I dont care what people say about the value of the card, this is one of the most poorly conceived cards of the year. Total and utter shit.
Ok, I have waited to post this review to see if there was anything that could really redeem this set in my eyes, and so far there has been very little to do so. I saw a few boxes broken with pretty horrible results (unlike Beckett who had some great results, as usual) and I just cant find a reason why this set was done the way it was.
Design/Creativity
Aside from the rehashed RPM design and stale concept of the entire set, the actual design of the rest of the product’s ridiculous number of subsets is horrible. Starting with the Tools of the Trade all the way through the War Room stuff, it all just screams typical Panini crap design. In addition to an awful look, each card features weirdly cut swatch windows and the ugliest of gaudy raibow fucking foilboard.
Since the RPMs are the focus of this set, Ill start there. The design is pretty much the same it has been since 2003 or whenever. It hasn’t really changed other than the fact that they now have as many parallels as Beckett has conflicts of interest in their magazine. Yeah, that many. You have the regular “NFL”, a diecut of the NFC or AFC, their number, a jumbo jersey, a jumbo patch, a brand logo, a nfl shield, a jumbo jersey auto, a jumbo patch auto, a brand logo auto, and a shield auto, among others. The stupid thing is that so many of these parallels feature swatches that intrude into the player’s photo, thus making the card pretty pointless and fugly. In addition, they used stickers for everything, so the black autos (some of which still feature college number inscriptions) don’t really work well on reflective board and dark colors. Also, the fact that almost EVERY parallel features those stupid and needless football swatches, makes me want to scream. I don’t care about some football that a player played catch with for two throws. It has less connection than including a napkin they wiped their hands on during lunch. DITCH IT.
Moving into the subsets, Panini has pretty much outlawed square swatches in their design, as if that would solve the problem of them placing them in horrible places on the cards. Unlike the other companies, however, instead of making symmetrical borders to the windows, they pretty much just cut them out like a five year old with their first pair of scissors. Then, when you think about the crazy lines on the card that Panini has been known for, and you can see where asymmetrical swatch windows would look ridiculous. Those swatch windows are often placed where they break the line borders on the cards, making it seem like they were not factored in when the card was designed. This is pretty common with Panini products, because they parallel every one of their cards to fucking hell. First they create the base card, parallel that 10 times, then add in a swatch, then add in an auto. Its all very backwards, and leads to an awkwardly balanced card.
The only redeeming part of the entire thing may have been the Absolute patches. These cards look good because they arent paralleled (big shock). They feature jumbo patches, placed correctly, and usually with multiple breaks in a huge window. It fits well, and makes me wonder why the set wasn’t done more like these cards. These cards will be prime for the patch fakers to exploit, but they look like they may be the only part of this set that actually had some thought put into it.
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Autograph Cards
The autograph cards in this set pretty much fit in with the rest of the crap that is featured ad nauseum in Absolute. They are rarely well done, and not one of them is on card. The stickers arent focused on like Topps’ bordered boxes, but they are hard to miss on the rainbow foil board.
I would say that the Canton absolutes (a horrible conceived concept of a subset) is the best looking of all of them, but im not sure why they didn’t focus more on getting design filled with cards that could actually go well with the stickers.
The RPM autos are numbered to 299 and have five billion parallels, so the effect of pulling one is getting to be a lot less than it used to be. Then when you see some of the players STILL having stickers with their college number on it and you start to get even more frustrated. When you look at the jumbo swatch autos, its clear that there is just too much on the card to begin with, especially with the inclusion of the stupid football swatch in the corner.
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Relic Cards
Holy fuck, I don’t even know where to start.
Then, I saw the rest of the cards. I tried to find a relic card that wasn’t bad, and aside from the absolute patch set mentioned above, there is absolutely nothing. Most of the time, 3 out of 4 hits in your box will be a relic card, and you should see what some of them look like. None of them look like they were designed with a swatch in mind.
Lastly, enough with die cutting weird crap into the cards. Jersey numbers are one thing, but when you start diecutting the name of the fucking conference they play in, you are walking a thin line between shit like Sterling and Triple Threads and normal junk. Maybe this is just a signal to stop with the plain swatch cards.
