Friday, January 23, 2009

2008 National Treasures: The Great, The Annoying, & The Rejects

National Treasures to me is one of the most exciting products for football. It is a product that offers a chance at some really great looking cards and some really great pieces of history. The 2008 Edition is due to release on January 28th and many football collectors are excited I am sure (even at the IMHO gouging price of $400-$500). As the collecting world waits, Donruss has started to release some more images that look great, but also point to something really annoying that should not be happening in the high end products of sports cards. Let me break down my opinion

THE GREAT

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I always love the chance of getting a cut auto. This year the Historical Cuts are amazing once again and the aesthetics of the cards is unbelievable. Mother Teresa would be an amazing pull. This year the addition of the Heisman Cuts is great. It is a chance for football fans to pull some cuts from some of the greatest "yearly" college football players.

THE ANNOYING

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What's that you say? All those cards look awesome. You are correct. They are beautiful cards and I commend DLP for once again having some amazingly sweet looking cards. However, on to the annoying aspect. Each one of those Tony Romo cards is a 1/1!!! That is right each one of them is a 1/1. I know Gellman has written on this before, but when this crap starts dropping into National Treasures, then I start to get really annoyed. At least in the past runs of NT they have changed the foil embossment for the different print runs. And with "laundry tag" and other such "premium" patch cards they usually have been in a run of #/10. Not here though. We have three 1/1 auto cards and the only difference is what piece of the jersey they plopped in the "material" window. Not even a change of picture or embossment foil color change. This is annoying to me. If the only thing you are going to change is the piece of material, then for the love of everything sane and logical would you please number the above cards #/3!!! Don't play us like idiots. (Side question: Does anyone else feel like this is just a manufacture equivalent of the Ebay 1/1 sellers? There the sellers say the numbering or the "patch" make it a 1/1 because there is nothing like it. To me it seems like that is just what DLP is doing here except they legitimize it by "stamping" 1/1 on the back. I ain't buying it!) Annoying, but that doesn't even compare to the following "horrible" reject product that should cause box busters everywhere to puke.... Ladies and Gentleman I give you the following:

THE REJECTS

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That is right folks. Manufactured Patch Autos! Never should DLP reuse a concept from a mid-end to low-end product in their "premium" set. Manufactured Patches are horrible in my opinion. As you can see some of the autos look alright, but as you can also see above some of them look horrible. Nobody likes sticker autos, but this can end up even worse then those annoying sticker autos because the autograph looks horrible. DLP has taken a pretty cool concept in "nickname" autos and paired them with one of the most pointless manufacturer moves in creating manufactured patches. These do not belong anywhere near the National Treasures set. As a side note, is it just me or does it seem that "manufactured patches and/or letters" are becoming the new "sticker" auto? This allows them to get the autograph before production like stickers but it seems that the vast majority of collectors think these are somehow better than sticker autographs and I don't know why. At least on the stickers the autographs can look bold. HORRIBLE!

All this being said, I am still excited for National Treasures because it has some really great looking cards as always, but DLP somewhat has disappointed with some questionable manufacturing production.

5 comments:

  1. Those 3 Romo 1/1's are ridiculous. By that logic, every jersey card I've ever pulled should be a 1/1 since in some way or another they are unlike all the others...right?

    I'm not even going to get into how awful those manufactured patches are...I'm disgusted!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Paul-

    What is even worse is that the Romo was just an example. In their previews there are multiples of most of the players. AP has 2, Roethlisberger has 2, etc. It is horrible.

    I had the same issue with their Elite autos. There was an issue I had with some Throwback Thread auto. They had 2 versions of the Marino. One was with patches in it and the other with regular jersey swatches. Both of the cards looked exactly the same except for the "swatch" in the window and the worst part was that both editions were #/5. It is so annoying and in my opinion questionable.

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  3. I can only agree to everything you said. It's obviously a trick to make us think there are tons of 1of1s in the product. However annoying it might be it will still not be a bad thing when it comes to card value, people always pay premium for 1/1 stamped cards.

    The manufactured patches came as a shock to me. I had plans on buying at least a box of this product. Manufactured patches put an instant stop to those plans. I'd hate to see 1 of 3 autos being a manufactured patch when opening a box, wow that really would suck.

    My favorite set of what I've seen so far is the Championship materials set. I just love the design of it, with the unique red cards.

    If you disregard the manufactured patches I still have to say the product as a whole looks amazing. They have taken the best from 06 and 07 and combined it for a winning concept, minus the manufactured patches of course.

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  4. Lars-

    I agree that overall I still like the product because it has some really great looking cards, but man the ridiculousness of adding the "manufactured patch" autos, just lowers it a bit in my opinion.

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  5. I want the Ronald...man, what a sweet looking card that is.

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