Series: Dragonball Z
Company: Panini
Year: 1998
Main distribution: Italy
Barcode: 8 42428210120
These are trading cards from Dragonball Z by Panini. This is Serie 5. The series exists out of 100 cards, 25 of these being metal cards. The images are based on the Dragonball Z series Fusion Saga to the end. All the cards have a green border, and it’s also referred to as the Panini Green series.
Panini is an Italian company headquartered in Modena, Italy, named after the Panini brothers who founded it in 1961. Mostly known for its collectable stickers and cards, they also produce books, comics, magazines and other items through its collectibles and publishing subsidiaries.
Here I’ll show my Collection Dragonball Z Serie 5.
The cards are recognisable as having a green border, with Collection Dragon Ball Z Série 5 on it.
The backs have the same image but smaller, accompanied with the character’s name, Dragonball Z, the card number and the background is green with a black and white line drawing of the image on the front.
The cards have a slight embossing effect.
They came in packs of 7; 6 normal cards and 1 metal card. The pack design was very basic again, and simply green with Super Saiyan Vegito on it.
I got 100/100, a complete set.
Alongside the Artbox series these Panini series started to appear in my local shops at the time. Because they were Italian, and therefor foreign, they were less desirable to us. However, they were everywhere.
Although I never saw Serie 1 and Serie 3, Serie 2, Serie 4 and Serie 5 were easy to get. Eventually I started collecting these as well. I was annoyed to start a series midway, but I had ended up with so many of these now I might as well complete it. I guess because there was so little text on these, they figured it was fine to bring these Italian cards over.
I traded these everywhere to get a full set. On school, on markets, with friends etc. Although I was mostly focussed on getting the Artbox series complete at the time, I still swapped for and with these, so there was a lot of swapping going on! Serie 5 seemed to be the one that stuck around the longest, perhaps because it was the last one and didn’t get phased out with newer series. So everyone had these green cards, and they were quite easy to gain.
As a kid with no internet, I never knew how many cards there were in a set, and went with the highest numbered card I’d have (it is stated on the packaging, but I guess I never realised as a child). For years I thought I had this set complete, until I realised there are actually 100 cards, and I only got 99! Oops. I found the last card, #100 on eBay. So now it is actually complete!
Got any more details / information you think I should add? Or did I get something wrong? Do you own any of these cards? Or do you have the full set? Would you like to trade any? Do you agree or disagree with my findings? Let me know in the comments below!