Best & Worst Products of 2015

Hey guys,
Just wondering what you think are the best (and worst) card products of 2015.
Name 3 for each section. I'll start.

LIKE:
* 15-16 Hoops. Really nice photography that makes the new Complete Basketball look like dirt (though it feels like it is). Sigs are nice, and I like the simple parallels in the set.
* 14-15 Donruss. Takes Retro designs to a new level. Love the patch autos, and the numbered die cut cards make Prizm die cuts look like they weren't meant to be cards.
* 14-15 Excalibur. Wow. Just wow. Product of the year. Sure, it's what, 2x the price of mama Crusade, but the cards are aching to be in a high end set. Kabooms really made a boom in cards. Crusades in Excalibur look better than the Crusades in the actual Crusade set. Autos look great. Rookie Rampages are better than any other RC Auto I've ever seen. USA patches are sweet. Forget that it's US Target only; the cards are good enough to pay $50 shipping for.

DON'T LIKE:
* 14-15 Select. This is just Prizm Overloaded. Cards look ugly, autos look like they've been left in a bin for 12 months. Patches are not good enough. Base are... urgh. WAAYY overpriced for a box. Don't like it without the mini boxes. Select needs to go.
* 14-15 Eminence. Look at 1/1 card prices on the Bay, then find out a box price. Then look at a Panini Blog preview of the cards. I don't need to say much more about this rubbish. Cut sigs seem cool, though.
* 15-16 Contenders Draft Edition. I have never been a Contenders fan, and with college uniforms, I hate it more. Cracked Ice parallel versions are ugly. Dual sigs are nice, but the box doesn't appeal to me that much. Also, 5 autos a box??? I'd be OK with it if the sigs were all numbered. But I've seen 6 Contenders box breaks, for 2 numbered sigs (including a Frank the Tank 1/1). Ugly set, this one is.

Give your best and worst products in the comments. Also, I may be doing a card review blog soon, with posts like the one above.
Thanks, Gee

I'm a big fan of 2015-16 Prizm. The refractor inserts, especially Emergent at 1:720 odds really highlighted the tail-end of 2015 for me.

I have to disagree with you on Select though. One of the best products this year hands down in my opinion, with the gold on-card autos from last year's rookie class being the most impressive.

Immaculate as always was on point. Probably still the top, or at least top 2 Panini product. Especially liked the Shadowbox autos, and the jersey numbered patch set. Great product.

Hoops never disappoints, great price, cards look great. Best bang for buck every year.

I think Prestige has become stale, same again for 2015-16 release. One of the easiest forgotten releases for me. I can't even name one sub-set in the product.

Preferred is only worth it for Silhouette. Not as good this year as previous years seems to be the general consensus, but I liked it nonetheless.

Never been a fan of the majority of Court Kings. I prefer a more professional look on cards, and don't like the whole "brush stroke" look to the product.

Eminence is just terrible. Bad quality autos, bad sets, bad price tag, and lowers the values of every other big name auto out there.

Good
Select - a hugely popular product and a much better looking version of prizm.
Preferred - heads and shoulders above last years, I'd put it on par with 12-13. They tried some new stuff, some worked some didn't... that's what we want rather than spitting out the same garbage every year. I'm happy to take the bad with the good as long as Panini are seen to be trying! Overall a win for me.

Made Strides but not necessarily "good"
Gold Standard - certainly needed to go back to the drawing board after a failed attempt in 13-14, it was better but still far from its early days of popularity. Has it run its course?
Flawless - Better than 13-14 overall, but the black foil for the 1/1's just killed it for me. The platinum just looks way more elegant.

Bad
National Treasures - this product is just watered down junk now. It's just not worth it and the RPA's have not looked any good since 12-13.
14-15 Prizm, 18 parallels including 2 red, 2 gold and 2 black... can Panini water down, flood the market and decrease the value of "rare" any further? Plus the base design was hideous... This coming from a guy who is known to chase a good rainbow or three!

