Random Card of the Day

The design was not one of the better Legends releases, but still a decent one. 2013 Legends was the last Press Pass Legends NASCAR release. I think the 1st one was in 2005, but they dropped it after the 2013 release as they were trying to stay afloat. Their poor performance in football cards was part of their downfall. The real dagger was Panini buying exclusive rights to over 200 NCAA schools. That killed Press Pass, even though they still had the only NASCAR license. By changing nearly everything they had done with NASCAR cards for nearly a decade, they drove fans away slowly. The changes started in 2010 when they altered several main-stay brands and dropped a few. They started pushing out too many NCAA football sets while reducing the number of NASCAR sets. Plus, they started charging more for the NASCAR releases that were replacing the other sets they'd made for many years.

Isn't it ironic that about 19 months after Press Pass closed it's doors, Panini released their 1st NASCAR set?! Panini has now released 9 NASCAR sets in 14 months. Not a single one hit the market by the original release date, EXCEPT for 2017 National Treasures that wasn't even supposed to be made this year. They snuck that one out without letting people know ahead of time that it was even on their release schedule. TCDB still says the release date is on the 15th, but they've been out for a couple of weeks now.

I have LONG said that Press Pass killed themselves by shifting more to the "Super Premium" sets, and dropping the real sets that you could actually collect. $500 for a single 5 card pack is not a sustainable buisness model. I believe that was the price and packout of Five Star. It killed Press Pass, trying to do it killed Fleer, and now Panini is going that way with the NBA.

They never learn.

Press Pass was supposedly working on another Legends set when they went out of buisness. It was supposed to be released in March 2015, supposedly (stressing that on purpose), however they closed their doors on January 2nd of that year. (It was the first major card event that happened after I started Cardboard History, and since I wrote about it, I remember the day)

To be honest, I was not a huge fan of Press Pass. They were actually my least favorite NASCAR producer of cards. So it's only natural that they had the exclusive license from 2001-15. So far, Panini has done a better job with the sport than Press Pass did. Panini actually gives us cards of the cars. Press Pass gave us cards of the driver's "star signs". Even with my general malaise towards them, I still find myself nostalgic for their releases of the mid-2000s. 2003 and 2004 in particular.

That's "kind of" what I said in my previous post. They dropped VIP and American Thunder in 2010 and completely changed Eclipse. 2009 Eclipse is still my favorite racing set ever! Then PP ruined it with a complete re-design for 2010. The 2010 Legends set is my favorite from that brand b/c of the design. But then they dropped Eclipse, Premium and Stealth after 2011 and replaced them with Fanfare (which I liked), Ignite and Redline. Totally didn't like those last two sets and still don't. They added in Total Memorabilia in 2012 and it sucked too. The prices were way too high for all of those replacement brands and it was just b/c they wanted to add "HITS" in every pack. That wasn't necessary at all and that was where the downfall really started. The pack and box prices skyrocketed and most people stopped buying. TM finally got to be a nice release in 2014 and they brought back American Thunder (but it was crap). Ignite and Redline were never good AND they dropped the flagship set from 220 cards to 100 cards. They kept cutting back or dropping the sets that were selling to try to sell higher-priced releases that no one really liked.

I haven't mentioned Showcase yet b/c it was an oddball. Their 1st super-premium set was a big hit in 2009 and pretty good in 2010, but then it basically flopped from 2011-2013. They wanted way more per box than it was worth then. There were so many parallels and useless "hits" in those releases that nobody was paying $200+ for a box. I STILL wouldn't buy a box from those years for more than $50 now. 2009 Showcase was so sought-after that I ended up having to spend $256 to get a box a several months after it released. I NEVER even considered buying a box of Five Star! It was ridiculously priced and the product was nowhere near the value that should come from a box of 5 cards that costs $100 per card. Panini's National Treasures is the same garbage and I was shocked to hear that they were trying that again this year. Panini is going to crash and burn if they keep going with the NT and Torque brands!

I'd be happy with Panini's NASCAR slate in 2018 IF it is: Donruss (again, but without the SP's in the "base set"), Prizm (the original Prizm set from 2016, not the Select-branded version of Prizm), Absolute (again next year), and a new low-end to mid-range set to wrap up the season. No more NT at all! No more Torque, UNLESS they learn how to make the set brighter and make less parallels/inserts and parallels of those inserts! Panini is getting better with limiting the parallels of non-AU and non-RU insert sets, but they really need to stop with all the parallels of everything else now! They also COMPLETELY exclude set-collectors with every release they make. Even case-breakers are not willing to try to complete sets anymore. That's pretty sad to me. I've never been a set-collector, but if I can't even trade my unwanted box-pulls to a set-collector, there's not much of a point to buying boxes anymore. I rarely pull PC cards now, so trading to the set-collectors is usually the only way to get the cards I didn't pull.

Sorry for the rant, but I hope everyone reading this sees my point now!

What they really need is a base set like Hoops or Score. When Panini had the NHL license the Score set was spectacular- everything that a set should be. They have fallen short on Hoops. When I first heard the annoucements of the brands for Panini I was hoping Torque would be that set...but I was disappointed.

Don't expect Panini to brighten up Torque if it returns in 2018...they like dark sets...totally ignoring the fact that it's nearly impossible to keep them all in perfect shape if you actually touch them. Of course, the card companies don't really care about set collectors, or any kind of collector- just flippers. But that's a whole rant I just don't have the mental inclination to go down today, and from our past talks I'm pretty sure you already know exactly what I would say anyway, lol.