Sports Cards: Topps and Panini Both Guilty of Ugly Errors in 2017
Not a ton of people collect sports cards anymore, plain and simple. It’s a sad truth, but one that’s hardly breaking news. In fact, the hobby could be headed for even darker times, as middle-aged men dominate the once youth-driven pastime.
At one point, sports cards were all the rage. It seemed like everyone wanted a piece of the action, with collectors and non-collectors stocking up on cardboard as a future investment. However, as people loaded their closets with late-1980’s baseball product, values plummeted and the hobby went on a respirator.
Luckily, card companies got creative in the years that followed: they added game-used memorabilia, autographs, and other unique short-prints to the mix. Collectors suddenly had new cards to chase, and the hobby, at least for awhile, was fun again.
Eventually, several major card companies would shut their doors, as sales fell and licensing became too expensive. Only a few brands remain viable in today’s market, and none of them have licensing agreements from all four major sports leagues.
The Topps Company, easily the most notorious sports card brand out there, has exclusive rights to Major League Baseball and has done a nice job keeping their name tied to America’s Pastime. Some ballparks even display blown-up baseball cards as you walk through the gate, side by side to signify the home team’s batting order.
As of 2017, Topps is shut out from the NFL, NBA, and NHL.
The other major brand is Panini America, a company that’s unknown to anyone outside sports card circles. However, what they don’t have in brand recognition, they make up in quantity. To date, the Italian-based company has licensing deals with more professional leagues than Topps, highlighted by an exclusive agreement with the NFL and NBA. Panini also offers NHL products, the MLB is the only league they cannot use real team logos for.
Things have been this way for several years now. There are still a lot of other lesser brands, but none with legit team logos, and none with the cache of Topps or Panini. However, with the release of two separate products in 2017, both Topps and Panini proved that their standards are slipping.
Non-collectors may find these miscues petty, but to those who cherish 2.5″ x 3.5″ pieces of cardboard, the bloopers are flat-out disappointing and easily avoidable.
Topps baseball is one of the first products to drop every year and is a fan-favorite for all ages. It’s a simple and affordable set, one that features several players from all 30 MLB teams. This year, however, Topps deviated from their long tradition, taking away from the heart of what baseball cards are all about.
Rather than list complete stats on the back their base set, Topps elected to print only a portion of players career stats. For younger players, the decision doesn’t matter. Yet, for veteran players with many years under their belt, the B-side seems remarkably incomplete.
When building a Topps baseball set, you wind up with lots of duplicates and extra piles of cards everywhere. Normally, I’d utilize these dupes like only a baseball nerd could — organizing them by career hits or comparing stats of Ryan Zimmerman and David Wright — but not in this year, they just lay there in scattered piles.
Less Twitter handles, more stats…please.
While Topps knew what they were doing when they bailed on complete stats, Panini’s mistake was just a case of oversight and poor production.
In 2016, Panini produced one of the most beautiful football sets in recent memory with their Donruss line. The base set was an ode to 1990 Donruss baseball, complete with affordable pricing, eye-popping photography, and the insertion of NFL legends to go along with today’s players.
With that type of praise, my fingers were obviously itching to get a hold of this year’s version. The day it dropped, I popped into The Fantastic Store in Chantilly, Virginia, eager to rip a hobby box to shreds…
What I wound up finding was a more expensive product, filled with a blandly-designed base set. If those were the only downsides, I’d be fine. Unfortunately, when you flipped the cards over, it got worse — much worse.
Like I outlined with Topps baseball, the back of a sports card is nearly as important as the front. It’s the place where you get to know the player, usually featuring the height, weight, and alma mater. I mean, even Monday Night Football has introductions. It’s the same sort of idea.
Panini definitely wanted to give us the particulars, they just forgot. Instead, there are no TCU’s or Georgia Tech’s, just a blank white space above the stats that stick out like a kicker’s jersey on a muddy Sunday.
Check the Ryan Kerrigan card below.
Errors have been a part of sports cards for a long time, it sort of goes with the territory. After all, who can forget the famous Billy Ripken card? Still, these things normally happen more on a one-off basis — a single card here, another one a few years later. The fact that an entire set is flawed makes you wonder about the state of sports cards: Is the hobby so dead and lifeless that we don’t even have standards anymore?