2024-25 Panini Obsidian Soccer is here and Panini actually got it out before the 2025-26 season started and over 3 months before when they released 2023-24 Obsidian Soccer. There are some big changes from last year. The biggest being they cut the base checklist in half. That has led to a big reduction in the hobby case print run. That is something we don’t see often with Panini and Topps these days. On top of that Panini put in a new case hit, Iridescent Iridescent (Search On Ebay), that most people seem to like but Panini may have taken out one old case hit despite it being on the checklist. Check out what else you can expect this year in the review below.
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2024-25 Panini Obsidian Soccer Checklist and Review
Checklist – HERE
Box Makeup – 4 autographs or memorabilia cards, 1 parallel, 1 insert or insert parallel, and 1 base per box (Search On Ebay)
Print Run – ~1300 hobby cases in addition to ~400 International hobby cases
Soccer Cards HQ Review – If you have followed and read the reviews on SoccerCardsHQ for a while you know I am a numbers guy who loves to focus on print runs. When I ran the numbers on 2024-25 Panini Obsidian Soccer I was happy to see how much the print run dropped by roughly a third from last year. Take note Topps…..yeah right. The reduced overall print run causes a positive trickle down throughout the entire set. That’s the good news. The bad news is the checklist this year isn’t nearly as good as last year and the amount of numbered parallels per base card went up about 10%. This is where cutting the checklist in half hurt. There are no South American club teams in the checklist, so getting those rookies didn’t happen like in 2023-24. The rookies in 2023-24 Obsidian have proven to be incredible. Of course, Topps is just waiting for all those rookies to hit UEFA so they can slap a RC on them even if it’s 2 years after the fact…cough Estevao (Search On Ebay) and who knows for Franco Mastantuono (Search On Ebay). Then of course there are no Lamine Yamal rookies as well. The only Premier League team with cards is Chelsea. I figure this has to do with Panini losing the EPL license. I have never quite understood how they manage to get some teams they seemingly don’t have the license to in their products.
Case hits and Floods (Search On Ebay) are two of the main drivers in Obsidian Soccer. The case hits in 2024-25 Panini Obsidian Soccer are two holdovers from last year, Black Color Blast and White Night, with the addition of Iridescent. The Black Color Blasts (Search On Ebay) this year are vertical instead of horizontal. Lionel Messi is back in the checklist this year as is Cristiano Ronaldo in an Al Nassr kit. CR7 has been missing from a lot of soccer sets recently so it is good to see him back. I am not sure how collectible his Al Nassr cards will be in comparison to his other cards, but I am glad Panini put in the effort to get them instead of putting non playing day cards in. Shockingly Lamine Yamal did not make the Color Blast checklist like he didn’t make the Kaboom checklist earlier this year. I don’t hate that either, but it does hurt the product a little bit. This year there would be ~100 Color Blasts if they were true case hits which is almost half as few as last year. There does seem to be some cases with 2 Color Blasts so there could be more. I haven’t heard of any cases missing Color Blasts as of yet.
Iridescent (Search On Ebay) has Lamine Yamal and Cavan Sullivan which should both be chaseable cards. There are ~185 or ~145 depending if they are in International boxes or not. White Night is on the checklist but there haven’t been any hit yet and it is not included on the back of Hobby boxes as being in the product. It is not listed on the International sell sheet either. I do think Iridescent will do better than White Night but just swapping one for the other doesn’t move the needle much.
For all the good mentioned above the auto checklist in 2024-25 Panini Obsidian Soccer is not great unless you are a US Women’s National Team collector. In such an auto heavy product that is a problem. There are still some chase autos in the set of course. The good news is it appears that the Lamine Yamal Volcanic Material Signatures (Search On Ebay) got a pretty high print run so the chances of hitting one of those is decent. I am not sure how well the resale will be considering the prices of Yamal Volcanic rookie autos (Search On Ebay) last year. You will still be happy to hit one. The patch cards are a big part of Obsidian, but they never move the needle that much. This year will be no different as most seem to be napkins that are not associated with anything at all.
Panini released 2024-25 Panini Obsidian Soccer for $400 on their website and they are still sitting there despite the reduced print run. That kind of shows the appetite for the product. Secondary market boxes seem to be in the $325-350 range. You can get 2023-24 boxes for only about $100 more when they hit auction. It’s a shame Panini didn’t have the 2024-25 print run with the 2023-24 checklist. There are some new Flood colors this year as well as the Talavera which is a unique design which will be cool to chase. If you are getting involved good luck and I hope you hit big.
If you have any questions reach out via social media @SoccerCardsHQ on Twitter, IG and FB. Want to read more about Lamine Yamal Rookie Cards?