Questions Raised By Panini’s Recent Flawless Football Fiasco

Every so often, something comes along in the hobby that ignites a huge discussion. A good example from the past was Mark Ingram’s photo from the 2011 Rookie Premiere, showcasing a clear representation of the way that Event Used jerseys were done. Although it wasnt displaying anything that most of us experienced online collectors didnt know, it clued a lot of others in, and they werent happy. This new Panini Flawless fiasco is a similarly big discussion, although its far less cut and dry.

The whole situation was further complicated after Panini released a more extensive understanding of how far the mislabeled cards went, and with some additional thought, there are a lot of questions that were established in the mean time. For those of you unaware of the situation, here is my original reaction.

What Does Further Discovery of “Mislabeled” cards Mean?

When Panini released their first statement, I wrote it off. Three players had issues? Okay, whatever. But now more players are part of it? Wait what? That’s a bit different. It seems a larger part of the print run was deemed to be mislabeled, and that is a very disappointing situation. Remember, this is a product that costs a mortgage payment per box, attention to detail needs to be top of mind. Something doesnt compute. This led me to the next question.

Was This Really A Mistake?

Aha! Now we get to the meat of the discussion. Originally, I could see how a few wrong swatches get into the wrong cards. It happens. Yet, to have extensive documentation of which cards from which run were effective? How does that happen unless you know exactly what is going on? Its one thing to say, “Well we missed on these three player’s whole runs. The wrong bag of swatches got used.” Its another thing to say, “3 cards from Subset A were bad, but the rest were good, and the same goes for 6 cards from subset B, but the rest were good.” That shows me that someone probably knew exactly what was going on. You dont have that type of documentation without knowing. Products go through too many QC checks to not catch this many issues.

Flawless came out very early in the year. Very early. I can easily see a scenario unfold that stems from having to rush the cards to print, cutting corners, and hoping no one can tell the difference. Not only is that extremely short sighted with a hobby that is known for its meticulous study of the different releases, but it is a blatant disregard for everything that we find to be trustworthy. This brings me to a third question.

Why the fuck do they have so many old photo shoot jerseys in stock?

Calvin Johnson attended the photo shoot in 2007, which was over 7 years ago. There is absolutely NO excuse for having his swatches in inventory after this many years. Somewhere down the line they needed to pick up a game used jersey, and dump this shit once that happens. This brings me to a fourth question.

How many other cards/products might this have affected?

This was a likely hand packed, highly QCed product that should have never had these issues. What about those other products that cost 1/16th of the price? Can we trust that Panini hasnt cut the same corners with other products? I have to say that my once solid stance is shaken with them, and I am guessing that others will probably feel the same way. Many of the players on the list have been in MANY products, and that only begs the final question.

CAN WE TRUST ANYONE ANYMORE?

I want to say yes. I want to say that the plethora of bad autographs, bad jerseys, and dismantled trust gives us nothing that should shake our confidence, but that just isnt true. Panini made themselves the online bad guy overnight, mainly because they mistreated that trust. This recent post further explaining the situation only makes things worse, even though it is them stepping out from beyond the shadows to own up. The bottom line is that they are only owning up because they got caught, and it seems like they are employing every part of their PR department to try and spin this away from the questions I am posing in the above part of this article.

The industry is not in a good place right now, and it is even more in question now that the company who just signed an exclusive license with the world. These are the people that the leagues are putting their trust in, and we can all but be certain that as long as the checks clear, they could care less. Or, will a shaken public who is coming off the heels of a federal investigation finally have a jumping off point to rid this bully from the yard? Who knows, but this cant hurt.

Here is the article in question if you want to take a look.

5 thoughts on “Questions Raised By Panini’s Recent Flawless Football Fiasco

  1. This situation helps to explain why so many Topps jersey cards say something like this material is from no specific game or event. 2013 Topps Triple Threads say nothing more than “Authentic Material.” At the 2011 Las Vegas Summit we asked the card manufacturers to give us “Game Used.” The hobby wants “Game Used.” How many 2014 Topps Jerseys have the identification “Game Used?” I love Topps products. They’re great. The point I am making is Panini is the only manufacturer which has tried to give us “Game Used” across their product lines.

