Category Archives: donini fucking sucks at card design

National Treasures 1/1s Popping Up All Over The Place on Ebay

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There are a bunch of cool looking 1/1s that are popping up on eBay, though some of them are not living up to the standards set by 2007 and 2008’s. We know that the Robiskie 1/1 Logo Patch auto has been pulled on blowout, and now the Josh Freeman is up on eBay. In addition, there is also another Robiskie that is out of the colossal patch set with no auto, as well as a Moreno Tag Patch Logo 1-of-1, meaning there is many more logos in this product than there should be for the rookies. Funny enough, over a quarter of the “colossal” set has swatches that are smaller than the normal ones for the rest of the set.

In addition to the rookie logos being what they are, there are a few subsets that are well below the extremely low standards set by the 2009 set. Below, a 2008 Kevin Curtis 1/1 Logo patch is next to a Barry Sanders tag patch from 2009. They are both 1/1s from the same parallel of the base set, but one OBVIOUSLY looks a lot better. Ill give you a hint, its not the Sanders.
In the same vein of the jumbled messes that were the immortal patch autos out of 2009 Leaf Certified, these new 1/1s look like the 101 Freeway in LA during rush hour – busy as fucking hell. Rather than building on the simplistic awesomeness of the 2007 and 2008 1/1s, they have made the cards into a shitty version of Leaf Certified. Thank you Panini.

2009 National Treasures Is Live, Threads-y

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Its Tuesday, and that means that 2009 National Treasures is hitting eBay. I have voiced my disapproval of the direction that this set has taken, and it is becoming that much more apparent now that more cards are hitting eBay. This product used to be about great looking cards with an old fashioned focus, all of which has changed to an overpriced version of Donruss Threads and Rookies and Stars.

Back in 2006, NT was DLP’s answer to Exquisite Collection’s massive success, but now it is put out only to continue the tradition of super high end. In my opinion, with the way that Upper Deck runs Exquisite (all on card, lots of autos, continuity of the main parts of the set, etc) National Treasures has actually become more of a competitor with SPA in terms of value. Collectors expect new ridiculous things out of Exquisite, they just expect National Treasures to be there every year. Oddly enough, National Treasures’ biggest problem is that it has yet to employ the practices it needs to on the high end autograph front. This is pretty much the main factor behind its lack of competition, with design now added into it. With UD featuring as many on card sets as it does, NT hassnt been able to live up to the hype. In a 2006 world where everything was stickers, it was different, but now, UD has set the bar too high for them to reach in that respect. Hell, UD even managed to get on card stuff into the lower end of things with Philadelphia and UD Draft, and that is in boxes that don’t include 400 dollar price tags.

The way that DLP always competed for business with its high end was in the design it used for the product. It hearkened back to the mahogany and painted feel of an antique item, focusing more on the history of the game than the rookies. Rookies were a part of it, but the focus was on the “treasures” of football. In 2007, things started to move away from that, while still keeping the soul of the 2006 product. In 2008, the design was still very good looking, and featured a lot of tributes to the original set. In 2009, all is out the window, and it looks more like an overpriced versions of the lower end sets that DLP puts out every year – minus the foil board.

Don’t get me wrong, the Rookie Auto Patch cards don’t look bad outside of the bubbled on card sigs, but the rest of the set might as well have been National Gridiron Gear or National Rookies and Stars. Instead of focusing on the parts that made the previous sets great, they focused on the rookies and cheap ways to say that NT features on card sigs, when really 90% of it is stickers in a 400 dollar product.

They may think that they can blind us with jumbo logo patches of the 2009 rookies, but even the JCs are not fooled by cards that normally made them salivate in previous years. This years National Treasures is a horrible attempt at an overhaul, and you can bet that things will need fixing if Panini expects to stay in the deep end of the super high end pool.



Would You Rather Have This Card, Or A Peterson Exquisite?

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This recent sale of a ridiculous short print out of 2009 Contenders is making waves across the net. The Aaron Kelly card is limited to just 21 copies, so that means that there are only 21 truly complete sets of the product this year. This card should be worth about as much as the cardboard it is printed on, but because so many people are collecting this brutally ugly set, its worth a ton.

There has been a lot of speculation that this sale was actually done to bolster a market for a card that would normally sell for a few hundred, which is the reason I havent posted on it yet. Sell the card to a friend for a ridiculous amount, file an NPB to avoid the fees, and then re-sell the card for much more than it normally would have. Good plan right? Well, I dont think its going to get to a thousand a second time, but one has to ask, why would anyone care THAT much about a set like this?
Listen, I get that set collectors can be crazy people, but this card at a thousand dollars is going for the same amount as a Peterson Exquisite Rookie Patch Auto. Fuck, at least Peterson has played more than one snap in his career so far. That, and the set looks like more poop this year than it did last year, and that is hard to do. Its confusing to me why anyone would legitimately pay that much for a card like this. I would understand if it were Mark Sanchez, but this is fucking nuts.
Its painfully obvious that the person who spends their money like this probably has tons to spare, but I think it says a lot more about what level we have reached in this hobby. Aaron Kelly has been in a ton of products this year already, and from what I can tell, there is no shortage of his stickers lying around at DLP HQ. So, why create a card like this? Publicity and starting a crazed pack busting mob trying to get this card. In all seriousness, I doubt sales will be any higher, so why torture the fans of this set? That is just a horrible thing to do, in my opinion.
Then again, Panini did design the set to look like it does, so the short print to 21 may not be the biggest crime of the product.

