By: Ethan Cahn

With today's trends to buy online, be it For Boxes or singles alike, What do the shops bring to us the collector's? Sure, the Support your Local business call is there, but realalistcaly would YOU pay $149 for a box you can buy for $100 online? Now please understand I am coming form an area that has 2 disadvantages, 1. I live in a tourist town(Ie: Inflated Prices Already), and 2. they are the only shop within 100 miles of me.
Panini Has decided to use only 4 US distributors(2 Stateside if you truely Look at the other 2 are in Hawaii, and Alaska)
this now means that for my local shop to get boxes from them they have to go through the Distributor they curently use, who then has to get the boxes from the Exclusive Distributor of Panini.
After speaking a little with the owners, they are unsure if they will even carry their products next year due to the Extreme measures it will take to receive them, as well as the additional costs that will occur.
This is a huge Problem for them as they already do not carry any upper deck products(No I don't get any Hockey here). I quess the point of this is that we have been concentrating on the changing landscape of the
manufactures, but what about the few shops we have left?
Yes, Topps runs their Progam each year, the Card of the week program, and they Ran the Million Card Giveaway(Which was very cool for me, but not so much the kids).
Upper Deck Tried last year, and Still do a few things but mainly they use the internet to get to their customers, heck they do giveaways weekly on facebook, and you receive info, sometimes seeing the products packed out, and autographs signed.
I am wondering how much these campigns that Panini are planing to get the customers back in the store(as they Promised at the Trade Conference last month), will Help brick & Mortor Shops? If a Shop that has been in business for 20 years is ready to give up on everything that is produced by a certin company. How do they intend to reach me, their only shot is on the Internet.
So that said, I am still waiting, waiting for a sign that they will treat us the way we should be treated Not taken advantage of, like so many before them.
Recently Playoff Prestige Was release, it's stale design and once again sticker Autographs Along with the 1 color jersey Cards don't even come close to the Cost of this product.

The other day I went on one of the Stalking sites today, I noticed Panini Reposting Something from Gerald McCoy,
Here it is:
"GK_McCoy Autographs for Panini Cards!! Coming soon!! Haha pretty cool. Huh!"
Attached was this:

"Ha Ha, Pretty Cool"?
Well I quess for you, the guy who just got paid to do those, For the collector this give us a look at what is to come from the 2010 releases this year. More stickers, and mass Quanity of Junk Inserts that won't make much sense.

This is what We have to go on?

Now that being said, if used properly the Stickers can work traped, but in past years, Donruss(Yes have to blame them, We DO have to give Panini a year lag, as most of last years wtuff was already in the pipeline when they took over) I do like the Donruss/Playoff/Panini Cards, but the Sticker autographs are a second thought for them, most of their
Placement of the Autos is well, less than to be desired, most times the signature blends in to much, thus taking away from
the autograph itself.
Now I can't Believe i am going to say this, but Topps has proven that they can atleast make a card (that is not Hand Signed) look good, using their designs to Trap the autographed stickers(Am I happy that there are Stickers No, but atleast they havesome eye appeal)

Look at this Card from this year Baseball Unique set:


With the new Licenses in place we should see, that is what it will be from now on. No amount of complaining or moaning is going to change that, with the demise of Upper Deck in the football/Baseball market, It
Might just LOWER the standards of both Panini, and Topps. I think we all need to reevalute how Important the On Card Label is to you personally,
Cause the future is looking like you maybe Out of luck with that now, Stickers are easy and More econimcial for both companies
I just hope that they put forth more effort in atleast making them an attractive card.

A Collector like me, who is now on an extremly low budget, sure hope's that there is some value in the stuff I decide to purchase(Which Doesn't look like the case in most of the box breaks I saw), cause this maybe it for me, and for alot of others.

The recent devolpments have put alot of people like myself off.
All I know is I predict this will be a very interesting year in the Football card Arena. Question is, do the 2 companies that can produce cards try to out do each other, or out do us the collector's?