General Forum

I often struggle in deciding what brand to of card to get when I'm standing in front of all the cards at the store. As a kid I just got whatever I could get with whatever change I could scrounge up, It didn't matter. When I first got back in to this I randomly picked up a box of 2019 Panini Prestige and stuck with it until I was getting more dups then what I actually needed. I'm mainly referring to baseball and football as thats all I colect.

How do y'all decide what brand to get? Are some better than others (quality, bang for your buck, etc..)?

It makes my head hurt lol

P.S. Does anyone elses wives give them "the look" when you come home form the store with a new pack of cards? LOL

Topps is the only company with the MLB license, which is unfortunate.  I'm not a real fan of their flagship, but I enjoy Heritage.   I dabble in Donruss, but it is distracting without the logos.

I'm still not sure which brand I like for football.

I just buy whatever set has the best designs.  Some years it might be Prestige, some years I might not like it.  It all depends.  For football, Prizm is kind of the flagship set so you typically can't go wrong there.  For baseball, I'll always collect flagship Topps.  

If I had a choice in the 3 sports I still collect (NASCAR, NFL, MLB), I'd pick Upper Deck. But they don't make cards in those sports anymore. Today's card landscape is almost foreign to me and I've been collecting for over 30 years. The real problems are... #1: Exclusive Licensing; #2: massive amounts of Inserts and Parallels; #3: massive amounts of different products from the same company!

So the real question is what do YOU want to collect?! In baseball, I almost despise Topps now but my personal top choice for any of their products is Topps Chrome. In football cards, I don't really have a preference right now b/c Panini constantly changes the products they are making (at least by name). I really liked Black Gold and their resurrection of the Crown Royale product. They have done a good job with the resurrection of the Donruss name in several sports, but I don't like the massive amounts of inserts and parallels in those releases. The Score releases they've done are also a nice nod to the past products, but it's still a cheap product with too many inserts/parallels. In the Racing world of cards, Panini's Victory Lane has been my favorite product the past 2 years (the ONLY years they have released it). I'd love to see Upper Deck come back to NASCAR. They left in the early 2000's, but NASCAR has no exclusive license for cards and never has had one. Panini doesn't have a lock there and it would be nice to see some competition. I have absolutely NO interest in the new "Leaf" brand and never cared for SAGE, so I don't care what they produce. ITG (In The Game) really only seems to apply to hockey cards, so I also have little interest there. Panini also has an exclusive license for the NBA, but I quit collecting NBA cards almost 20 years ago. So I have no interest in whatever comes out for that sport.

As for picking a pack or blaster at any retail store in the US, usually the less cards per pack/blaster means better value per card. But not always! You really just have to go by what looks better to you. All blasters have pictures of cards on the box. Don't focus on the potential "hits", but just the base cards. Do you like what you see there? If so, buy it. If not, pass on it and look at the next product.

Yeah I noticed when I got back in to collecting and began looking at the checklists, the massive amounts of parallels and inserts. It's crazy! I really only concern myself with the base sets, however I will admit it is exciting getting the parallels, inserts and memorabilia cards as a bonus when opening a pack. Haven't been lucky enough to get an auto yet. 
I've debated to do away with sets and just do team, but I'm finding it hard to "let go" lol. 
Ultimately I do just pick what looks good to me. Also don't mind hitting the clearance shelf at Walmart. 

Every sport has exclusive licenses these days, so there's really not much choice. Panini has NBA and NASCAR, Upper Deck has hockey. 

I like what Upper Deck is doing more...while not perfect, they do issue several actual sets, whereas Panini basically does one per year and the rest focuses on memorabilia delivery systems, not actual card sets. 

I get whatever is available for my sports, and whatever I can afford. 

For hockey I go with O-Pee-Chee, and for football I go with Score.  For both sports I buy blasters at Target untiltey run out of them.  I then buy the large retail boxes on online.  These boxes don't have that many hits, but you get a large amount of the base cards.  These are the only two sets I complete year.  For the other sets I just buy the specific cards I want for my Kings and Rams collections.

I don't mind the executive license for the sports.  There are less cards to chase for my collection.  I believe that both Upper Deck and Panini does good jobs with their respectially sports.  The j"junk era" (I don't like this term) was not only know for mass production, but numerous companies producing companies for each sport.  A lot of these companies went out of business.  One of the reasons the sports went exclusively for one company is stability.  When Press Press went out of business NASCAR went a year without seeing any cards produced.  They eventually went with Panini.

Upper Deck does a real nice job with their line of hockey cards.  The flagship set is always very attractive, some of the inserts though I am not a big fan.  Topps I believe still has the MLS license which is fine, I did like the Upper Deck MLS product better though.

I have always been a fan of Upper Deck in most sports, with the SP, SPx and Legendary Cuts being my favorites. I also loved Pacific, they did things that made them stand out (Prism, hit per pack, unusual die-cuts).

I am just a baseball guy, and find myself liking Bowman more and more.