Wow, busy day today.

Last year, Plates and Patches was built into a stand alone set after being a subset in Gridiron Gear for a number of years. Despite the title of the set being nothing more than what is inside the product, a la “Snakes on a Plane,” collectors did not fully embrace what the cards had to offer. Personally, I really liked the base autos for veterans and rookies, and liked that they explained the part of the jersey in the swatch on the card even more. The rest of the set was so representative of what Panini normally does in a product, that I just bought the singles and went on my way.

This year, the product is back, surprisingly, and the cards are very similar in nature to what we saw last year. The difference is that the rookies look to be hard signed, and that makes me very happy. However, the inserts and non-base cards are so similar to every other product that Panini has come out with this year, that its not going to be enough good to overshadow the ton of bad.

Again we see autograph cards with big white boxes, and poorly designed two dollar jersey cards galore, even though the box hit rookie base autos and veteran autos look really good. Im still kind of pissed, because they only look good because they are so similar to last year’s design. A few tweaks to the borders and colors, and you can go right back to the 2010 design.

No matter which way you slice it, its obvious that Panini has put little to no effort into their cards this year. I don’t see any examples of ground breaking concept or design work like I have seen from even their unlicensed competitors, and that should be frightening to them. People say I have a personal vendetta against Panini, but that isnt the case. I just cant accept this level of effort when everyone else is running laps around them. Design, content and concept are my hot button issues, so its very hard for me to ignore the crimes against the eye that come out of their shop on a monthly basis.

Here are the cards, you can see what I mean: