To me, Gold Standard has never lived up to its haute name, in any way, shape, or form. Now that it has started to show up on eBay, I dont think I am going to be the only one wondering what the hell Panini was thinking when porting this product from Basketball to Football. Not only did they use extremely cheap and poorly executed methods for the set, but its obvious that the same amount of thought was not put into it as it was in its sister.
Let me give you a little bit more perspective, as I think a lot of this is going to be lost on the people that are going to buy this product. First, Basketball featured hard signed cards from a lot of veteran and rookie players to help bolster the enormous price tag that was placed on the boxes. They also had gold cards similar to the contenders ones from 2010 football, and the product STILL dropped to 50% of MSRP. In the football set, Panini went with all sticker autographs, swatches of gold leaf (WTF?) over solid gold, and tiny diamonds that dont really have more than 125 dollars in actual value. Its not even close. Gold, understandably, is very expensive at the moment. Gold leaf? In one inch swatches? Not very expensive. In fact, I dont even get the big attraction.
On top of these above issues, there are a number of hits per box, but only a small handful will carry any value at all. Swatch cards in football have become so valueless, that Topps and Upper Deck have tried to think of other things to insert instead of plain swatch cards. Panini obviously doesnt think this is correct, and continued with practices that are as good for a 80 dollar product as they are for a 200 dollar product. Basically, the only thing that changes is the price tag, not the quality of the cards.
The most disturbing thing has to be the execution of the ONLY hard signed cards in the set, signed in thick and runny silver paint pen. Aside from the obvious DERP of using silver rather than gold, I honestly believe that I could get a better autograph if I had been waiting along the sidelines at an NFL game. These do not look to be even close to beautiful silver signatures that Topps secured in 2011 Inception, with sharp lines and very little issue.
Check out this Cam Newton to see what I mean:
The horrid look of the marker on this Andy Dalton looks to be similar:
Andy Dalton Gold Standard Rookie Patch Auto
Aside from this gross oversight in production, the big white box is back en force, and I am getting awfully tired of it. Hell, these cards dont even need the washout of any area to see the sticker. The ugly BRIGHT gold rainbow foil will be fine to highlight the autograph on the sticker, and yet Panini still thinks its a good idea to put the white box on the card, just in case.
Bottom line, you would literally have to torture me before I bought a box of this JUNK, and I sincerely hope that a bottle of KY lube is included as a box topper to ease the pain that will no doubt accompany the break.
Here are some of the cards:
Thurman Thomas Gold Leaf Swatch Auto /8
Golden Anniversary Fran Tarkenton Jersey Auto
Stevan Ridley Gold Leaf Swatch Auto RC /9
That Cam Newton pretty much sums up that company. No standards, shitty product and non-existant quality control. Complete trash.
So I’ll admit that I don’t break new wax but only buy hits from the broncos from a card dealer in town but…
Why would anyone be interested in buying a patch auto, where the auto is thin and ugly in the first letter, for $200 when there are 525 others just like it out there? Are people really paying this for these cards? I suppose Andy Dalton is a sort of hot rookie but its hard to imagine that much interest.
Then it continues with a “hit” of 14K gold?!? The Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas is literally covered in gold leaf. If they can cover a hotel in the stuff it can’t be that valuable. I can’t even say nice try Panini, that would just be to much.
I think that if Panini at least die cut the players over the jersey piece in the Gold Leaf Stars set that would have at least added some visual appeal. Does anyone out there still really want, and I mean really, another product with square and circle jersey windows. For Pete’s sake learn to use another style. I mean they missed to opportunity to shape the gold piece like the logos of the team or something cool like that.
I can’t see buying anything from Panini this year. Everything is such crap. The most fun I’ve had this year has been opening Topps Chrome. At least with Topps you’re getting SOMETHING of vallue! Topps Inception = Cam Newton patch auto… Topps Finest = Cam Newton patch auto. All Panini products = Steven Ridley auto and Taiwan Jones autos. It’s an easy choice for me!
To be fair, it’s quite possible that Panini put the ball in motion with this product prior to seeing how poorly the basketball did. Still, I feed that it was a poor effort right from the start, and unfortunately it fell in that dead area where the average person couldn’t afford it, and the high rollers knew all about it and moved onto other things.
The silver autos are a ridiculous miss. However, a box of this is priced very close to Triple Threads and I don’t see much difference outside of personal preference.
Triple Threads–mostly sticker autos
Gold–mostly sticker autos
Triple Threads–junk jersey cards
Gold–junk jersey cards
I don’t think either of these is a strong offering but head-to-head, I think they are about the same.
Triple Threads has – right or wrong – a track record, though. If you look back at introductions of high-level products (Cup, Exquisite, UD Black, etc.) you usually need to knock it out of the park that first season. If you don’t it’s usually dead in the water. I think Panini just assumed it would be gobbled up (at least in Basketball), but their products can’t contain arguably the best signature in the business and one of the most sought after current player in the game. It just didn’t have enough to make up for that, and their Black product suffered the same fate. We’ve sold more of an unlicensed SP Authentic that either of those NBA Products. So I don’t expect any of our big guys to give the football product even a taste.