Today, Panini posted a massive gallery of cards and a video of the NT packout on their blog, much to my excitement. That excitement was extremely short lived, as all I saw was a product stuffed full of incomplete looking jersey cards and oddly designed auto and other cards. Panini touted that they would have EIGHT hits per box (GASP!) not mentioning that 50% of them would be jersey cards that will probably sell for pennies on the dollar. Although NT may be a product that has a deeper checklist than the hastily conceived Five Star, its top competitor blows it out of the water in almost every respect.
My biggest complaint is card production, as Panini did not spare the National Treasures jersey cards from being “Panini-nized.” Almost every single hit in the product QC video that did not have a sitcker on it, looked like one SHOULD have been included. I get that this is Panini’s MO, but it does not make it any less fucking annoying. I was hoping that the SUPER HIGH END cards that were designed to “stay in someone’s family for generations” would be designed with a care that makes them look like effort was actually put into the construction. It has happened in EVERY fucking Panini product this year, why shouldn’t it also happen in their biggest release to date? God forbid, they take the time adjust the jersey card’s swatch placement to be in a different place that doesn’t screw up the card design, but NOOOOOOO, that would cost an extra penny per card to do that. Just slap the swatch on and put some squiggly lines where the sticker would normally go, and no one will notice. RIGHT? Ugh, I want to hit someone right now.
Seriously though, look at the way Five Star’s cards are constructed. Each of the jersey cards ARE DESIGNED SOLELY TO BE A JERSEY CARD. Each of Five Star’s patch cards ARE DESIGNED SOLELY TO BE A PATCH CARD. Its not like they have a billion fucking parallels that require a design to be adjusted. If there is a design that needs to be adjusted, it probably would have been adjusted, because no one pulls this kind of crap but Panini.
On top of all of that, anyone see the upside down Sanchez sitcker they all thought was amazing? Yeah, seems to be a common problem when the autos arent signed on card, haha. I like that the designer thought that minimalistic approaches and white spaces were great, but when you have to shrink the player picture to penny size to accommodate all the different crap below it, something is very wrong.
In all reality, the people who do not value design and look over those GIANT MOJOZ OMG swatches they put in the hard signed rookie patch atuos, will love National Treasures. I don’t even care at this point that Bryant, Montana, Rice, and a number of other people were left out of Five Star, because when the cards look as bad as they do in 2010 National Threads-ures, it doesn’t matter. These cards might as well be in Prestige, because they are produced with similar design values.
Does Five Star have its drawbacks? OF COURSE IT DOES. But when it comes to the overall presentation, its about as near perfect as a product like this can be. National Treasures may try to sway you with the pictures of those cards that someone else will pull in their box, but that is a mere slight portion of the production run. 95% of the boxes will contain 1 scrub auto, 1 good auto, 1 rookie auto patch of Mardy Gilyard, and four crap jersey cards that will sell for under 10 bucks. Have fun with that one people. Ill take my great looking cards and small checklist every day of the week. Im fed up with this crap, and from what I have been reading, there are sure a lot of people coming over from the dark side.
This is one of the funniest things you’ve written: “95% of the boxes will contain 1 scrub auto, 1 good auto, 1 rookie auto patch of Mardy Gilyard, and four crap jersey cards that will sell for under 10 bucks.”
Funny, but unfortunately true. I bought one Five Star, got one of those LT inscriptions cards, and called it a day. To National Treasures and everyone at Panini who is proud of it, I will not-so-politely say, “Fuck off.”
I agree with you on all of the points. The rookie patch auto is the part of this set that has value and actually is designed well. They have gotten in a consistent groove, but the groove is very poor. I wish that they would take more time in designing cards that have a high end presentation with good photography. The new subsets (Ring of Honor and the Hall of Fame bust cards) are very poorly designed, and look very very gaudy. I would love to pick up the Colt McCoy rookie patch auto, but that would probably be it.
