Well, a new basketball season is underway and that means a new crop of
Panini NBA cards. They are now the exclusive license holder for real, so officially no more
Topps or Upper Deck this year. The first set to be released this year is Prestige. I'm not sure, but I (and other fellow
bloggers) think this may be
Panini's "basic" set this year. I hope not, since the checklist is kinda small and there is not a sticker and/or insert per pack. They do seem to be cheaper, though. From what I remember last year, you got 5 cards per pack for $2.99 while this year it's 10 cards for the same price. Or maybe my memory is a little foggy. These came from a value pack which is 40 cards for $4.99 which is a great deal. Anyway, let's check out the cards shall we?
Here is the base card design. I like the fact that we get a background and the player is not cut out. The right side has some trademark
Panini gray striping (they do shy away from those team colors, don't they!) The player and team name appear in a strip at the bottom while a Prestige logo creeps in from the upper left corner. One strange thing I noticed is no team logo. While the card design is fine without it, the strange part comes from the side of the boxes that the packs come out of. They clearly show a Kobe card with the
Lakers logo on the gray stripe in the upper right hand corner. That's okay though, we don't need a team logo, because there is not room! The poor players are already having to duck out of the way of the Prestige logo as it is! In fact, that's my main complaint of this set, almost all of the players are being knocked upside the head by the logo for no reason.
This is what the backs look like. Notice the nice use of team colors here! Why not on the front? Same as all of
Panini's releases last year, we only get 1 line of stats.
Besides current players, we get "Legends?" this year. I like the inclusion of retired players, though I'm not sure if Kurt
Rambis and Jamal
Mashburn (which I pulled from another pack) count as legends exactly. At least Mash is in a Mavericks uni on his card!
In addition to retired guys we get some young guns as well. I really like the design of the Evans Super
Sophs card, there's a cool swirl pattern in the background if you look carefully. I got two of the top rookies, the Turner being on of the many
parallels you can get.
This is what a rookie back looks like, same as the veterans except for one small difference. There is an extra line of text above the
Panini logo and when I first read it, I was a little mad. I was going to send an email to
Panini and find out what was up. Take a closer look at it...
That's right, I pulled an auto card which as you can see from the front scan is clearly missing the auto. What the heck? Well, I picked up another couple packs over the next couple of days and guess what? That's right, all the rookies seem to have this line on the back whether there is an auto on the front or not. Gee, thanks a lot
Panini. I guess they decided to design the rookie cards just like all their other "hit" cards. Start with a insert/relic/auto and gradually remove items until you are stuck with poorly designed base insert cards. Figures. I wonder what they would do I if sent them all in asking where my autographs are?
All in all, I like the Prestige cards alright. I'm still holding out for a true Panini base set. I liked the chance to get more than 3 or 4 players for each team and, like I mentioned before, the inclusion of a sticker and insert in every pack. Plus, you got like 12 cards for $1.99. Stay tuned tomorrow and I'll show you how I can make a decent set design even better. Later.
My one big complaint with this set this year is the logo upside the head of everyone. Here I don't mind it though because it's necessary to fit the player on the card. These 3 cards do show the player's head on top of the logo, but they also overlap the stripes on the right and make good use of all of the space. So these are good in my mind (though they could use some color!)
Here are some cards that I feel miss the mark. All the heads pretty much touch the logo again, but none of them overlap the stripes (or just barely). This leaves us with players that look crammed in the card or who are dribbling half a basketball like Vince. So what can I do that will make them look better? I'll show ya.
First, I moved the players to the right a little bit so that they overlap the stripes which also moved their heads away from the logo. I even allows Vince to dribble a whole ball! Second, I added a dash of color and presto! Much better, right? What do you think? Later.
