General Forum

I’ve been focused a lot recently on how my cards are organized, and something popped in my head.  Currently Panini releases the Prizm set for basketball, and we list it as Panini Prizm.  But what happens in the future if a new company comes to town and buys out Panini.  

They decide to release a set called “New Company” Prizm.  Would we just call that new set Prizm? Or would we call it “New Company” Prizm.  If we decided to just refer to it as Prizm, would we go back and change every Panini Prizm set to just Prizm?

Just curious as I assume something like this has happened in the past with card companies buying each other out. 

The first thing I thought of was Donruss Diamond Kings which are now Panini Diamond Kings. They were insert sets mostly with Donruss I believe and are their own major release set now.

I don't believe there would be any changes to previously released sets at all. If Topps was to be bought out by Panini, the 1969 Topps set would always be known as 1969 Topps. No reason whatsoever to change it.

New companies taking up old licenses or brand names doesn't change the original set names. If Panini gets bought out (will likely never happen) by Topps or Upper Deck, new Prizm releases by them would be called Topps Prizm or Upper Deck Prizm. The Panini and Pacific sets (Prizm OR Crown Royale) will not have their name changed to Topps or UD. For another example, Panini releases a product called Panini Limited. That used to be a Donruss/Leaf Inc. product called Leaf Limited. Panini uses what they can but they can't call it Leaf Limited b/c of the new Leaf company that would have issue with that. It's the same reason they call their version of Leaf Certified Materials just Panini Certified. Panini bought Donruss/Playoff, Inc. and Leaf wasn't part of that. The Leaf copyright was allowed to expire and a new company started in Texas using that name and the logo. That's right along the lines of why you won't see Panini or Topps release sets named Football Heroes or Baseball Heroes. Upper Deck has already done that and court battles will help no company in any way. Cards have gotten so very complicated in the past couple of decades!

Who knows what we would cal it. After all, we already have Triple Play, Finest, Stadium Club, Ultra, Flair, etc. even though all of those are produced by Donruss, Topps, Topps, Fleer, and Fleer respectively. So whatever we name the new set, it probably will not conform to any standard as there is no standard.

We throw Panini onto sets it's not actually on, for example Select, and in Hockey. Pinnacle. The correct answer is, who knows? 

I also want to point out that the first year of Prizm, 2012-13, was just Prizm. It didn't become Panini Prizm until 2013-14. 

I'll add to the who knows pile on. However, I will add this as well:

All of the sets that are already on here that we're talking about are "Major Release" sets. There is currently only one member ID on TCDB that can change the name of a "Major Release" set. :) If you feel strongly about the name of a major release set, please submit an Inaccuracy Report (IR). Please start the IR with "SET RENAME" in all caps. We will not "resolve them" by explaining them, we will mark them as "Admin Needed", and allow Admin to either approve or deny the renaming. Sound like a plan?

Gotta think renaming "past, Old" sets" really doesn't make sense. That would really throw collectors into "insane mode".