The next few weeks have a battle that many products have approached and few have succeeded with winning. The fight between Panini’s Contenders and the latest crop of rookie products is a very hard one to win, if not only because of collector loyalty. We know that visual appeal, design and look has nothing to do with one product’s success over another, and contenders is a prime example of this. The name itself drives value, and its only because it has been around since before Peyton Manning.

This year, Topps is creating a new set that is going to go head to head with Contenders, even though the configuration is a bit different. With 2011 Topps Precision, they are pairing hard signed content, with the normal cards that have been a successful staple of the recent calendar. I would say that Precision’s feel will be like Ineception with added veteran content, and with how awesome Inception was, this is NOT a bad thing.

As a self confessed card photography snob, I love seeing the game pics on cards that have hard signed autographs. As good as it is to have photo shoot pics earlier in the season, at this point in the year, the game shots add a level of collectability. There are only so many shots they can use from their time at the shoot, and action on the field during an actual game is always going to trump that.

More importantly, for Precision, Topps correctly decided to give the players maximum space to sign their autograph, something Panini has wrongly decided on with Contenders, Plates and Patches and National Treasures. Because sports signatures are known for being dynamic and beautiful, why limit that expression? Not only does it give room for some of the inscriptions that I love and chase, but it also gives the player the optimum place to make the card unique.

I still dont understand why companies continually opt for the cookie cutter approach rather than giving collectors a reason to buy one product over another. If each product cannot bring something new and unique over another product on the calendar, why have both? It makes no sense. Panini has opted time and time again, to make each of their products EXACTLY like the others, and as a result, I wont buy any of their junk.

For 2011 Contenders, you have a product that not only looks awful, but no longer has any reason to exist. The complexity of the rookie autograph checklist is now forced into every product of the year. Scrub autos dominate so many of the checklists these days, that Contenders is no longer special in that way. It can only function on its name and its design. This year, the design is so terrible, that Panini better hope that they can make it work. Last year’s ticket design was probably one of the best ever, a definite need after 2009 was probably the worst. 2011 looks to be somewhere in between disgusting and horrendous, and that is not good with a product like Precision delivering 4 great looking autos per box at a similar price.

Here is a gallery of the visual train wreck from Panini’s site.

I completely understand that Contenders could be signed notecards and it would still sell, but I have to have faith that eventually people will figure out how much design and composition means to cards and growth of the hobby. When cards look like ones I could create on MS Paint, it takes away from being worthy of display. If you cant display, I dont buy. With disposable income no longer being spent on stuff like this due to the recession, it may take something drastic, and they better have something up their sleeve other than video cards.