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Value To The Collector
People freaking love this set because they are blinded by the swatches and autos they can pull. In reality, there arent many strong points in terms of memorabl
e parts of the set, so everything kind of blends together. That means that there are no cards that really are worth buying these boxes for, and the value of the whole comes down considerably. The Auto’ed RPMs will hold value until Limited and the like, but once those come out, it will be tough to get much for any of them.
The boxes will cost more than average products, and its rare that you will make your money back. Because the set is so over dilluted with poorly designed jerseys and stuff, it will be tough to find boxes that will make you feel good about the purchase you just made. As with any product like this, its always better to buy the singles than to spend 120 dollars and buy this.
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Overall Impressions
To me, its pretty sad what Absolute has become. It used to be something that was a fresh start to the products with rookie material in it, now its just ugly, boring, and poorly conceived. Even the Tools of the Trade cards have sunk to a below bottom standard, and that makes me angry. Im hoping that eventually Panini gets the point and realizes what they are doing has put them at the bottom of the barrel for design in football.
Average Rating =
2009 Product Leaderboard (SO FAR)
1. Topps Chrome (4/5 GELLMANS)
2(t). Upper Deck Football (3/5 GELLMANS)
2(t). UD Philadelphia (3/5 GELLMANS)
2(t). Topps Football (3/5 GELLMANS)
2(t). UD Icons (3/5 GELLMANS)
2(t). UD Heroes (3/5 GELLMANS)
2(t). UD Draft Edition (3/5 GELLMANS)
8(t). Playoff Absolute Memorabilia (2/5 GELLMANS)
8(t). Bowman Sterling Football (2/5 GELLMANS)
8(t). Donruss Threads (2/5 GELLMANS)
8(t). Donruss Classics (2/5 GELLMANS)
8(t). Donruss Elite (2/5 GELLMANS)
8(t). Playoff Prestige (2/5 GELLMANS)
8(t). Bowman Draft Picks (2/5 GELLMANS)
15. Score Inscriptions (1/5 GELLMANS)
16. Leaf Rookies and Stars (0/5 GELLMANS – NR)
My god, this breaks every rule in the fucking book:
Over the last few years, there hasn’t been a high end set created quite like Bowman Sterling. Trying to equal the success of the prospector’s baseball favorite, Topps tried to create a similar set for football. The problem is that prospecting is very tough to market in football because all of the players are usually on the field from the beginning. This year, the previews were promising for a design that looked much better than it had in previous years. After seeing the finished product, I am less than enthusiastic about what was produced.
Design/Creativity
I have never been a fan of Bowman Sterling because I don’t think it offers much to the people who buy it. My feelings on the design are very similar as well, as this year’s just looks as distracting as ever. You know those ruler designs you did in elementary school where you drew two axis and connected dots to form a cool looking star like thing? Yeah, Topps used those as part of the background. Normally, it wouldn’t be any more distracting than a normal element, but they have added a different grain of refractor to them so that they reflect differently than the normal rainbow foil. It makes the card so hard to look at that someone at the shop last night said he had a headache just from opening the packs.
Secondly, the photography they used in this set is completely awful. For some of the cards, they didn’t even use actual shots, they just blew up their player pics from NFL.com. Rather than accomplishing their goal of providing a good look, it looks like they are putting mugshots on the cards. Most of the players didn’t quite know what to do for those pics, and therefore most look bored or angry. Not a good look for a close up trading card.
The entire set is printed on ridiculous rainbow foil or mirror foil board that somehow makes the cheaper chrome set look like it is a more focused execution of the technology. They even added colors to the parallels, which further detract from everything on the card.
There is one good thing, and that is the fact that they incorporated cards for the rookie material auto cards where the players have their helmet on. Although there are some of them that are still helmet off and goofy, a few are done the correct way.
The golden dual autographs arent that bad despite the incredible gaudiness of the cards. Although the bordered stickers are weird looking, the overall presentation of the cards are the best of the set. Of course, that isnt saying much for this.
