If you have been reading this blog for any extended period of time, you know my feelings on Panini’s design. For every one thing they do right, they do 20 things wrong. Despite my feelings for Panini’s lack of design chops, many other collectors have started to feel the boredom and frustration as well, especially in terms of the normal junk that they put into every product.
With 2011 Gold Standard, the best of the best of this product look really good. So good that I am not sure that anyone will be able to look past these rare cards to see that there is still going to be a plethora of 2 dollar jersey cards produced again like it is 2003. Regardless, at the very least they are taking a step in the right direction.
I really like the Hall of Fame cards, the super bowl cards, and the logo cards, as all of them look to be designed extremely well. However, this is still a SUPER high end product with an ass ton of sticker autos, and that will never fly with me. I dont understand how a company can charge what Panini is going to charge for this product and not do hard signed cards like we saw with Basketball. As always, Panini has come up drastically short on this situation.
The Charles Woodson logo card lands within the normal pitfalls of previous Panini products, with an oddly composed vertical orientation for a card that most definitely needed to be a horizontally oriented card. Full game photos are AWESOME, but not when you shrink them the way that they did on this card.
We also get information that the rookies will be on card, but we get that many of them will also be stickers. When you see what Topps is able to do with their products that cost significantly cheaper, this is unacceptable. This is outside of the fact that Panini is not showing us what they even look like.
EDIT: Found the rookie preview, forgot that we have already seen these. Not anything new or wonderful.
One other part that Panini desperately needs to get under control – YOU DONT NEED BIG WHITE BLOCKS TO SHOW THE STICKER. Adjust your backgrounds or have the players sign the stickers differently. The logo card and the Brady card would have been a million times better without the giant horrendous white blocks on the card where the stickers are. Its a terrible precedence set by 2011 Elite, the most disgusting product of the last few years, and Gold Standard should be above it. Obviously, someone at Panini wrongly felt the contrary opinion.
In the end, I like where these are going, but this should have been something they tried in a mid-end product where the content would more match the pricing. Even though you can get a gold plated card, logo, or hall of fame auto per case, it wont matter when you have products like Five Star tearing stuff like this to shreds. At least the chase hits outside of the Woodson arent train wrecks, but I will most likely save my money for cards that are similarly high end, but hard signed.
Here are the previews:
The Emmitt is nice but, it’s a sticker so I really couldn’t give a shit. The base cards look like the background is a rug. You use design like that for edging or otherwise. Looks like I just keep saving up for 5 Star. Thanks for making the decision so easy panini!
I agree with 90% of your review. Wish this product had on-card autos of all the players that count. I hope they have very few plain looking jersey cards, and they should make sure that all boxes have some great hits.
My customers loved the overall design of Gold Standard Basketball. What I have seened of Gold Standard Football looks ever better than basketball. I like look and idea of the diamond cards. I hope they don’t easily come off the card.
While the improvements you have described are very good, the product, as is, should be one of the best Panini Football products of the year.
I think this looks decent. It might be the only Panini product I buy this year (at least from what I’ve seen thus far). How much will a box cost?
I don’t collect basketball anymore since it’s only Panini so I have no clue what they looked liked but if these are “better” then I won’t waste my time.
The inconsistency in design is just as annoying as the sticker autos in a set like this. Some cards have the ugly white box, others don’t have it and they look 100 times better. The Woodson card looks terrible due to being vertical and using an action shot when all the other cards are on the gold background. The Locker is the only preview to use black boxes for the jersey and auto, which I think looks terrible.
This set could be so much better if they had on-card autos in a lighter gold box (like the Newton/Ingram dual) to make the autos stand out and if there was some consistency in the designs. If this is one of the best we’ll see from Panini this year it’s pretty easy to spend all my money on Topps products and not feel like I’m missing out.
The box price should be comparable to basketball.
Double Standard? What a horrendous set name with a negative connotation.
Man, I had the exact same thing written in my notes before I posted and I forgot it. Totally agree.
This is basically Panini saying this is the ‘BEST THEY CAN DO’ for their definition of Gold standard. Thanks to the easy out, sticker auto ‘norm’ of today (originally touted to be a cure for too many redemptions) the players have had allot of practice over the years signing with-in the confines of the sticker…
Still nothing beats a nice free flowing, hand scribed auto on card. We know the player had touched that card. It couldn’t get any more awesome than that. If this was all hand signed, it would be one great, thrilling product.
However, hungry collectors will still eat this high dollar product up and that is good enough for the company in staying with their sticker, production program, saves them $$. A better name for this product would be ‘Fools Gold’, the Standard’.
actually stickers dont save money…there is well, the cost of the sticker and then labor to affix the sticker to the card
And the sticker process has improved. I used to get imbalanced sticker placement, rumples in the foil and smudge marks on the auto itself. It was a disappointment. I would think they are not being affixed by a human hand anymore. Just keep the stickers on low to mid end products. Super end should be super.
But really…this product is about the bling on the cards. Reminds me of when Action Packed imbedded synthetic diamonds into the card.
Love the product from what I have seen! Stickers do not bother me at all.. In fact I wish it affected prices bu too bad it does not
:(… As another guy said in a forum as long as it is not loaded with redemptions…
It will also be the highest product with vets so far and nothing worng with that
-wheeler281
Looks corny and tacky… Great standard panini, people can walk over it, its so low
Man corny and tacky is having 3 different number variations of the same card just because of color. cough cough inception
-wheeler281