Over the course of the last week, there has been a literal explosion of contempt and anger over the Bradford 1/1 Mirror Black Logo Auto being left out of the Certified pack out. Ever since the card publically ended up in the hands of a large scale case breaker as a redemption replacement, we have gone without explanation from Panini, and it looks like we will never get a full explanation of what happened.

Today, Panini issued an official (non)statement that reads as follows:

“To ensure quality product in the marketplace, it is Panini America‘s practice to pull product from the production run for quality control purposes. The cards from the product pulled for QC go to Customer Service to be used to correct any problems that may occur in an individual product. Extensive efforts are made to re-introduce rare cards to the pack-out before the cards are routed to Customer Service. However, under certain, unusual circumstances, this is not possible.”

Basically what is being said here, at least in my opinion, is that they are passively admitting to fucking up. Yet, instead of owning up to the fact that one of the biggest hits of the product was left out of the hands of the customers, they give us this bullshit statement about their policies. This type of brush off will lead to a backlash from the collecting public that will ensure problems for them in the coming months and years of their product’s release.

You know what, I would like a little bit more explanation of what these “unusual circumstances” consist of as referenced in the final sentence. If the biggest hit in MY product is pulled for QC, I move mountains to get it back into the pack out. Hell, I even commission one more box being built just to send it to a store for someone to buy. Not only that, if it isnt going to be in the packout, I dont give it to someone as a redemption replacement. Bottom fucking line.

Much like any amazing box break posted on any forum gets a “those boxes should have gone to Beckett,” response from someone thanks to the 2007 Exquisite fiasco, this situation will be a similarly hilarious punch line. Any time someone pulls a chase card, there will surely be a response of  “You are lucky they didn’t hold that one back!” Because of this type of meme-based publicity, I think we will obviously come to see just how badly Panini biffed it. In all seriousness, this type of response does absolutely nothing to help them win back some of the customers they may have lost.

The Bradford was recently up on eBay with a huge asking price, and I would expect this type of publicity will eventually do a lot of favors in selling the card. In the end, the losers of this occurance remains the consumer base themselves, and Im not sure how many more fuck ups people can take without throwing up their hands in frustration. We all know that all of the card companies bend over backwards to take care of their best customers, but it has never been this public. Now that many people know what is going on, they cannot “un-know” it. That is going to be the downfall. Mark my words.