Lacking identity
Donruss - they merged together Panini base brand and Elite and spat this out. To me its a downgrade on both products. Hopefully it picks back up if they go with this again
Excalibur - It's like 3 products merged into one "retail exclusive" product, making it near impossible to obtain and not often broken. It's Crusade, Innovation, Intrigue rolled into one.

What were they thinking!?
Luxe - it rhymes with "sucks", lets just leave it there, shall we?
Emminence - took the gem concept from flawless, patch windows from immaculate and luxe and the foil and base colour from UD black and claim to be unique? At least when it was under the working title of Optimus we could laugh that we had a chance of owning an Optimus Prime, now it doesn't even have that going for it...

Talking 2014-15

Worst Products

Prizm- There is no doubting that the 2014-15 edition of Prizm was an outright disaster when compared to each of the other Prizm releases. I could not stand the design used with the close up photography and there was a complete lack of thought put into production. Once again the proliferation of sticker autos ruined what would have been memorable cards and despite a few attractive insert sets like the Fireworks arrangement there was very little to get excited about for Prizm this past year. 2015-16 Prizm is a world better than its predecessor.

Paramount- A forgotten set that offered plenty of "innovation" but again delivered very little

Donruss- The cheapest looking junk that could ever be assembled with bad designs accented by sticker autos, even Complete looks better!

Prestige- Being retail only release this product never really took off and the confusing names to each set made it a disaster trying to track down cards for any PC.

Luxe- Of all the high-end releases this would have to be my least favourite. Luxe came out in a rush by Panini to try and dump as much premium product as possible to cash in on the stellar 2014-15 rookie class. The dominance of the word Luxe on these cards was overbearing as were the tired looking designs, weird die cut shapes and lack of originality. It was either a metal framed card or an ugly die cut patch, auto or patch/auto and to be honest the price tag for this release should be around that of a lower end release, I can't stand it!

Best Products

Select- Easily one of the best products of the year with so much to offer! From on-card autos to the courtside sets to great designs, the tie-dye popping and for the Aussie Spurs collector plenty of Patty Mills to collect made the release memorable.

Preferred- Always a popular release for the all on-card auto aspect but this year they really stepped it up in terms of design, replacing some tired Crown Royale and Panini Choice Award designs and that horrific NBA Pride set from last years release. One stumble with the Silhouette Autos this year with the player positioned in the middle of the jersey window but when you take into account the lengths Panini went to with the booklets that lack of foresight pales into insignificance.

Noir- Hands down for me this is the product of the century, with so much on offer in such an attractive black format that has been lacking in the basketball scene since the demise of Upper Deck Black in 2008. I have not heard a single complaint about this product, besides what is uttered in the chat section of the Cherry group breaks by whoever lands the Nuggets. Panini really pushed the envelope with this release in terms of card stock, visionary design and a balance of black and white and colour cards which pop. The highlight of the set for me is the Spotlight Signature cards, I just wish they could have replaced Thaddeus Young with Tim Duncan! As a Spurs fan these cards are the perfect fit for my PC with the nasty black backdrop.

I think looking at the high end you had lack of innovation with Immaculate, nice change ups with Flawless but the overkill of the rainbow arrangement and the horrific black 1/1's killed it, Gala was caught in a haze of rushed high end and was lost on collectors, National Treasures made some advances with the base set and some much nicer designs all round and of course we have Eminence which I love for the cut autos but it is an exclusive release that appeals to high rolling collectors. Other releases that made ground in 2014-15 were Gold Standard with the addition of triple patch rookie/tag autos and improved designs and Court Kings again was quality for a lower end release with impressive designs and more on-card autos. In terms of releases that need to be shelved ASAP I would say Panini need to work out what they are going to do with Excalibur because it has become a mish-mash type of release incorporating a variety of previous works, Totally Certified needs revamping and hopefully 2015-16 delivers that, retail only releases like Prestige, Threads, Excalibur will only work if made available internationally and Spectra cannot be delivered in the same format as 2013-14 and 2014-15 this season because it will fail to gain traction in the market.

