You may have heard that Fanatics will be partnering with the MLB, NBA, NFL, and their Player’s Association to be the exclusive seller of the Big 3 Sports Trading cards. While I’ve already blogged regarding what changes I hope Fanatics makes, right now let’s do something fun. Let’s Fantasy Book the upcoming Fanatics card offerings.
This assumes Fanatics buys/partners with Topps and Panini America so all of their brands will also be available. Labels that won’t be available because their rights are not owned by Fanatics, Topps, or Panini include Leaf, Upper Deck, Fleer, O-Pee-Chee, Pro-Set, and Skybox. So, I’m not going to include them here.
I’m hoping that there are clear splits between budget, mid-tier, and premium brands. They should limit the number of overall products to avoid confusion. In a perfect world budget brands will only be available in retail card packs, mid-tier labels in only blaster and mega boxes, and the premium stuff will only be able to be purchased as hobby boxes. All levels should have inserts, parallel colors, and numbered cards. The mid-tier and premium should be printed on a higher-quality stock. You should be able to pull 1-2 signature and memorabilia cards in a mid-tier box. If you spend money on a premium hobby box you should be guaranteed a certain number of autos, mem, and numbered cards. I think clear delineations like that will make it much easier to follow the hobby.
All Big 3 Sports
Budget – Topps, Donruss
Mid-Tier – Donruss Optic, Panini Prizm
Premium – Topps Finest, National Treasures
All six of these brands have a history in all of the Big 3. In the budget tier having Topps be the basic card makes sense, due to its long history. Donruss had a bit funkier designs back in the days, I’d like to see Donruss as the budget label that’s a little more fun and takes some bigger swings on card designs and inserts.
Getting to the middle, Donruss Optic can continue being basically the same as the Donruss set on higher-quality card stock. And with maybe a few more autos and relic cards thrown in. Panini Prizm is THE Panini brand and I think it slides perfectly into the medium tier. Both Optic and Prizm have established enough of their own look and identity that they make sense as two separate choices in booster and mega boxes.
Topps Finest is the original premium card set. It should be the “main” hobby box with refractors and autographs. National Treasures seems to be everyone’s favorite Panini high-tier Hobby offering. It’s well-known for its relic cards. So have Topps Finest focus more on refractors and National Treasures focus more on the memorabilia cards.
All Sports College Uniform, Draft, Minor League, and Rookie Cards
It is very confusing knowing the difference between a “Rookie Year” and a “Rookie Card”. In Baseball, Topps Chrome and Bowman Chrome are sort of the rookie cards to get (for some players it’s the Topps Update Series, Baseball cards are very confusing). In both Football and Basketball the Panini Prizm is the Rookie card to chase with the Donruss Optic being either a close second or a faraway second. And then Baseball also has the Bowman 1st card, the “first” professional card of a player.
With the recent NCAA rule changes it seems clear we’re going to start seeing college player cards even before they declare for the draft. So let’s make this simple and make the separations between all the types of cards easier.
College Uniform – Contenders
Draft/Preseason/Minor League Cards– Bowman Prospects
Rookie Year – Topps
Let’s eliminate the uncertainty with clear distinctions with which card is associated with each phase of a player’s career.
Contenders is probably the best-known college uniform product currently. Let’s just make that a college uniforms-only card.
And let’s officially make a Bowman label the Prospects card with a name like Bowman Prospects (which may already be a release?). Draft Day, Minor League, Summer League, G-League, and Training Camp cards should only come out of a Bowman Product. So any example of a player’s first professional card will be a “Bowman 1st” card.
And finally, the first card of a player in full NFL, MLB, or NBA Uniform should be a Topps card. That way from now on, the first official Rookie card of every single professional will be Topps. The first card to have the official “RC” logo on it.
I know I’ve now given every sport a Contenders Card, a Bowman First Card, a Donruss Rated Rookie, a Donruss Optic Rookie, A Topps Rookie Card, and a Panini Prizm Rookie Card; but I think those are more meaningful than the current system of having 8-12 Panini Rookie Cards that are pretty much the same. And it’ll be a fun way to follow a player’s career.
Single Sport Only Budget Releases
MLB – Bowman
NFL – Score
NBA – NBA Hoops
There are some additional affordable products with a long history and association with a particular sport (though they have released products in other sports as well).
We have to make a clear distinction here between Bowman Prospects and Bowman. I think Bowman can be the budget label that still concentrates on Rookies, but if Topps releases first the “first” rookie card will still be Topps. But Bowman has a long heritage of Baseball cards, so I’d like to see that continue beyond just the Prospects.
For both Football and Basketball, those brands are currently the affordable packs to get. They also each have their own established history with the sport and their own set of distinct designs and inserts. This is also the place where they could make more sport-specific inserts.
Art/Illustrated Sets
Panini currently has a lot of cards that are almost more like art than a trading card. From the more abstract designs of Mosaic, Revolution, and Noir to the Illustrated Court Kings brand and the Marvel inserts there are some awesome cards I don’t want to go away. There are also die-cut designs of Crown Royale and the comic book-like Kaboom! inserts.
Honestly, there are just so many different card brands, inserts, and designs that’s it’s almost too much. I think the solution is to roll all the various graphic insert sets into one brand like “Panini Illustrated” or something similar. Maybe this is a mega/blaster/hobby box only release? That way those without a ton of money can still get some of the unique designs.
Vintage Brands
There are still some Vintage brands like Gypsy Queen and Allen & Ginter that are getting modern releases. I don’t think they’re really a continuation of those existing legacies as much as they are retro throwbacks. There is also the Panini Legacy release which is pretty much just a modern release with slightly retro card layouts. I don’t think I necessarily want all these packs to go away, but I don’t think any of them have much of an argument for why one is more important than the other. And I think there are already too many of them. So, maybe roll everything up into something like Fanatics Vintage and have Gypsy Queen, Allen & Ginter, Panini Legacy, Topps Project 20, and any other vintage brands as part of that set?
So, that’s it, that is my ideal Big 3 Sports Card release configuration. I’d really like there to be fewer overall releases and each release to mean more. And I’d really like it to be easier to know which cards to chase. I think these suggestions accomplish that.