My mind wanders again to the lack of innovation and complacency that seems to be taking over the card market right now.
This is going to be a little one sided since I don't buy much hockey and I buy even less basketball. I invite anybody out there that collects those 2 sports to chime in, but this is mainly my gripe about the football and baseball releases this year.
First Topps. It just seems lazy to me to use the same design over and over again for different products. There was a time when Topps Baseball looked nothing like Topps Football, Hockey, and Basketball. Remember when Topps got to put out those kinds of cards?
Here's what I mean.
Series 1 baseball
Series 2 baseball, you would expect these to look the same there the same set just different issues. And we can expect Update to look exactly the same.
Topps Football
Topps WWE
Topps Pro Debut, and series 2 of this is coming out soon too.
Lazy.
Now onto Panini. Like I said I can't speak for the Basketball issues but here is what I've pulled together in 5 minutes from the Panini website, using just the base cards of Peyton Manning.
Rookies and Stars
Threads
the New Epixs.
Prestige
Classics
and Donruss Elite.
I wanted to so a side by side of Elite, but couldn't find any base cards from previous years on the website and I couldn't find an image for the base Absolute due out soon but you get the idea.
At least Panini changes the direction of all the lines. And Epix and Threads look way too similar. At least in Threads you get some background action.
What's really worse here though, Panini at least mixes up the design. Although they are all eerily similar. The hits all look the same too. And I have a hard time paying so much for so marginally designed cards just to get 7 or 8 cards and a blank white bluff card. Although those can be made in to cheap easy dividers for your monster boxes. But that's a later post.
While I don't look forward to the days when the market was flooded from every direction by product I do miss the incentive that competition fostered into innovation and design.
Pro Debut should use the Topps baseball design; a big part of the appeal is that these are Topps minor league baseball cards. They need to tie into the design to boost that brand appeal.
ReplyDeleteTopps did get lazy with Pro Debut series II, though - it should have been out in early to mid August while the minor league season was still going.
It doesn't really bother me that they use the same design for football, but I suppose it might if I'd been opening packs of this stuff all year. I'm at the point where I just buy the specific cards I want.
The difference is that Topps design is only for the Topps Base brand - Panini makes the designs look the same through all price point sets (just a waste of time and money).
ReplyDeleteGood points guys. I think the most original release from Panini was the cheapest, Score football. And John your right the Topps design is though just there base products but look at Platinum that just came out it's kinda like a cross between Chrome (the rookies) and Elite (vets foil board). And triple threads bases look fairly similar to each other from year to year.
ReplyDeleteJeez my spelling and syntax is terrible this morning sorry guys.
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