2017 Panini Basketball - worst of all time?

This may be a slight over reaction lol (and purely personal opinion) , but for me the products that Panini has released so far for 2016/17 have been ordinary at best . I've watched quite a few case breaks of gold standard, absolute, certified, court kings and contenders and have found that very little of interest has come out. Maybe its because Panini weren't able to sign the #1 pick big Ben or maybe some of the designs are getting old and monotonous. What do you guys think?

I definitely haven't spent as much on this years products as I normally would have by this point, a few boxes and case shares of CK and a box of GS. Have seen some nice cards pulled and I think the CK designs overall are great but the other products are mediocre at best.

Personally and I'm sure many will disagree with me, but I thought last year was probably Paninis best year to date overall (Replay excluded) and maybe I just set my expectations too high this year.

One of the issues is I think Panini has made all of these products so Rookie orientated that when you have an average rookie class and no #1 draft pick autos that it seems as though there are less monsters coming out, and that there seems to be an abundance of Ingram autos etc. Coming off last years class where you had KAT Zinger and Booker as 3 solid rookies to hit.

They also seem to have cut back (so far) on the Kobe & Durant autos in their products, which is something collectors have been asking them to do for ages and stop flooding the market, then when they do the products get crucified for having no value (dont get me wrong the products are way over priced )

Hopefully some things will improve in other products, especially NT Immac & Flawless and we get a surprise from some of the others. So far though I would give them a fail this year

I'd say yes. I honestly have had no interest in anything released this year and I know of many others that have said the same.

It's exactly why I've reverted back to my Bynum PC as I pretty much have all backdated Faried and I need this as a way to remain engaged in the hobby

That said, even Immaculate and Flawless were underwhelming last year so it's not just exclusive to this years product.

Yes... I've bought one Prizm 16/17 blaster(haven't ripped yet!) when I was drunk!! I would have busted a few buy now but nothing jumps out at me. 15/16 was good, they got it right with Prizm, Revolution was great and the TC colours popped. I've recently bought some older boxes instead of panini stuff and concentrated on a new pc! Replay... REPLAY!!! no I won't go there...

It's time for something different 2017/18 UD maybe? 2017/18 topps chrome? How hot would that be, haha!!

Slim

2016/17 panini products could be similar to 2009/10 UD... product dump before they lose the license. 2017 is the year the NBA license expires for Panini, they could renegotiate or UD could land the new contract. We'll know soon

To be honest, most of the big hitters, imo, come out towards the end of the season, but what we've seen so far hasn't been super impressive. I've like Prizm and Court Kings, but don't think either of them are the best of their respective releases when compared with other years. I also think the rookie crop and lack of Simmons auto's/mem has hurt the product, but that in turn has made the chase of his base cards more fun.

All this being said, I haven't busted new product since 12-13 anyway, and don't think that will change anytime soon. I am having fun picking up super low end singles of the rooks this season, base prizm, donruss etc.

Panini cant even come up with new ideas, here's a set that will be released 2016-17-aficionado, one insert set is the closest rip off of the 93-94 scoring kings???

https://blog.paniniamerica.net/2017...ionado-basketball-gallery/#jp-carousel-172067

Charles Way said:

Panini cant even come up with new ideas, here's a set that will be released 2016-17-aficionado, one insert set is the closest rip off of the 93-94 scoring kings???

https://blog.paniniamerica.net/2017...ionado-basketball-gallery/#jp-carousel-172067

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Wow that Aficionado looks like trash too, wonder what the price is

GarnettFan4Life said:

Wow that Aficionado looks like trash too, wonder what the price is

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$110US per box presell

Charles Way said:

$110US per box presell

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I'd rather go Revolution

Thought I would give this a bump since more products have been released since Feb.

For me gold standard is the worst value since gold standard started in 10/11.
This years Spectra is far and away the worst for design and value. (already dropped to 230 a box from 350)
Same for Noir which has just come out, weakest design for a product that was pretty classy.
Grand reserve is complete rubbish, most boxes have 3 scrub autos, considering it was a 240 box product you expect better.

So now the majority or products have dropped for 16/17 , do you guy's agree that 2017 is the worst year for basketball cards in some time?

