Last month, Panini had a nightmarish experience explaining how the biggest hit in 2010 Certified was held back for Quality Control, and then handed out as a redemption replacement. Well, now that National Treasures is out, and the Bradford 1/1 NFL Logo Auto has been posted on ebay, someone at Panini just breathed a sigh of relief the same wont be happening for this product.
Personally, I hated just about every part of this poorly designed product EXCEPT for the rookie patch autos, and this Bradford 1/1 is a great looking example of the way the WHOLE product should have looked. The asking price is obviously an homage to the maliciously inflated Superfractor 1/1 auto sale price, but im sure it will most likely sell around 5-6 thousand.
Panini released a number of images, including one of this specific card prior to the release of National Treasures, to help bolster hype of a product that is filled with thousands of cards that didn’t get the super high end treatment. In reality, this hype mongering served only to blind the public from the true face of National Treasures, one that is scarred by card after card that doesnt live up to the billing that should accompany the $400 price tag
. Collectors have highly opinionated responses to the release of a set with a lot of history, but even on many pro-panini message boards, things arent getting the type of response they had hoped for. With Five Star constantly outshining National Treasures in just about every area other than checklist
, its too bad that cards like the Bradford 1/1 are buried by the hits like this one
.
Overall, its obvious that National Treasures isnt what it used to be, and that is only made more apparent by the ways collectors react to the breaks of the bad boxes of NT versus bad boxes of Five Star. What I mean, is that a bad box of National Treasures leaves you with 8 hits of poorly designed jersey cards and sticker autos, where as a bad box of Five Star leaves you with some wonderfully designed on card autos and patches that still have that “it” factor.
Hopefully Panini will learn from their mistakes and go the right direction next year. However, as you saw from my documentation of my confrontation with Panini over the weekend, feedback from people not in their target audience doesn’t matter to them. God forbid they try to bring us into their target audience, but that is besides the point over at Panini HQ.
Because Panini’s releases look like one big Yankee Stadium continuity set they should have put the set name in clear boldface type on the back of each card. That way collectors would be able to differentiate one set from another five years from now when the 2010 calendar is remember as one big foil board disasterpiece with horrificly designed cards and ridiculously placed swatches. Thanks Panini for saving me $2,500 this year as my budget once allotted to Donruss stayed safely in my pocket!
If you need any more proof that National Treasures is not doing very well, look at the pricing. When Topps Five Star came out, Blowoutcards.com had it for $399/box. Within just a few days, that price shot up to over $500. Currently, Blowoutcards is running a special on Five Star for $489, more than $90 more than it was originally priced at.
In contrast, National Treasures also hit the market at around $399 a box; however, it has quickly fallen below that, and as far as I’ve seen, has never broken $400. Currently, it’s on special at BlowoutCards for $369. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it fall even further in coming weeks. That’s all the proof you really need to see that collectors are showing Five Star love, and are overall not impressed with NT.