Last Wednesday, the most popular Panini set of the year was released, to much fanfare. At 400 plus dollars per box, National Treasures was the most expensive on the calendar, and catered to a very specific part of the hobby. Oddly enough, on Friday, Panini released 2011 Playbook, which is another product that caters to the EXACT same group of people. Any business person out there has to question this strategy, as it is pretty apparent to everyone that these products are basically going to compete with each other. It has to be the dumbest thing I have seen all year.

Playbook, in my opinion, looks a lot better in a lot of different ways than NT, but it lacks a following to make it popular. I like the look of the patch auto booklets for the rookies, but the ridiculous numbering on these will eventually diminish the value as more people move on from NT and start buying this stuff. The white dominated cards look really nice, and I hope that Panini realizes that these types of cards give a higher end concept some legs.

Here are some of the big hits so far:

Packers / Steelers Octograph Book – Rodgers/Roethlisberger and company

Cam Newton 3 Color Booklet Auto Patch /299

Von Miller Rookie Patch Auto Book – Dont make it too blatant that Miller wore a John Elway jersey at the premiere or anything…

Tim Tebow / Elway/ Terelle Davis Broncos Six Way Autograph Book

I also very much like the scrub and base veteran autos from this product, as I think the design is absolutely awesome with the ghosted player in the background. Even the logo of the product is based off of the previous logo that the NFL used for the playoffs, which was a nice touch. The stickers continue to be a detriment to the potential success of what they do, and I dont see them changing this anytime soon, which is a major issue.

Outside of this, its basically a normal Panini product, filled with a bunch of crap that should never be included in a high end product.  More jersey cards that wont break the 99 cent minimum bid, and a checklist bloated with players that most dont consider to be worthy of inclusion.

Playbook is one of the best Panini products so far this year, which isnt saying much, I realize. Having this type of release in April is asinine, and should never happen again. On top of that, to compete with National Treasures is like releasing the first two movies of a franchise on the same weekend.  Bad for business.