Gotta agree with the consensus here, Select is great. The Autos are especially awesome IMO. Hands down the best value for money buy.

I'm also a fan of Immac and Flawless. I really like the Alma - Mater set that was added. I also think Eminence will come good, Panini have just priced it high so that case breakers aren't making all of the money.

Good
1. Select- A well rounded product with great designs and on card autos too boot. The parallels, in particular Courtside looked great and was not overloaded in the product. Every box you opened you felt there was a genuine chance of hitting something nice.

2. Noir- Black cards are always popular and certainly isn't something new in the hobby. But this release is nicely put together.

3. Preferred- A huge improvement from previous years with new design schemes and all on-card autos.

Okay
1. Flawless- An improvement from 13-14. The addition of the USA autos along with dual patches and dual autos helped refresh this product. However the patches on a lot of cards are still quite mediocre for such a high-end product.

2. Gala- Yes it is basically Panini Signatures in a different colour but it looks a hell of a lot better. I really like some of the patches and I think the Career Achievements autos is a great idea. However there is valid argument whether if this product was necessary.

3. Prestige- I really like the designs of these but the fact they were retail only made it difficult to obtain singles.

Bad
1. Donruss- Who said old school designs needed to be ugly?

2. Prizm- Most people on here know how much I love Prizm but the 14-15 edition was a huge let down from the base set designs to the overflooding of parallels. Why Panini felt it was necessary to double up on /10 and/1 cards is still something I can't not understand. I also think it was stupid to make every insert a prizm. The value is just not there both aesthetically and financially.

3. Eminence- Cards don't look too bad except it isn't bringing anything new to the table. It is essentially a mix of different designs they have used in the past. At $6K U.S for the price of admission, you'd want something that's truly innovative, not a checklist that is filled with the same old stars and historical figures who have no relevance to the sport of basketball.

I don't really have an in depth review as I agree with most of your initial assessment. I do agree Select was underwhelming IMO, but the courtside parallels were nice and I LOVED the tie dyes.

I also feel like noir could be a real winner, they just need to re-think the gold pens they are using. There are some real nice gold pens out there that don't streak that they could use going forward. Also they need to adjust the price.

Overall I feel like this was the year of the high high-end products. The average box price is getting crazy high and from someone who didn't really bust anyway, it's pricing me out of the market to ever bust in the future. I will be sticking with singles of lower key players from the nicer sets going forward.

I will sheepishly admit I liked Spectra 14/15
Pretty simple, they reminded me a little of the old finest cards.
Immac was nice ish barring the woeful cutting
NT was a flop although the logoman cards are nice.
Flawless take it or leave it
Noir if they can fix the gold pen issues and surface scratches will be a staple for pc guys.
Preferred I have all rainbows barring 1 and HATE and i mean that sincerely (actually this goes for all the panini products where this was done) that the rarest card the 1/1 is a cheap black finish. Black colouring when next to emerald, gold, purple and silver looks absolutely puss.
Eminence I have seen a few nice cards but more "wtf?" cards. Overpriced gimmick set.
Hoops - Standard ,fancy enough for price
Donruss - look like they should come from a cereal box
Select- agree that tie dyes looked cool
Prizm - take it or leave it
Gold Standard - a bit better than average.
Gala - a little under average. Not a great design and given i have all the Ennis ones barring 1/1 i really don't like the Cinematic signatures. Yes take a pic of it with a white backdrop and it looks ok. Have it in your hand and don't hold it up to the light, you have cardboard and a piece of black plastic!

Overall, too many products from one company.
Poor quality cutting, putting patches and nameplates in upside down, autos occasionally upside down... i mean the old addage quality over quantity is what i miss in cardboard these days. The hobby NEEDS competition as this one horse race is getting old.
Happy Holidays, be safe and all the best for 2016

All good responses so far! Keep them coming!
Merry Christmas Guys.