2010 Panini Prestige Football - A Sign of Good Things to Come?

I bought my first pack of 2010 NFL cards a couple weeks ago and if I have any luck this year based on the first card of the season, then the Cowboys will be Super Bowl champs! My first baseball card of the year was a Ranger and guess what my first football card was!

That's right a Cowboy! Mr. Romo himself! How awesome will it be to see the Rangers and the Cowboys win it all in the same year! Okay, so enough of the Cowboys homerisms, let get to reviewing the cards themselves.

Let's start with the backs. A pretty decent design, though I still wish Panini would include yr to yr stats and make them larger and easier to read. You'll notice that the cards have actual team colors on the backs which looks nice, but for some reason, yet again...

the fronts are void of any team colors other than the players in the photos. Why? Why are so many Panini sets basically grey on the front? Oh, and there is also the annoying white fade at the bottom again. The photos themselves are nice and I like that the players are not completely cropped out of the backgrounds in this set. What I don't like is that all of the players heads are trapped between the Prestige logo and their team logo at the top.

The rookie cards have the same problem as the veterans. Where are the team colors? That and they are obviously made to have autos, but this card doesn't have an auto, so it looks bad. I bet you're waiting for me to say I can do better aren't you? Well I think I can, so here is what I came up with.

See, much better right? Add some team colors, move the logos to the bottom, away from the heads and presto, a nicer looking card. I also moved the players name to the bottom and placed it horizontally. I didn't like all the text being diagonal.

Here we have color added to the rookie card and since this isn't an auto, I decided to make their new team logo stand out better. After all, they are NFL players now so shouldn't their NFL team stand out a little more than their college colors? All in all, I like this set okay and will probably pick up some more here and there. I just wish some of these companies would start consulting with me before putting out their sets. I would buy a lot more if I had more input! Later.