Gridiron Gear is Live, Filled with Disappointment

When Gridiron Gear was released for the last 4 years, it was a product that rarely made a splash because of how many similar products DLP now Panini put on the shelves next to it. Threads, Classics, Certified, etc had all come and gone live, and ANOTHER product at 4/1/$90 isnt going to get many people excited when there are ten just like it. This year, its worse than normal, mainly because of how unsuccessful the season has been in general. Despite having two extremely celebrated college QBs, one having a phenomenal year in the pros, the cards arent selling like they should. Call it a symptom of an economy in shambles, but it doesn’t help that the two companies putting out sets are rarely putting in the effort to make good products.Gridiron Gear has its plusses, but those rare shining moments are far overshadowed by cards that look like someone gave up on creation halfway through.

So far, from what has shown up on eBay, there are a few cards that I like, and a ton of cards that I despise. The base cards and base auto rookies actually look pretty good, but who buys a product like this for cards like that? Moving into the meat of the product, I think the hidden gems cards look good and well composed, but as you move through the 10-15 parallels of those gems, its one fail after another. Aside from almost every hidden gem using pieces of a football tossed around for a few seconds at the premiere, the non-autographed parallels are some of the most poorly composed cards of the yearThey look unbalanced and incomplete because of the fact that Panini refuses to adjust the placement of the swatch windows on the non-autographed parallels, and in the case of the triples, the windows extend into the player picture. Considering how much space is available on the card, I have no idea why this is the case.

They also brought back the normal played out card types that have been present all year for Panini. We have the plastic helmet sticker autos for the third set this year, the field autos for the second time, and a subset with “orientation” in the title coming back around as well. They are so lazy, that they cant even come up with new elements for each of the rehashed eyesore products they love to flood the market with. Not only are all of these concepts repeats, but the value that these cards carry is watered down due to how many sticker products Panini puts out every year. You can get Bradford and Bryant cards for a drastically reduced price because of what they do. That isnt good for wax breakers, prospectors, or collectors who like valuable cards.

Lastly, I am sick and tired of how terrible Panini has been at planning out their products. So many of the rookies and veterans are redemptions, and with sticker autos, that is almost inexcusable. Of course, this is also a player issue, but its annoying when many of these players have had live autos in previous products. Panini uses SO MANY stickers that they obviously didn’t plan it out. If it were two or three guys, that would be one thing, but for many of the recent products, its been close to ten, including top guys like Mathews, Bryant, Williams and company. Shame on them.

Here are some of the bigger hits that have been posted, you be the judge of how this set lives up to expectations:

Joe Montana Helmet Auto /10

Chris Ivory Auto /25 Redemption – Ridiculous price already on this card, I guess that’s what happens when you have nothing out and you are playing great.

Tim Tebow Pull Out Auto Jersey

Joe Namath Helmet Auto /25

Dez Bryant Pull Out Auto Jersey /293

Tim Tebow Orientation Auto Jersey /50

Jay Cutler Patch Auto 4/5

Bradford/Tebow/Spiller/Mathews Quad Patch

5 thoughts on “Gridiron Gear is Live, Filled with Disappointment

  1. Gridiron gear looks horrible and is disappointing me this year. Too much sticker autos, ugly plastic helmet autos, and incomplete looking cards. As long as panini keeps making cards like this, I will keep buying old upper deck autograph cards of hall of famers and veterans.

  2. Looks like more crap from Panini, but then again, why should we be surprised? Everyone over there is on autopilot, producing the same junk over and over. Then again, why shouldn’t they be on autopilot, collectors still go out and buy their crap.

  3. Do those pull-out auto swatches come all the way out? Kind of a screwy idea to make the auto’d part too big for the rest of the card. But I guess it’s their way of compromising for all the jumbo swatch / tiny picture crap from before. How long before we see fake auto swatches of some other brand with the pull outs pasted in place of the original swatches?

  4. When a triple prime card with a 3 color patch is selling for $4.95 your set has issues. I concur with those who wrote before, that we shouldn’t have expected anything else.

  5. Dude I enjoy reading your blogs but you always seem to be way to negative! If you hate newer card releases so much don’t buy them! And others thinking the same way shouldn’t either… I guarantee that would change the companies designs and hits drastically! Stop feeding the Pannani (sp) trolls and they will either learn from their mistakes or close their doors!

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