There is a brewing debate this year, and it centers around a title bout between Panini’s perennial super high end offering, National Treasures, and Topps’ new super high end offering, Five Star. Both products are above 350 dollars per pack, and both are the final releases from each company this year. We also see that Upper Deck is going to be releasing Exquisite this year, but without NFL licensing, its pretty much a non-contender in this fight.
On their twitter and facebook page, Topps has been slowly trickling pictures of the final Five Star cards, ALL HARD SIGNED, including some of the most awesome inscriptions I have ever seen in a product. One non-topps hobby insider who saw a portion of the cards in process said “they are some of the coolest cards I have ever seen.” Being the only completely hard signed product of the year, I am going out on a limb and saying that Five Star is probably going to win this fight with one hand tied behind its back. Its just going to be almost impossible to compete, especially with the Panini builds a product.
Regardless, Panini is finally stepping up their pre-release photos of the cards, and so far, the results are both good and bad. They surely arent at the extremely awesome level of what Topps has been showing, and the sad thing is, I dont think that level exists with National Treasures. Just from looking at the sell sheet and the pictures below, its easy to see that this year will be better than last year’s “National Threadsures”, but still not where it needs to be. Aside from being almost 100% stickers, the cards show signs of having similar problems to every shitty set Panini has released this year. Incomplete looking cards, oddly placed swatches, and parallels out the ass. Although the cards below will have stickers on them eventually, its not a far stretch of the imagination to think what the non-auto versions of these cards will look like. Its going to be a bloodbath in this fight.
BOTH Panini and Topps had a chance to fill a void left by the loss of Upper Deck’s license, and while Topps has risen to the challenge by offering their first all on card set, Panini thinks they can get by with the same old shit from years past. Though Five Star may be a top contender for Best Product of the last Few Years, National Treasures seems to have a lot of issues. We have all seen the deflated values of many of the previous year’s NT cards compared to Exquisite, and I think that this will continue to be a huge issue going against the hard signed juggernauts in Five Star’s checklist. Stickers will never be able to hold up, even more so when the design is less than perfect.
Dont get me wrong, I think the logo card is cool, and the auto’ed version of the “colossal” set will be VERY cool, but that Moon screams poor design and bad composition at me. I hate when we get cards created around worthless stats like Moon’s “nine pro-bowls” and I hate it even more when the company opts for a small player picture. Panini’s design team obviously wanted half the card to spell out “Moon” and whatever else they needed, and rather than extending the player picture through the card, they left it Triple Threads sized. You want to get me riled up? Create more cards with focuses in the wrong composition areas.
Here is what has been posted so far:
Honestly, I think topps five star will crush national treasures. A set with 100% on card autos, with awesome inscriptions, beats a set with inspiration from triple threads and nearly 100% stickers. The only sets panini did right are 09 limited football and plates and patches. Other than that, their football cards are garbage and have killed my interest in football cards. The recycled design and horribly small player pictures wreck any chance of me getting the single cards on ebay. The low percentage good part of 2010 national treasures is the hard signed rookie patch autos and the logo cards. a low percentage out of 100% is not good enough for me panini. I miss upper deck exquisite, sp authentic, ultimate collection and all those good upper deck sets.
5 Star all the way. Panini refuses to follow suit and up their game, so f’em. I know guys who were HARD CORE 2007 & 2008 National Treasures breakers who dont want to touch last years with a 10 foot pole and are really hesitant to spend much if any on this stuff. Now, these same 2 guys just prepaid for 5 cases EACH of 5 Star.
Are you picking up what I’m laying down Panini?
The repeat crap, the same generic designs, the F’ing STICKERS!! Who decided it was a good idea to put stickers autos in a $350+ pack of cards? Seriously? I’m by no means saything Topps if off the hook (**cough Triple Threads cough**), but they sure as hell put a lot of work into 5 Star, and from the looks of it are going to SMOKE Panini in the Super High End sales when this stuff hits.
Well done Topps, shame on you Panini.
It really blows my mind that they would have any sticker autos at all in a product that expensive. I just can’t see buying a box, even if I had the expendable income. Hopefully nobody buys it and Panini will have to rethink their “strategy.”
Dude, if they’re pimping Darren Sproles and Wayne Chrebet pics…and using them as ‘sneak peeks’, this is setting up to be an epic fail.
I’ve been on the fence on both NT and 5* this year bc I’ve busted at least a case of exquisite since 2007. Every year of exquisite has been different with a new element replacing something out of the previous years making each year better than the last (not taking draft classes into account).
After seeing these pictures I went ahead and preordered 5*. Except for the RPA’s which really look exceptional I really don’t see anything that different from last years. Same type of design (although a little cleaner), same layout, same stickers, same diecuts. The only thing really different is the players.
I’m just disappointed bc NT basketball last year should have been a stepping stone. They got the RPA’s right in that and you can barely find boxes left even though unless you hit one of the big 3 rookies your looking at a big loss on the box. I feel it’s going to be the same with NT again in football.
I can’t stand the big, empty white spaces on some of those cards.
I don’t like the small player pictures much, but I am digging that Sanders/Peterson dual logo patch card. Maybe I’ll be able to find some decent singles, but in no way is this worth busting at that price.
The cards in that third picture remind me way too much of that godawful ’09 Classics set, but without the weird ornate candy bar/etched poop background that those had.
I am very unsure about the 5 star and the National treasures cards. There are only certain types of cards of certain players that I will collect, so when I buy cards I look to sell or trade them.Mostly sell for profit. I will be honest the baseball and football triple threads have not done very well for me this year. I just find it very hard to justify $475 to pull another Marty Gilyard auto lol. I think the product looks freakin awesome, but from my standpoint there are a lot of duds as far as rookie autos that they have out there and it seems like they mass produced it.Seriously, I have like 10 Marty Gilyard autos lol…cry. I have not been buying or selling for that long so my opinion is probably not worth much, but cmon card manufacturers these cards sell for four something and all you can get is maybe 200 when you sell em all? That just aint right, I want some damn resale value man!
Well an addition to my post above, the Five star is awesome, better than advertised in my opinion!!!!!You wanna get this stuff!