The 2nd Year Of 2023 Select Draft Picks Football Is A Winner

It’s July, which means our first collegiate football products are beginning to hit the market. Select Draft Picks Football is the third we’ve seen from Panini so far in July, and it’s set to release on Friday, July 28th.

It’s a pretty standard collegiate product, featuring players from the 2023 draft in their college team’s uniforms. There’s been a little confusion over whether a few of this year’s notable rookies — including Bryce Young and CJ Stroud — were going to be included.

In this article, I’ll cover everything we know about Young and Stroud’s status, as well as information on what’s inside, the best rookie autos, and how the collegiate products stack up against each other.

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Select Draft Picks debuted last year as Panini looked to expand its offering of college-centric products. The checklist featured mostly rookies, but also offered some college throwback cards for notable vets and legends.

As we’ve seen in other Select products, the base set was split into two tiers — concourse and field level. It was a stylistically diverse product, with a fairly conservative base card design, but with some flashy color wheel and zebra print inserts too.

It looks like Select will pretty much be running back to this exact same format again this year, with the two-tier base format and some colorful inserts and parallels.

The rookie autos are the big chase of the hobby box. While they aren’t on-card autos, nor are they particularly scarce, they do have the luxury of being some of the first on the market. This should mean they sell at a slight premium, at least until more products come out later in the summer.

The 45 card boxes will once again include 9 base parallels (3 of which are Prizm), 6 inserts, and 3 autos.

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Over the past few seasons, Young and Stroud have emerged as the two clear standout QBs from this class. They now play for the Panthers and the Texans respectively, and they’ll be the two biggest names to chase this summer.

Initially, there was a lot of skepticism over whether these two would be included in Select Draft Picks. They were both left off the checklist for the FOTL boxes, which cast some doubt that they would be in the regular release product. Young and Stroud’s absence would drastically impact the Select DP’s value.

Over the weekend, however, Panini updated the product description to mention Bryce Young and CJ Stroud as players included in their auto offerings. They also added mock-ups that featured both of them, including an auto for Stroud.

So, barring something completely unexpected, Bryce and CJ will be included in the 2023 Select Draft Picks checklist.

This is big news, as the early collegiate releases can be hit or miss when it comes to including star players – both Young and Stroud were missing from the Mosaic Draft Picks checklist that came out last week.

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Autos are the big chase in the hobby box, and Select offers 2 of them dedicated to rookies: Rookie Signatures and Youth Explosion Signatures. Here’s what we know about them so far

Rookie Signatures is slated to be the more stylistically conventional of the two autos, with a full-body in-game image, a large and centered sticker auto, and two-tone neutrally colored background.

This won’t be the most exciting CJ Stroud auto we see over this year, but it’s a pretty solid option considering the price.

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Youth Explosion brings some more flair into their auto collection. While the player image and auto placement are similar to Rookie Signature, the card is set against an exploding tie-dye background.

This style is reminiscent of the color blast feature that has been wildly popular with cards like Kaboom! over the past few years, and should cater to the collector who favors more colorful and creative cards.

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The 2023 Select Draft Picks Hobby Box will be released on July 28th. Retail boxes have been listed as low as $135.

Here’s what each hobby box will contain:

And here’s what Panini has released about the card breakdown inside:

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Normally this is the section where I’d take a look at how past versions of the hobby box are performing on the resale market, how it compares to this year’s price, and try to project if buying and holding wax was a good investment.

However, with the product being in only its second year, there isn’t enough historical data to predict how its value might change in the future. So, I figured this would be a good spot to compare Select to the other Draft Picks products on the market.

Obviously, there are a lot of similarities between these products, but a few differences stand out. Mosaic has one less auto, so if that’s important to you, Select and Chronicles are better options.

Chronicles has a higher percentage of non-base cards, with its 12 optic inserts to go along with the hologram and relic cards. It’s also the only of the three to feature the ever-popular “rated rookie” cards.

Select on the other hand is the only of the three that offers 3 silver Prizm inserts. That is, of course, another wildly popular card that can be a big pull for certain collectors.

It’s also important to keep an eye out for the checklists to make sure that the player you’re looking for is included. As mentioned above, Mosaic doesn’t have Stroud or Young, and its checklist of rookie autos has historically been much smaller than the other two.

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Select Draft Picks is back for its second year. It sticks to the classic Select two-tiered approach, with concourse and field-level base cards.

Each box guarantees 3 autos, and with the biggest names in the draft set to be featured in this year’s product, it should be a big hit among NFL collectors who don’t mind college jerseys.

Of course, a collegiate product is never going to offer a player’s most valuable cards, but luckily the price reflects that. Select Draft Picks is a great, cheap primer for any big-time NFL or college football fans who are looking to get in on a summertime NFL release.

Shop for boxes of 2023 Select Draft Picks Football