It may seem a bit late but Panini is making a big push in the 2010-11 Basketball market with a few late releases. Totally Certified (recently released),  Season Update and the much hyped Gold Standard are coming soon. For the purposes of this post we’ll focus on Totally Certified which has one of the most Totally Awesome rookie card designs of the year. On card autographs too!

Not an inexpensive product by any stretch of the imagination and a very quick bust at six packs per box Totally Certified at least brings some cool designs to the table. Boxes sell in the $100-$120 range but will more than likely drop quickly in the coming months. All six packs contain hits with at least two autographs per box. Certified Parallels are back with crowd favorites Gold /25, Green /5 and Black 1/1 being chased by collectors.

This type of set doesn’t usually draw set collectors in but it could be a cool one to put together as every card is serial #’d with the 35 rookies being #’d to /599. Considering each box will only net you 18 of the 185 card base set this one would be quite a challenge to fill if you’re only doing it by busting wax. Of course other routes like ebay will get it done much cheaper for you. A 343 card lot recently sold for $20ish. The base and parallels are very nice looking though. Panini is bringing back the subtle beauty of etched foil reminiscent of some fantastic 90′s insert sets.

Of course we can’t forget about the HRX video cards and their autographed versions. 50 of each of the following players HRX cards can be found in Totally Certified:

- 50 Kobe Bryant cards (10 Autographed!)
- 50 Blake Griffin cards (10 Autographed!)
- 50 Kevin Durant cards (10 Autographed!)
- 50 John Wall cards (10 Autographed!)

One Blake Griffin has already been posted on ebay and is currently at $400+ with a day left in the auction. An unfortunate thing about the video cards is that the only way they could “insert” them in this product is via redemption.

Recommendation: I really like this set and the product overall has some great designs, on card autographs, chances to pull very valuable cards such as the HRX cards or Mirror Black RC’s but I still think this one is overpriced at the moment. I’ll bust some open at some point I’m sure but it won’t be until the dust has settled a bit.

Brent Schultz is the founder of the Card Geeks Blog and longtime Jerry Rice collector. Follow his Blog and Twitter for more updates and conversation.