[melcmd]

Is it just me, or is the quality of releases gone way down in the last couple of years?

I've been a serious collector since the 2006 NFL season. I feel like Ive hit a wall and am just not excited or impressed by most of the products out this year. To me, most of the Topps products are tired concepts that they've used over and over again. Inception got me excited, but would have a been a better product w/ more veteran autos. Topps Five Star was okay.

Panini has just plain tanked this year. They had a few disappointments in 2010 (Prestige) but made up for it with some of their other products, especially Certified Football. Contenders was a watered down product thanks to no College Ticket autos......redeemed only w/ the Super Bowl Ticket auto set.

With 2011, it's like Panini isn't even trying any more. Certified is one of the worst products of the year as far as design and redemptions. In 2010, I was working on 6 different sets from Certified. Only one this year and I feel like it is garbage (Fabric of the Game Prime auto set).

I, for one, am insulted by Gold Standard. I don't see how microscopic precious metals or gems have anything to do with collecting football cards. It insults all of us to believe that we would buy this product for this reason.

I never thought I would miss Upper Deck, but they did go out with a bang with most of the products they released in 2009. Exquisite, SP Authentic and Super Patch autos, Ultimate Generations, Legends 6....all still nice stuff to look at.

I might try Topps Precision and will buy singles of Five Star. I'm not so sure about more Panini, including Contenders.

My suggestion to Panini for 2012.....better background designs, cut out the boring white backgrounds used in all of your products (except Crown Royale). Since you can't use college uniforms in photos for rookies, decrease the emphasis on the rookies in products like Prestige and Elite and integrate Rookies and Stars into these products and just release manufactured pro team stickers (except for free agents). Maybe they should blend all 3 of these and then channel their energy into getting other products like Certified out on time and elinimate all the redemptions.

Does anyone know why Panini can't make arrangements to have a representative there at practice to get contracted players to sign? They practice every week during the season and can be found. None of this waiting on players to send stuff back.

It would be nice to get thse cards during the season when the players are actually relevent.

Just had to get that off my chest. I'll start posting some of my collections that I havent shared in the next few days.

[patsfan129]

I agree, ive hated almost all of 2011's products. Most of them look like something that was just thrown together.

[jdetter23]

I agree with ya for the most part,most of Panini's stuff has been duds so far.Topps should have brought back magic instead of legends or rising rookies. Hey Mel what does one of the certifieds look like that u are doing the set of this year?

[chibearsboy]

i hear ya brother.. i thought 2007 was the high water mark and it has gone down hill HARD from there...and we all saw the slow motion train wreck coming...we sent the card manufactures suggestions..thousands i am sure....they did NOT listen to the masses and will pay for that in low profits..
so hard for me to find a set i like anymore too.....stinks....tiny patches of event worn crap on RC's...20 diff insert sets of the same card design...too many redemptions you never see so set suffers...
i could go on but i hate to bring folks down

[daytonator]

I couldn't agree more and I've been saying it all year, I've switched to baseball for this very reason, panini is tired, they are so unimaginative, it's sad. Certified WAS the best product last year, ur dead on, and they've watered every product down by cutting corners and putting in less veteran autos and patches and settled for rookie jerseys, which they acquire at events, by having those players put on four or five jerseys on at a time, it's ridiculous. And also MUCH cheaper for them. Bring back the 90s inserts, the die cuts, the imagination, like encouraging collectors to make sets by doing the promotion playoff did with 98 contenders and having collectors redeem sets to the company to have them stamped and returned by the company to the collector.
Being creative sometimes just requires to looking to the past. Topps has had better products this year but yea, gold standard is garbage, there is just so few good products to name, I can't think of any off the top of my head.

[warcraftin]

Best way to inform them is to not buy their product and send a complaint through the BBB. They have to respond or there business reputation takes a hit. If enough people do it then maybe? who knows?

I miss officially licensed Upper Deck products.

[Sajman01]

Upper Deck dropping out of the market really hurt the quality. Topps has an inflated price for a decent product brought on by the fact that Panini products are so poor.

Topps really hasn't been bad this year, I liked Platinum, Chrome and Inception, however, none of them are worth the current price they are demanding per box. But I can't fault Topps for the inflated price, they know their only competition is Panini and they see how bad their designs are and know they can command more and collectors like us will pay more.

The last few years have been hard for me as I've been primarily a Football and Basketball collector, but with Panini having monopolized the whole Basketball market and the mess that is the football market, I've found myself moving more towards Baseball the last two years.

Unless Precision is spectacular or the price of Sterling drops to $200 a box, I just don't see myself purchasing any more hobby boxs of Football this year and that sucks because this has been one of the best classes of the last decade.

[phinzphan1372]

Im impressed with certified and maybe inceptions ... but even my favorite Gridiron Gear has been a Dissappointment... Think I'll go with certified, inception and sterling for the most part

[CowboysFanatic]

For panini I personally like some of the white background products as i am a sucker for good clean cards, i think timeless treasures did this very well and i love the look of their cards. I do like the gold standard design and their rainbow holofoil look, but the persian rug background design can get canned.

As for Topps, i enjoy the refractor, super fractor and xfractors, but for the love of the hobby if your gonna make a patch card, at least make it a decent looking patch. I dont care if you got to make less of em to get it done just do it. More logo patches and way less one color patches unless its a on patch auto.

Also all around why not more creativity as Daytonator suggested. I can sit here and think of several things right off the top of my head. How about a set where it looks like the player is bursting from the card in a rip tear design type effect? Or do multi dimensional multi colored layered cardboard so it has some real 3D depth similar to what you would see in those old chinese cork carving paintings?

So many ideas i can come up with myself. Someone in design needs to get out a lil more, smoke a fattie or something because the design on some of these otherwise great products are dead.

[biglump007]

I have to agree I think almost every product this year has been a joke, the only set I've seen this year that was worth attempting is the certified NFL die cut prime patch set which I'm doing. Prestige and it's water color design was a joke, and rising rookies with its basic design and paper thin card stock was no better. I think after last years success with taking the freshman fabric set horizontal panini made a mistake this year and took elite and absolute rpm horizontal as well. They just don't seem to understand that the freshman fabric was a success because it was a bit different, now with elite and absolute being the same it's overkill. Gold standard well not much you can really say there other than I guess panini thinks it can con collectors into thinking gimmicky products with gold and diamonds are better than well designed products. With this years draft class being one of the weaker classes in recent years you would think manufacturers would try to step up their game to make collectors more interested, but instead no. I personally think this year was a bad year for anyone to launch any type of rookie based product and while inception has one of the nicer if not the nicest designs this year it's rookie autos or nothing. Topps also needs to stop watering down the market with 15 different parallels of the same card ( triple threads ) the last thing I want is a short printed card that has 6 or 7 short printed parallels just like it. As far as the future products well contenders and sp authentic both look like a kindergarten class designed them, like you in intregued by precision but will wait and see before making the final call. National treasures has a nice appeal to it but at 500.00 a pack it's not like the average collector can do that. At some point the manufacturers are going to have to listen to collectors and find out what they want to see in a product and probably more importantly what they don't want to see. I for one am tired of 1 clr prime patches /10 or /25 and seeing 15 different jersey cards of the same rookie in 1 product.

P.S. Panini there is a reason why you are left with a ton of stock in the warehouse and had to do the black Friday giveaways to get rid of some of it.