on all of the cards except for Spotlight Signatures it appears. Panini used Sneaker Spotlights (Search On Ebay) as one of their preview cards on the sales sheet. It was a Joao Neves card. Not only does Joao Neves not have a Sneaker Spotlights auto, he doesn’t have a Sneaker Spotlights card at all. The only thing more foolish than calling a soccer shoe card a “sneaker” is having the Sneaker Spotlights auto checklist only being 3 players. Sneaker Spotlights do very well in other sports and I think the non autos of the big players will do well in here as well as they are very rare and do look cool.
It’s going to be hard for even the most positive of people (cough cough breakers) to not call 2024-25 Panini Noir Soccer a disappointment. Thankfully for them since it’s a Panini product and not a Topps product they won’t have to say how great it is on social media posts to make sure they get good grades on their Fanatics report card. The warning signs were there for this set with how Panini treated Noir in past year’s Chronicles products. I even mentioned when the sales sheet came out that some of the images looked like sticker autos. Of course, some people were quick to jump on me for even mentioning that could be the case.
Watching the presale pricing of this has been interesting. Listing from 3rd part distributors and LCS started showing up a few months ago in the low $2000’s. Then Panini dropped FOTL via a Dutch auction and it sold out very quickly at $4000/box. After that presale prices seem to go up to around $2500. Now we see that Panini is going to be releasing hobby boxes at $2600 even though Ebay has cheaper boxes (Search On Ebay). If they wanted $2600 they should’ve made sure not to ship out FOTL boxes before the normal hobby boxes went on sale. I watch 2 FOTL cases the other day and I would be surprised if all the cards sold for $4000 combined much less the near $40,000 that were charged for the breaks. Granted they were two really bad cases. That said now that I have seen a few more where Lamine Yamal and Lionel Messi autos were hit even those cases like wouldn’t break even for what was paid since they were sticker autos. Getting anywhere near $2600/box back is going to be a tall task. I know getting the box price back is always tough but it seems extra tough in 2024-25 Panini Noir Soccer. The sad part is I think the boxes will sell out as soccer is hot and people will get lose lots of money. I wish everyone the best but just know that there is a lot of soccer product that should start hitting soonish that will hopefully be better value.
If you have any questions reach out via social media @SoccerCardsHQ on Twitter, IG and FB. Here is a whole article on Lionel Messi case hit print runs.