Ladies and Gents, stop the presses, I have some news you are not going to believe. I actually like the preview from a Panini set. I just saw the preview pics over on Blowout from 2010 Classics, and I have to say that they didn’t fuck it up at all. Last year’s Classics was terrible compared to previous years, but this year’s looks to be a VAST improvement.

First off, the base cards look really good, and with Classics, that is one of the most important elements because of the way the Rookie Autos are produced. I would buy myself a Toby Gerhart auto from this without a thought, sticker or no sticker. Then, the HOF auto cards also look pretty good, especially when they are using official logos and such. Nice job there.

The one problem I see is that there is a good chance of some major floating swatch syndrome, as Panini always parallels the hell out of each of the subsets. Look at the Vernon Davis card, then take away the auto, and see what you are left with. Same concept with a few of the others from this preview. Panini builds their cards backwards, which is the reason that a lot of their swatch cards look off balanced. Instead of starting with the base and building the swatch and auto jersey cards in that order, they start with the auto jersey and remove things to get to the base card.

However, with the focus being on the base cards, I think this is pretty good looking.