    O.K., someone or several people at Panini made a mistake (or made a bad decision). I don’t know exactly what happened and it is not important to me as a retailer and collector. All that matters to me is where we go from here. I still want more “Game Used” and not “Authentic Material.” Hopefully, Panini will not take a step backward and label everything “This material was from no specific game or event and may or may not have been worn by any specific athlete.”

    I will give Adrian Peterson another chance. We are humans and we have all made an error in judgement somewhere in our life. I have no problem with giving Panini a second chance to show us they are giving us “Game Used.” I believe this situation will lead to improvements in guaranteeing us more authentic “Game Used” Jerseys/Patches of our sports heroes.

  2. I havent seen the 2nd announcement yet but at this point is there any reason to think that any of the cards have game used swatches in them? We already know the rookies are all event worn…

    I still dont like the “authenticity” statement they put on the back. It just says the material is game worn. To me that doesnt mean it was worn by the player pictured on the front, it just means the jersey was in a “game”. What game pre season, intra squad scrimmage reg season??

    It should state in what game it was worn and who wore it. At a very minimum when game used items are purchased, they are tied to a year.

    Why dont these goofs at panini stop throwing money at these silly college licenses and start a contract with the league or each team to buy the entire single game usage of each teams jerseys once a year.

    Its not credible that they or the company that actually assembles the cards could manage 2 different sets of swatches for each player and keep them straight throughout the process.

    The question is given the perceived low production run why would they even mess with event worn for the veterans. It is interesting to think of ziplocs full of little squares from jerseys floating around in inventory. Think of how they would break them down and imagine how messed up this whole thing could(is) going to get. A bag of each event worn single color, a bag for each patch or striping, bag for premium and special patches and double that number of bags for “game” worn etc…

    Hopefully UD and Topps are clean and use this to point out how hacky panini is with their products. Im sure it doesnt matter to the league or players inc but maybe it gives them pause and the fraud perpetrated by panini allows exclusive contract reconsiderations.

    Maybe some consumer protection group will take an interest as well…

  3. “Hopefully UD and Topps are clean and use this to point out how hacky panini is with their products. Im sure it doesnt matter to the league or players inc but maybe it gives them pause and the fraud perpetrated by panini allows exclusive contract reconsiderations.”

    Ah…hahahaha…

    If you believe that UD or Topps are clean, you haven’t been around long enough.

  4. There is absolutely NO possibility that those cards were “mislabeled”. That’s what their lawyer(s) told them to say. Nothing more, nothing less. The issue of certain signature cards was proven to feature an incorrect cut signature of another person, by the same name as a notable historic icon, and this excuse was born. There’s an entire thread on it on the same place where this Flawless conversation continues. It was a non-sport product, so not nearly as much attention. It will be used again, as it’s now the status quo to avoid responsibility. If someone in their 9 to 5 did something this damaging to their company, their brand perception, they’d be fired. Anyone held accountable for this yet? Nope. Will anybody? Nope. They will continue to take collectors for every penny they can while lying directly to you and selling fake goods. How long does it take to get a digital photo of the actual game jersey & date used information on the reverse of a card? 5 minutes?

  5. What I think happened with the Calvin Johnson jersey is not that they still have Rookie Premiere jerseys of his sitting around but that they used a swatch from an Ebron RP jersey instead. The cards only state that they are game used not that they are used by a specific player. I wish they would do away with event used garbage and stick to game used but make it rarer if need be so that it actually has value.

    Also, worth noting, they were suposed to be implementing their patch authentication system so that you can see a picture of the patch from packout to know if it was tampered, that may have been what they used to determine which cards were potentially affected after the fact. (Just giving the benefit of the doubt to one company of many that doesn’t deserve it)

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