This is one of the biggest weeks in the hobby coming up, with two of the biggest products of the year coming out this coming Wednesday. These two products have become the biggest releases for the high end space, with each having some massive hits in the course of the breaks.

Five Star

I love the look of the product this year, with the first time that baseball and football have had the same look. Baseball had some really nice looking cards, and I cannot wait to see what Five Star has in order. Last year's product looked similarly great despite a horrible RC class, and continues the long standing tradition of Five Star being the best looking product in the tier.

It does not come without disappointment this year, as the non-rookie checklist does not look like it matches what it has been in the last few years. This comes as a bit of a surprise considering how star studded the on card checklist was for Museum Collection. Not only that, but my favorite cards of the year, are no longer part of the checklist. Previously, the inscription cards have always been the gem, but they have been seemingly left off the checklist for 2014. This is borderline blasphemy for me, and I cannot express how disappointed I am that none of them are part of the set.

Check out what I mean:

2014 Five Star Bo Jackson Auto Inscription Quotables

2010 Five Star Adrian Peterosn Auto Inscription Quotables

2012 Five Star Andrew Luck Auto Inscription Quotables

2011 Five Star Peyton Manning Auto Inscription Quotables

Overall, I think that this product will still be on par, and the rookie content will still make the product worth checking out. This year’s single logo autographs are the first time that Five Star has offered cards like this (usually dual logos), and I am quite interested to see how they perform. Because Topps does not offer many logo cards over the course of the year, hopefully they will be special, unlike Panini who puts out 10 per rookie per product.

National Treasures

Over the last two years, I think the design for Treasures has been better than it has been in the previous years combined. I have often said that it does not deserve the fanfare it has relished over its run, as the cards have been so ugly to describe with normal adjectives most years.

One of the biggest factors that I see making treasures such a disaster each year is that it uses sticker autographs in a product that costs as much as NT does. Additionally, this year they are using stickers for the rookies more than I have seen in previous years, which makes me question why an ultra high end product cant have 100% hard signed rookie content, but other products from Panini can? That makes no sense. Maybe Panini should spend less time putting together horse shit products like Spectra and Black Gold and focus on delivering for their biggest release of the year.

That being said about the stickers, I am a huge fan of the rookie auto patch design and a bigger fan of the cards that are on card. This year’s design is EASILY the best design treasures has ever had, and its sad that wax breakers will have to endure the sticker embarrassment just to get at the good stuff. Similar things could be said about the shitty throwaway relics that have plagued this product for so many years. Dear Panini, THE JUNK RELIC IS DEAD. Let it rest in peace, instead of annually digging it out of the shallow grave you are responsible for putting it in.

Despite collecting the hell out of Teddy Bridgewater all year, this is likely the first year I will not be buying any boxes of either product. I will be picking up singles from both, but I just cant see spending a ton on this year’s stuff – especially when we havent seen any previews that showcase a reason to buy either set.