This ended up being a pretty awesome year for football cards, and it all has to do with two players. Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott took the world by storm and brought some heat to a product calendar that was definitely lacking much warmth. Even with their historic achievements this year, Panini’s products continued to fall flat, especially on the NCAA front and with new brands launched for 2016.

As we see with every year, Panini hasnt adjusted the way they make products, knowing that group breakers and online resellers will continue to bail them out as long as it is profitable. When even that doesnt work for some of the terrible products they make, we get promos like what we are seeing with their Super Bowl boxes that are being shipped with qualifying buys from their website.

Here are some of the cards already up so far:

2017 Panini Private Signings Andrew Luck Auto 4/5

2017 Panini Private Signings Carson Wentz Auto Patch /10

2017 Panini Private Signings Matt Ryan Auto 1/1

2017 Panini Private Signings Andy Dalton Auto Patch /10

Over the last few years, the cards in these promos have looked nothing short of horrendous, but this year, it looks like they are actually pretty good looking. They still use a ton of rainbow foil and all sorts of crazy patterning on the stock, but the design behind the glitz is better than it has been.

The problem with Panini promos is that the cards drop like a rock on the secondary market once the player collectors and team collectors get their fill of cards they need. Because the products arent advertised in traditional fashion, everyone else doesnt even know to look for them. As much as these promos probably work, they create a long standing realization that overproduction of shitty products is a HUGE problem for Panini.

At some point, when a rookie class tanks like it did in 2013, there will be no way to reclaim that level of discrepancy between the actual demand of a product like and the perceived supply that Panini wants to create. I find it hilarious that collectors believe this is just Panini being nice, but it is far from that. They need to clear shelves as the 2016 card season comes to a close, even more so that the Super Bowl is now over.

We have already seen Panini forcibly demand that shops and dealers take on cases of worthless (AND EXPENSIVE) NCAA product just to get their hands on National Treasures, a practice that Upper Deck started using with Exquisite to move failing golf and soccer sets they couldnt get rid of. This isnt fair for the shops that are already sitting on enormous amounts of unsold garbage, which is not a good sign for a year where the class was actually good. What happens when we have another 2013? Good luck.

I sincerely hope people understand how bad this type of practice is, and how much it reinforces dangerous behavior when it comes to over printing a product that has no real reason to exist. I mean, there was no fucking reason in hell that there should have been even one box of Unparalleled, let alone 25,000.