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Autograph Cards
The single autograph wouldn’t be that bad if they were printed without all the busy lines and added crap on the sides. Of course, since this is a Topps product that costs more than 100 dollars, they look pretty bad from most of the ones that I saw pulled. This product offers much less in their normal autos that Chrome does at less than a quarter of the price, which truly says something about the concept of this set.
More importantly, the focus of this set, the rookie material autographs look worse than they have in a long time. Ditching the horizontal orientation that gave them room for a huge foil sticker and a swatch, they instead packed every element into a vertical card. The result is a player that is almost being attacked by the swatch, as it looks to be creeping up their chests to eat their faces. The swatches obscure most of the player picture in some cases, thus making me question why it was even necessary, a la the Chrome auto patches with the same problem.
Another bad part of this is that Topps sometimes uses this type of situation as a sticker dump, meaning that non-star rookies from last year could be making an appearance. We already saw on youtube that players like Devin Thomas are put in this set, and those non-rookie jersey materials cards are rarer than case hits. How would you feel if you pulled that?
Lastly, there is no reason to release a product that costs THIS much with the stickers. Unlike Panini, Topps has the resources to get on card signatures, but doesn’t pursue it. I cannot understand why that would be the case, nor why the stickers are highlighted with a border in the design. I thought the point of a sticker was to hide the fact that it wasn’t on card, not make it a focus.
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Relic Cards
Although there are rookie jersey cards, the veteran jerseys are pretty much throwaways in this set. There are multiples per pack, and they become as boring while breaking as the overall concept of Bowman Sterling altogether. All it does is add unnecessary cost to the product, as its pretty obvious that Topps has had a tough time figuring out what a box would contain.
The rookie jerseys are expected and are basically just another card that you flip through to get to your scrub auto numbered to 15 billion. The pics are similar or identical to the auto parallels, and that is not a complement to any of them. Big disappointment.
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Value To The Collector
Of any of the sets that hit the market during the year, this is the worst possible one to buy a box of, hands fucking down. Boxes cost over 200 dollars, and you get 10 autos that are worth less than the rainbow board they are printed on, a bunch of plain swatch jersey cards, and one or two premiere rookie autos that never hold their value. I am completely serious that you need to have electro shock therapy if you are going to buy any of this. I cannot think of a bigger waste of money. Its that bad.
Even though the cards come out of a high end product, they very rarely equal the value of a card that comes out of a comparable priced set. Personally I think its because the cards are stickers and always look like crap, but Im also starting to believe its because people are getting sick of high end Topps product that offer nothing for the people that buy them.
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Overall Impressions
This set is complete crap. Poorly conceived, poorly designed, poorly executed. Go buy 5 boxes of chrome instead of buying this. Im serious. Remember the golden rule of Topps and you’ll be fine.
Average Rat
ing =
2009 Product Leaderboard (SO FAR)
1. Topps Chrome (4/5 GELLMANS)
2(t). Upper Deck Football (3/5 GELLMANS)
2(t). UD Philadelphia (3/5 GELLMANS)
2(t). Topps Football (3/5 GELLMANS)
2(t). UD Icons (3/5 GELLMANS)
2(t). UD Heroes (3/5 GELLMANS)
2(t). UD Draft Edition (3/5 GELLMANS)
8(t). Bowman Sterling Football (2/5 GELLMANS)
8(t). Donruss Threads (2/5 GELLMANS)
8(t). Donruss Classics (2/5 GELLMANS)
8(t). Donruss Elite (2/5 GELLMANS)
8(t). Playoff Prestige (2/5 GELLMANS)
8(t). Bowman Draft Picks (2/5 GELLMANS)
14. Score Inscriptions (1/5 GELLMANS)
15. Leaf Rookies and Stars (0/5 GELLMANS – NR)
I remember back two or three years ago when collectors would go after the Fabric of the Game cards like they made your dick longer or something. They were some of the best cards from the non grilled sandwich version of Donruss, and even I thought they deserved a place in my collection.
