In recent products, card manufacturers have done everything in their power to front load packouts with 1/1s. Although its a transparent effort to bring value to a product that may not have any to begin with, it works. Not only that, but collectors fail to understand what their support of this practice will do to future releases. I have often wondered how long it will be before we get our first mainstream product that consists of 1 card packs containing all 1/1 cards. Its happened already with cut signautre products, but not with sports. I think we are due to see one soon.

One of the worst parts of this shift, has to be the lengths in which card companies will go to get more 1/1s into the boxes. We have seen letter patches, all numbered 1/1s, superfractors of insert parallels, and of course printing plates. Of the prior items, the presence of printing plates in any product really confuses me, especially with the fact that collectors actually want them. Aside from my questions of whether or not they are actually used in the printing process, they have to be some of the ugliest pieces of scrap metal ever to be considered a “card” by any loose definition of the word.

Its scary to think they have this much value:

2011 Triple Threads Cal Ripken Printing Plate Auto Jersey

2011 Topps Supreme Tim Tebow Printing Plate Auto

Fleer Metal Universe Michael Jordan Printing Plate

2011 Triple Threads Jerry Rice Printing Plate

I just cannot stand to see them included in higher end products, even more so when adorned with a sticker autograph, if not only because of the cop out 1/1 that is actually a 1/4.

Do printing plates have a place in a some packs that are sold to collectors? Sure, just not in any product that costs more than 2 bucks a pack. If Topps wants to load up Opening Day with all sorts of printing plates to add value to their lowest end product of the year, sure, go ahead. But if Panini wants to design a whole plates and patches product around them, AND put them in the title of the set for 160 bucks a box, I think they are idiots.

My favorite set of all time, Topps Triple Threads has to be the worst offender of the use of printing plates, which is sad considering its previosu title as most expensive box in baseball. TTT used to have most 1/1s per production run in modern products, and it continues to be bloated with them even now. I have talked with many people in the industry to show them that making the 1/1 pools diluted will hurt more than help, and suggested that each of them should be special in some way. Special cards sell higher than those with contrived methods of making them valuable. and my suggestion was to get some sort of added content to make them awesome. Even though it will cost more money, a sticker sheet of inscribed autographs would be great for the 1/1s, which will at least give collectors a reason to chase these cards.

Regardless of the use of gimmicks in a 1/1, there is still no reason to continue the use of printing plates in high end products. These cheap thrills do nothing to the overall aesthetics of a product, and just scream laziness in not developing a replacement element for them in the checklist. If manufacturers were smart, they would stop resorting to this crutch, produce amazing content on its own, and watch their product fly off the shelves. After all, people are only stupid enough to buy for so long.