Still have bought a box of anything this year!! Will prob buy an optic at some stage, nothing really turns me on anymore box wise from panini

aussie26 said:

Thought I would give this a bump since more products have been released since Feb.

For me gold standard is the worst value since gold standard started in 10/11.
This years Spectra is far and away the worst for design and value. (already dropped to 230 a box from 350)
Same for Noir which has just come out, weakest design for a product that was pretty classy.
Grand reserve is complete rubbish, most boxes have 3 scrub autos, considering it was a 240 box product you expect better.

So now the majority or products have dropped for 16/17 , do you guy's agree that 2017 is the worst year for basketball cards in some time?

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Definitely agree, Shelling out $200 + for a box of anything should guarantee you get something back in return, apart from revolution everything else has been crap in my opinion, you can't expect people to pay these massive prices to end up with 1 or 2 no name autos and a no name jersey valued at $10 combined,the only way to stop this happening is not to buy.

aussie26 said:

Thought I would give this a bump since more products have been released since Feb.

For me gold standard is the worst value since gold standard started in 10/11.
This years Spectra is far and away the worst for design and value. (already dropped to 230 a box from 350)
Same for Noir which has just come out, weakest design for a product that was pretty classy.
Grand reserve is complete rubbish, most boxes have 3 scrub autos, considering it was a 240 box product you expect better.

So now the majority or products have dropped for 16/17 , do you guy's agree that 2017 is the worst year for basketball cards in some time?

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Gold Standard could be dropped and I don't think anyone would miss it.
Spectra I have never really been a fan of and this year definitely didn't help.
Grand Reserve - Cornerstone patch autos look great, the rest of it is pretty crappy.

I was worried about Noir and wasn't sure I would like the "new direction" I saw in the previews. However having helped Grayson at Cherry last night bust 7 cases of it I was pleasantly surprised. In hand they look great and didnt seem to have as much of the corner / chipping issues of the previous years of Noir. I think it's a little over priced at the moment but when it drops in price will be solid. Of course just my opinion but as a fan of the previous Noir releases I really liked it.

I'm liking the look of the upcoming Impeccable and think that will be a massive hit and always look forward to Immac.

Just need one or two of these rookies to boom next year and there will be a little more value....

aussie26 said:

Thought I would give this a bump since more products have been released since Feb.

For me gold standard is the worst value since gold standard started in 10/11.
This years Spectra is far and away the worst for design and value. (already dropped to 230 a box from 350)
Same for Noir which has just come out, weakest design for a product that was pretty classy.
Grand reserve is complete rubbish, most boxes have 3 scrub autos, considering it was a 240 box product you expect better.

So now the majority or products have dropped for 16/17 , do you guy's agree that 2017 is the worst year for basketball cards in some time?

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Couldn't agree more.

I've also notice Panini seem to be slowly creeping up the number of boxes per case with high end products, for example:

2014/15:
Immaculate = 5 box / case
National Treasures = 3 box / case
Spectra = 5 box / case
Noir = 3 box / case

2016/17:
Immaculate = 5 box / case
National treasures = 4 box / case
Spectra = 6 box / case
Noir = 4 box / case

With the exception of Immaculate, it seems the high end ones all have more boxes per case then they used to. The reason why this frustrates me is that if you forked out the (incredibly high) asking price for a box of NT or Noir back in 2014/15, from a fresh case, you had a 1/3 chance of getting the box that holds the case hit. If you are watching live breaks and one dude has just broken a terrible box, you are now down to a 50/50 chance of a case hit for from the next box. To me this relatively high chance of getting a beautiful case hit was what helped justify paying that extremely high price for a single box. Increasing that to 4 boxes per case doesn't seem like much (25% in stead of 33% chance of case hit) what that means is that you can now bum out on two straight boxes, and if you take the plunge on box #3 you STILL only have a 50% chance of a case hit.

This means that if you want a solid chance at a case hit you really need to buy a case, which brings me to the next reason why this sucks - because the boxes still cost around the same, but the number of boxes has increased, the cost of a case has now ALSO increased.

The end result is that buying individual boxes seems to now be riskier then it's ever been - especially for a semi-high-end product like Spectra, where you can potentially go through 4 boxes (at like $500 AU apiece) and not get a single decent hit.

