Review: Select ABL 2012 cards

I've been away on holidays for the last two weeks, and have only just gotten my grubby little hands onto the official Select 2012 ABL cards.

I've updated the checklists in my previous posts of the Select team sets with the actual card numbers. Even though the cards are being sold as team sets, the cards are numbered from 1 through 72 across the 6 teams. The breakdown is Adelaide has cards numbered 1 through 12, Brisbane 13-24, Canberra 25-36, Melbourne 37-48, Perth 49-60 and Sydney 61 to 72.

The back of the players cards feature

• a head shot of the player, 
• stats for each season of ABL play, 
• a personal bio,
• logo for the ABL, Select, Subway and WhoDat. 

I'm presuming that the Subway and WhoDat advertising is due to some type of sponsorship of the cards. Subway - international fast food chain. WhoDat - small collectibles store in suburban Perth that I'd never heard of before ... and I'm originally from Perth :) Good on 'em!

The back of the team's logo card features the 2012-13 game schedule for the respective team.
The back of the mascot cards contain the checklist for the cards for the respective team set.

The official Select 2012 ABL card team sets. 

From what I've seen so far, they've mainly used action shots for the players, and they're a bit hit and miss - some are good and clear, others are grainy, unclear, or the players face is obscured. I'd have been happy to let them use some of my photos of these players :)

Each team set comes in their own resealable polybag. I noticed that one of my cards had a scratch on the front, whilst a colleague advised that several of her team sets came damaged in the mail, presumably during the shipping process. Hopefully these are isolated issues and not a quality control issue with the shipping process or at the manufacturing stage.

Otherwise, fairly happy with these - great to see official cards. The collectability of the various team sets depends on different factors. Melbourne have 4 current and former MLB players in their set, whilst Sydney have three. Canberra has included a number of American and Japanese imports in their set, whilst all teams feature a number of first ever cards of Aussie players. I'm happy to have them all :)