Over the last few years, Panini has had the exclusive license for producing NBA branded trading cards. Due to a number of things stemming from player licensing, I have to believe it hasnt been as successful of a venture as they would have liked. They did make enough progress to sign Kevin Durant and Kobe Bryant to exclusive deals, but they are still missing the two most important pieces of the puzzle – Michael Jordan and LeBron James. Both players are still under exclusive contracts with Upper Deck, and there are a lot of unhappy people as a result. I feel their pain, as the loss of Upper Deck football was extremely detrimental to product quality, and I can only imagine how awful it must have been to lose them in Basketball – especially with LBJ and MJ no longer available.
If you need any proof of what I am talking about, check out these ridiculous prices. I am continually SHOCKED at how much MJ is worth as a commodity:
1997 Upper Deck Game Jerseys Michael Jordan BGS 9.5 – I never would have guessed a JERSEY card could sell for this much
1997 Ultra Michael Jordan Platinum Medallion BGS 9.5
1998 EX Michael Jordan Credentials /72 BGS 9.5
Michael Jordan is the Babe Ruth of basketball, and I would even go so far as saying Babe Ruth is the Michael Jordan of Baseball. Jordan’s value is so ridiculously high as the greatest and most famous athlete in the world, its crazy to believe that Panini would even think of producing Basketball cards without him. Then when you take LeBron out of it too, I dont care how popular Kobe is or ever will be. Its like producing football products without any current stars – that’s how important MJ and Lebron are to Basketball. On top of that, when NBA collectors spend what they do on cards like the ones above, its obvious that 90 dollar box after 90 dollar box isnt what they are looking for.
I was always curious what brought about Exquisite collection back in 2003-2004, and I think its all about what the Basketball market is capable of. Producing ugly products like Absolute and Gold Standard, instead of focusing on recreating the success that Upper Deck had with Exquisite and similar products, is crazy. The NBA is filled with people willing to buy Ferraris, and Panini is churning out Hondas and Pontiacs. National Treasures will never be able to reach potential without the crown jewels, and its a huge reason why many people think Panini vastly overpaid for the exclusive license.
Does anybody know if Panini is making cards this year? There are some top rookie autos I want to pick up. And I couldn’t agree more that for Panini to have the exclusive for basketball is a joke. I love to see Topps Chrome for the rookie classes every year.
But it is good for collectors that UD lost the license b/c I think Jordan autos were becoming overproduced. Can you imagine if Panini gets a hold of Jordan? His autos will go down at least 30% in value.
So, flash forward to Panini getting Jordan.
You spend $500 on a box/pack of National Treasure, and holy $hit you pull a Jordan auto! Only then do you turn it over to see it’s #’d /299 and sells for $150 on Ebay.
As much as I dislike Upper Deck as a company, they produced quality over quantity.
Panini is one of the main reasons, I’ve become so disinterested in Basketball Cards. With a couple of exceptions, I absolutely hate their products and have not yet bought one pack or box of anything they’ve made. I just don’t see the value in them. Their “high end” products, look anything but. At least with UD, when they had a license, Ultimate Collection and Exquisite had the look and feel of important higher end cards and you had chances to pull some sweet autos of MJ and Lebron
I’d go out on a limb & say that even without a license UD would still put out better looking stuff that Crapini.
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