Couldn’t agree more. While I do like this year’s Crown Royale (even if it does have some of the same ‘parallel problems’ you mention), my face was contorted in a “what the heck?” shape while watching this video. This is seriously Five Star’s competition? I like some of them, like the Colossal cards, but overall, I couldn’t help thinking I wouldn’t buy this at $100/box, much less $400.
Sticker autos, huge areas of wasted space, and teeny tiny pictures of the players? Maybe NOW Panini will learn, because after seeing what is coming out of the Five Star boxes on Youtube, NT is going to get it’s rear handed to it.
Agree 100%
OMG MOJOZ Stupidity seems to be more rampant than appreciation of quality design……..
Valid points. Can’t really argue with the jersey-patch-auto parallel debacle on their part. However, when it comes to Five Star I think you’ve drank too much of the Topps Kool Aid. It’s a nice product with some big cards……just a nice product…….not close to being an overall great product. For Topps, “nice” is a major upgrade from their other high-end football products.
The product drop-off is direct response to UD being knocked off the football market. They didn’t do hard signed cards because they felt they didn’t need to. After all, Topps got a late start and they ALWAYS use stickers, and they suck at high-end. Why should they go the extra mile and spend time, money and resource to get cards signed. They can save money and due to lack of competition, people will buy it anyway. Banner year for Panini!!
Five Star blew this corporate strategy away. It exposed them for what they are; a LAZY company. They had 3 options when UD left. A) Increase value and quality within certain sets; making people forget about UD altogether and making Panini the undisputed choice of football card collectors. B) Stay the same; people know what they are getting and seem to like it okay. Treasures and Contenders will be our predominate on-card auto sets. or option C) Actually lower design standards by making minimal changes within sets and lower quality and value in our top sets like Treasures due to lack of competition.
Way to go Panini. Only you could turn Topps into the standard for high-end Football.
I agree that nice is a big upgrade from completely and utterly disgusting, but you have to remember, I live for on card autos and great design work. Unlike NT, five star has an abundance of both! Yay for me!
Wow…they’ve put those postage-stamp sized photos normally reserved for those stupid 12-jersey Triple Threads books on *BASE* cards?
And they expect that to fly?
It’s almost a good thing that those Panini guys opened those packs on video themselves, because I would feel MIGHTY sorry for whoever paid full retail for all of that…and LOL at having to brag about a Kafka auto because it was the only on-card auto they found!
When will panini learn. Their “parallel every card” policy is getting old. It looks like the quality control team is on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year long plan. I don’t know what to say about panini anymore. They have flooded the market with garbage, except 09 limited football and plates and patches, and force up the prices on the upper deck hall of famer autograph cards. Also, they have killed my interest in football card. I hate you panini for what you have done to the market. They fail catastrophically and won’t quit doing it.
I for one am not into patch cards without autos, and it looks like this card will have a lot. I think it is just retarded. As far as Marty Gilyard goes, I think that his cards have burned more people than gonorrhea this year. Thay sure make an upside down auto look good though don’t they.Honestly, I have never opend a box of cards and been as happy as when I opened the five star product.If you have not opened it, you need to.That product is legit.Hell even the redzone auto I got was on card lol.
I don’t know what you all are complaining about I mean I love tiny photos inexplicable space that isn’t used and single color jersey swatches. I mean this product is sick it has 8 hits per box. I mean try buying a hit on ebay for under an average of $50 or less.
you say that’s easy…damn
Shit like this is why my desire to collect football is quickly dieing.
Panini has just been absolutely horrible this year and their redemption service sucks balls. Still waiting on Brandon Jennings and Darren Collison rookie auto redemptions from last April and May! Coming up on the 1 Year mark!!! Get your shit together Panini!
@ 2:37
Is that a photo showing a Tom Rathman jersey card and a Tom Rathman Auto Jersey card coming out of the same box????
And these are the guys responsible for the collation? These guys are talking about ultimate cards and really scanning over what goes into each box???
in-freaking-sane
I couldnt agree with u more. i thought i was the only sane one. national treasures basketball was just released and it looks just as crappy as all the other sets theyve released this year. i cant believe people are dishing out hundreds of dollars for these sticker autographs.