Category Archives: episodes in parallelery

Product Review: 2009 Score Inscriptions Football

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I know this is a little late, but Score Inscriptions has released and I feel obligated to review it, despite the fact that many of you would never even think of buying a pack of it. Basically, this set has replaced the Score Select junk that seems to make its way onto the market each year, even though they really did nothing to make this set worth anyone’s time.

Design/Creativity

As if Select wasn’t bad enough last year, this year had no where to go but up. It didn’t really offer much improvement in the base set or in the “hot rookies,” but it is a better look. Don’t get me wrong, I would never think of this product as even in the same zip code as the top of the pack in terms of design, but it is a little better than the year before. I really dislike that Score has become of a place where graffiti artists go for their card design, as it makes everything look really weird and busy. For the last few years, its almost like they want the cards to look like they were spraypainted on the inside of an overpass tunnel, but they never really hit the mark. This set pretty much looks like an afterthought.

The Hot Rookies look as ridiculous as they did in 2008 and 2007, and you can see that this whole concept needs to be scrapped faster than any future Family Guy spinoffs. Score was better when it was just a low end solution to one’s hankering for set collecting, and adding in all these weirdly named parallels and awful insert sets hasn’t done much to bolster value.

The one seemingly redeemable factor about this entire product is the 1989 Score remake SPs. Each of the premiere rookies has their own addition to the iconic set of Sanders and Aikman, though the cards don’t feature much of what made the old cards great except for the border design. I could see these cards as a great addition to a set that actually matters, but I just don’t think there is much you can do for any Score branded set anymore. Im not a fan of these cards myself, only because of the helmet off pics, but I can see the appeal for people who don’t really care. I may pick up a Harvin just for kicks because these cards will be so cheap.

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Autograph Cards

The autograph cards in this set are pretty standard for any low end product. Slap a few stickers on the base cards and parallels, and you have yourself a set that many unsuspecting collectors will buy. The problem is, with so many oddly numbered parallels of every card, I would say you could have some scrubs with close to 1500 autographs in this set. Really, there just isnt much to say other than “This set contains autos. Yay.”

The 1989 Score reprint autos should be pretty valuable to start, only because they are exceedingly rare in a low end set. It would have been cool to see some on card autos here, but we all know that Donini thinks of hard signed as an exception rather than the rule. I may buy the Harvin auto later this year when the price of the set drops 80%.

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Relic Cards

There are no relic cards in this product.

Value To The Collector

Right now, it will cost you close to 100 dollars at some stores to buy a box of this junk. I am completely serious, and I saw it a few places at more than 100 bucks a box this weekend. I can tell you right now that any packs or boxes of Inscriptions bought at that price is money you are throwing in to a fire. You may end up with three autos, but the value will drop faster than Mike Singletary’s pants at halftime of a 49ers game.

For the last 2 years, Score Select has dropped more than 60% in terms of box price over the year, and even at 29.99 for a box, its still too expensive. Most people are just starved for good products, so they will open anything they can find just to test it out, and really, I cant tell you how stupid it is to even consider buying any of this product at the price its at right now.

When it comes to the value of the actual cards, the 1989 Score autos may hold SOME of their value, but the rest of the set will not. Don’t waste your time.

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Overall Impressions

Its Score Inscriptions. I don’t need to say anything else.

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2009 Product Leaderboard (SO FAR)

1(t). UD Icons Football (3/5 GELLMANS)
1(t). UD Heroes Football (3/5 GELLMANS)
1(t). UD Draft Edition (3/5 GELLMANS)
3(t). Donruss Classics (2/5 GELLMANS)
3(t). Donruss Elite (2/5 GELLMANS)
3(t). Playoff Prestige (2/5 GELLMANS)
3(t). Bowman Draft Picks (2/5 GELLMANS)
8. Score Inscriptions Football (1/5 GELLMANS)

Donini’s Recent Fails

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I have been saying for a long time that Donini has no idea how to design a jersey card. After the ugly display in Elite, I want to go over a few things that I just cant understand.

Here are 5 cards that I think are very, very poorly designed. The swatches are all over the fucking place, and half of them just shouldnt be there. See, Donini really needs to understand that not every card should be jersified. That means that you may need to create more cards, god forbid, but thats your job, and I am fucking sick of having sets built around these pieces of shit.
(CLICK TO ENLARGE)
Match the letter above to the letter below:
A – I am not sure why they decided this was a good place for the swatch. This card is so fucking busy there really isnt ANY place for a swatch, it needs to be more simple.
B – Why put the Pats logo on a helmet? It looks fucking wierd and fucking stupid. Logos were designed so that they could be displayed as solo standing items, no reason to show it this way without explanation. It doesnt fit.
C – The script “elite” and the swatch should be in different spots. Im not really sure why they decided to do it this way, probably because they were too fucking lazy to switch the card around. Either way, the whole card looks ridiculous, not sure what is up with those assymetrical lines.
D – This swatch is placed well, but it is the wrong shape. The whole card is an ill fitting combination of straight edges and circles, but this card would look much better with a circular swatch and inward curving edges to the box that approaches either side of it. Considering that this card is about targets, not sure why they chose a design similar to that of the universal symbol for atoms.
E – More logos on helmets, completely unnecessary.
F – This swatch is completely in no mans land, but it fits the design of the card. Yet, because the card is split into quadrants in such a weird way, im not sure why they thought it would make a good fit for a swatch. Another floating window, another fail.
G – Another card that has no room for a swatch, despite the out of place presence of the one they forced in there. When you cover up the player, something done on many of Donini’s awful designs, you takes everything out of the card that it was created for.
H – Brady’s name just looked so ridiculous in that spot to me. Im not sure why it was done in that font in that allignment. They should have done a different font and had it cover the whole box. Get some better designers, my 5 year old cousin could do better with a crayon.
Now, its pretty simple to solve all of this freaky deaky ugly design work. Either design cards around the swatches and find places for the rest of the stuff later, or maybe dont shove the swatches down our throats at all. UD and even Topps have come up with some other filler ideas besides sets crammed full of relics, some good, some epic fails, but at least they are trying. This is complete fucking laziness in action.