But getting back to the topic of product design - I agree completely.

I feel the best Spectra release so far was last year (2015/16) because the card designs were nice (the gold in particular looked awesome IMHO), a lot of the cases were loaded with hits (wasn't that uncommon to get 2 golds, a green and a black in 3 boxes). Because of that I was actually pretty excited for the product this year - and then when I saw the breaks, I was thoroughly disappointed. Ugliest design yet for Spectra with far too much going on (too many circles and zig-zags and all the rest).

So from there I decided to wait on Noir, which has been my favourite product from Panini the last few years - been a huge fan of the gold-on-black looks every since the UD Black days, and I love acetate finishes on many of the Noir / Immaculate cards. So Noir releases and what the hell!

1. The set now includes jersey cards - previously it was patches only
2. The colour base cards are no longer acetate (I felt this made them the nicest base cards of any product)
3. The colour patch cards are no longer acetate
4. The dark theme that was the defining character of Noir is gone from everything bar the Spotlight Signatures (which still look amazing)

That is four of the biggest reasons why I loved Noir, gone.

Unlike most, I actually don't mind the metal framed cards - I always thought they gave Luxe a nice unique selling point, and since Luxe got axed I'm ok with them moving them to Noir. At least the do maintain the "metal on black" look that Noir is known for, so I actually feel they fit the set nicely.

In fact I wish they had used autographed versions of the framed cards INSTEAD of the Black/white acetate design they did choose to go with. If they instead used They could have used a silver ink pen for the normal "Metal" set and a gold pen for the Vintage Art set, and I think that would have looked stunning and actually fit the product well. The Acetate autos look nice enough, they just don't look 'Noir'.

Bottom line is - every product has become more and more saturated with new parallels that didn't exist the year before, devaluating all parallels in the process.

Flawless is a good example. Year 1 - cards were #/10 or #/5 only. Then they added the terrible #/15 red version, and then the #/20. Then they added college variations as a further parallel again. They've gone from a total of 15 hits per in year 1 to 50 + another 50 for college.

Actually there is one product I do like (and actually think got better) and that is Revolution.

It's cheap to buy, the card designs are original and look great, there aren't TOO many parallels (4 or 5), and the autos are great (stunning to look at, all on cars, and rare enough that its genuinely satisfying when you get one).

I also think it improved over last year by adding 1/1s and by applying the parallel theme to the autos too.

Upcoming "Impeccable" looks very nice too based on initial shots, but we'll have to wait and see because I also thought that about Black Gold (until I saw what a bloodbath the breaks are, and how ugly the lesser hits are).

Revolution - I agree with your comments except for the 1/1. In my opinion adding a variation rarer than galactic hurts the value on what was highly sought after cards from year 1.

nichj99 said:

Revolution - I agree with your comments except for the 1/1. In my opinion adding a variation rarer than galactic hurts the value on what was highly sought after cards from year 1.

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That's a fair point.

I guess part of the cool thing with the Galactic cards is that they were known to be very short printed, but were never actually serial numbered. I suppose in a way that helped to keep the value high by adding a bit of suspense - you never really cared that much what number yours was, or how many were out there. All you knew was that it was cool, it was rare, and it was hard to get - and that seemed to be enough.

On the other hand if they had have been simply numbered to 10 or 25 (like most products) then they may not come across as being quite so cool because it becomes easier to compare that against another /25 card from any other product.

Being a rare, super short printed card, that has no serial number, made them uniquely cool. Few people knew how many were out there, so it made it hard (if not impossible) to compare the Galactics to any card from any other set.

By adding the 1/1's you still don't know how many of the Galatic's there are, but you DO know the 1/1 is rarer...so I guess it does hurt them a bit. Though to be fair I haven't noticed a significant drop in sell prices for the Galactics as a result of the 1/1 being added to the set - the 1/1 cards seem to be super hard to get (haven't seen any online breaks where one has been pulled).

I agree that Revolution are a nice set , the autos this year are quite easy on the eye, I've also had a good strike rate of hitting the autos in single boxes , the galactic cards are quite nice . If panini keep the same tired designs they will kill the hobby off , I understand they want to release as many products as possible to make max money . I wish they halved there number of releases and concentrated on making those mint .