First off, let me say before I start anything, that Absolute Memorabilia has been my Triple Threads of Panini’s calendar. Its always EXACTLY the same as it is the previous year, and rarely brings anything to the hobby that hasnt already been there a million times before. For the last few years, it has been a complete joke, and Panini is trying to resurrect their image now that Topps is taking them to school at every turn. After seeing this preview of the cards, I dont think there are many people out there who can say that Products like Inception and Finest make this look like Amateur hour.

Honestly, the first thing I thought about these cards they are previewing didnt have anything to do with the Patches. ALthough Panini focuses more on the patches inside the cards than the design itself, shown below, that didnt even enter my mind. The biggest question I had focuses on why the fuck some of these players are included on this ridiculous oversized checklist. Cortland Finnegan? Devery Henderson? In an era where three color patch cards cant get ten bucks on the secondary market, they put guys like that on this checklist? Henderson isnt even a starter! Santana Moss? Fred Freaking Jackson? Its terrible. When you have more people questioning the inclusion of the player they just pulled than what is on the card itself, you have problems.

Outside of that, I challenge everyone to put these cards side by side with the same player from a Topps Platinum or Finest set and see which card looks better. Even without the autographs, these cards look like cheap knockoffs of what we have seen over the last few weeks, the “Foakley” sunglasses to Topps’ real Oakley glasses. In fact, I would go so far as saying the War Room cards may be the most boring looking cards of the year, and that says a lot with cards like this or like this already on the market. As I have said already a hundred times this year, football has the potential for the most dynamic photography in sports, and they use this crap?

Lastly, for the Certified cards that were mixed in, I think we have a perfect example of how Panini focuses on the patches in the card more than the way the cards actually look. I mentioned before that the Jumbo swatches in Platinum break design borders, but the outline around the window prevent it from looking weird. In Platinum, it actually looked good with the metal looking border. For the Certified jumbos, there is no border, and the swatch is about half an inch too far to the right. It breaks the border of the card, and looks completely stupid. The same thing happens in the reebok logo RPM cards we got to see, only this time, the swatch is way too far to the left. Its like they dont know how to design a card. We all knew that Panini would find a way to mess up the good start they had gotten to these set previews, and now we are seeing how they are doing it.

Panini was not missed these last month with nothing being released on the calendar. For once, we had a few sets that came out back to back that both looked pretty awesome for the main content of the hits. This stuff looks poor at best. Panini will need to dump the bright rainbow foil for every card, and pick up their game, or Topps is going to run over them like Ndamukong Suh on his way to the QB.