Contenders is Live, Disappointing

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Well, 2009 Contenders has hit eBay, and that means that we finally get to see how bad this could possibly be. For those of you who have not followed along, Panini has touted through the whole thing that this set will feature on card autos, but then we find out that only a portion of the tickets are on card. The rest of the cards are stickers, and from what I have seen on facebook from the on card stuff, I think I actually prefer the stickers. The rest of the autos are bubbly and barely seen on the over crowded card, and I cannot believe that people are trying to get in on this product right at the beginning.

These new tickets feature a design that is worse than 2008’s visual abortion, something I didn’t think was possible, and the autographs are mildly visible to hardly visible. I have no idea why you would even try on card autos on a foilboard surface, as the reflective coating will highlight every miserable defect of the bubbly signature. They also switched to a horizontal orientation that did nothing but give them a huge space to write 2009 ROOKIE in humoungous letters. I always like when a painted player is featured on a card, but why would you cover up part of the artwork with a font that takes away from the general design? That doesn’t make sense. Plus, if you really want to do well, how about just ditching the foilboard all together and giving us a card that doesn’t blind us in the sunlight.

Contenders has always been the Bowman prospect set of football due to the fact that there are so many rookie autos, and this year is no different. The problem is that with 200 products that all have the same number of rookies on the checklist, the novelty isnt there anymore. The good thing is, they have made an effort to adding value to each case by promising a few top rookie autos per case and one on card auto per box, but when the cards look the way they do, the value just doesn’t matter as much. Contenders has gone from one of the top rookie autos of the year to another mid end whatever, and I can pretty much say that it is a direct result of the design of the cards and the refusal to adapt to the needs of the colletors.

I will give Panini their due for not rehashing the design, and for trying to up the on card content, but when your cards go from nice in 1998-2007 to awful, those smiles turn to scowls. Ive put together a retrospective here, and you can see what I mean when I say the design has tanked.

Take a look (CLICK TO ENLARGE):

How Not To Do A Cut Autograph

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For some reason, over the last year, cut autographs have gone from awesome pull to fucking ridiculous pieces of shit. When I mean fucking ridiculous pieces of shit, I mean that some of them dont break five dollars. Its not necessarily due to lack of rarity, but that is definitely a factor. I think its just as much a testament to the awful and disgusting designs that have overtaken the cut auto market.

Bad

This is a cut auto out Panini’s recent release of 2009 Limited. In previous years, Limited cuts have looked like this, this and even this. Not necessarily that bad, right? Then we have this:

No more picture, looks like a soccer ball, done for the sake of doing it. At least there is a team logo and the colors are based on the team’s. Since Panini puts fucking rainbow foil on everything, this card was not spared, and good lord is it bad. Unfortunately, this is the best of recent cards, and yes, it gets worse.

Awful

Upper Deck is usually thought of as the innovator and perfector of the cut auto. Their Legendary Cuts baseball product has always been a collector favorite. Recently in UD Black, all of that history went out the window so quickly that my head spun as I was projectile vomiting. Now, with newly painted walls, feast your eyes on this abomination:

No picture, odd looking hand numbering, and a weirdly shaped window that does nothing to help the cause. Just awful. For a set that looked as good as black did, there is no reason to include cards like this. I think this is the quintessential card to show that companies are now using cuts as a way to lure collectors in while delivering very little. Sad.

Fucking Horrid

Triple Threads is one of my least favorite products of all time, without question. However, even I could not believe my eyes when I saw this next card. It takes the whole cut autograph concept and just sets it aflame. Its so bad that you may want to take any children out of the room before continuing.

I dont know where to start. First off, the card is printed on bright blue neon foil. Im sure Vince Lombardi would have been proud. Second, those “relics” are from seats of the old Packers’ stadium, and I am not sure why this card even needed “relics” in the first place. Fucking stupid. Lastly, we have the crown jewel, the cut itself, and I cant even find a way in my mind to get the card the way it turned out. Obviously this is a check, but they mangled it so badly that you cant even call this his autograph anymore.

Seriously, if this is what we are forced to endure with cuts over the next few years, I want them gone. This has gotten to a point of parody, and I am not pleased that this is the direction things are headed. At least pay the money to put a picture on there, make the cards rarer, and dont use them in every fucking set. All three companies are such horrible offenders of this crime, that hopefully there is still time to make it back to the way things used to be. Wow.