This industry is one built on history. Brands that have been around the longest usually carry the most weight with collectors, regardless of the design of that year’s set. Its just an inevitability of the game, and as a result many card companies are reluctant to pull an old brand, even if it is as stale as month old bread. Oddly enough, when a new company comes into the fold, its rare that they have any sort of success, even less so when there is no licensing involved in the production of their cards.
Despite this fact, Leaf has had some very nice success with their recent Metal Draft product in football and the Muhammad Ali product in Boxing. Although Leaf is pretty much Razor with a new name, Brian Gray has done everything in his power to bring some heat to Panini, Topps and UD with his product releases.
Leaf has already far surpassed both SAGE and Press Pass in the unlicensed football arena with one product, and when you consider how long Press Pass has worked to build a following, that’s a victory. It has a lot to do with the look and concept of the Metal set, as the on card autos and clean design definitely raise eyebrows when compared to the MS Paint-worthy stylings of both of the other sets
. Actually, the bigger Leaf hits have done surprsingly well against some of the 2011 base rookies from UD Exquisite, regardless of the fact that they don’t feature an autograph.
When it comes to the Ali set, its obvious that a lot of thought was put into the way the cards were designed. Even though Ali has been tragically crippled by Parkinson’s disease, Leaf still managed to get on card autos for the cards. This is a huge victory in itself, made that much more impressive when you see how much the cards are getting. Many of the Ali autos are 1/1, but when you see the other fighters in the set, there is a lot more to the cards than just him.
Here are some of the ridiculous prices these cards are getting:
Muhammad Ali Fight Worn Auto 1/1
Muhammad Ali Fight Worn GU 1/1
Muhammad Ali Fight Worn Auto 1/1
Muhammad Ali Fight Worn Auto 1/1
Overall, Leaf is still gum on the shoe of the big boys, but from the looks of their initial releases, they are taking that to heart. I think its great that they are trying to establish themselves as a new company worthy of Collector’s cash, I just hope there are more products like Metal and Ali, rather than some of the stuff Razor was famous for in the past.
SAGE and Press Pass were obviously very conservative with the use of color schemes or uniforms that might be interpreted as being associated with CLC schools. Leaf Metal Draft was not – a lot of the cards look like they just removed the logos but left the uniforms. This is the main reason why the Leaf cards look so much better than the others, but could it draw lawsuits from the CLC? If not, then why would SAGE and Press Pass not at least use some uniforms or school color schemes in their cards? Also, SAGE, PP and UD have a more extensive rookie autograph list than does Leaf, which is limited to mostly offensive skill position players.
I like that Leaf has decided to focus on offensive skill position players as that is usually where the value comes from in a break. If there is going to be a no-name auto I would much prefer it be an offense skill player who may have some outside shot at being the next Brady, Romo, Charles et al. They saved the money it cost to fill out the product with defensive scrubs and allocated it (maybe not all of it) to players that have value potential. You have to be a player collector with a minuscule budget to not appreciate that.