Is the shape of a card important to you?

[Rraincock]

Food for thought.

The standard hockey card is 2.5 by 3.5 inches. From there we get Tallboys, box toppers, Walmart sized Box Toppers, booklets, tobacco sized, mini's, card-supials (oh Pacific)... all more or less in the 2.5 by 3.5 ratio (tallboys and tobacco issue not withstanding).

But what about the true oddballs? Die-cut cards, mastered by Pacific years ago, were my favorite... although I have to admit I hated it when a die-cut card has sharp spikes that are in never-was-mint shape. I think I prefer die-cuts to laser-cuts... at least for the outside edge. You can't beat a laser-cut for some of those insane inside the boarders cuts (Topps is the master of this). Pacific entered the market with a flourish - Card-supial pocketed cards and Christmas ornaments (not to mention those triangular Cramer's Choice cards) all were very cool and different. UD had those 3 star showdown cards (where you had to remove the little star die-cuts on the sides of the cards) and Superstar Showdowns (the S shape on the side of the card matched into a card partner's S shape).

Any ideas? Any favorites? Any hated ones (Panini loves to make spikes with NHL sheild shaped Score cards... and so did one of those McDonalds sets... was it Pacific or UD?). Some of my most hated designs were due to a lack of ultra Pro pages at the time (now you can get pages for anything!)


As always, agree with me or not, I welcome responses from all!

[Tripredacus]

As long as they make a page that fits the card, I'm ok with it.

[Craig2]

I'm definitely a "traditional" card shape guy, but it's just a personal preference. I don't like Tall Boys or minis, and my personal least favorite over the past couple of years have been some of the triangular Preferred basketball autos....I just don't like them.

Again, that's just my preference. I certainly understand that they may be appealing to others.

[30ranfordfan]

I much prefer the traditional size, but I also like variety.

Booklets: I own three of them, and they are all ones with 4 panels. I can't store them in anyway other than being closed (which is kind of annoying) but sooner or later I'm sure Ultra Pro will come up with something. I picked one up from National Treasures, that's my first one since Upper Deck Black back in 2009. If I added a new one every 5 years, that's enough for me.

Minis: I have enjoyed the content on some minis in the past, but I'm not a huge fan. Mini signatures make zero sense to me. Same with GU cards. Not saying I would never add another mini..... but I don't really see the point.

Tallboys: Hate them. They're oversized, which means they can't fit with my other stuff in boxes or binders, but not so big (like booklets) that I can make a cool exception. I'm medley interested in seeing what these Mini Tall Boys from OPC look like in person (I'll wait for the Expo in November to look at them, don't imagine I'll actually want to own them). The idea of using that style of card, those ratios, but with a more standard height is kinda cool.


Die Cuts, random shapes: The odd one is okay. There has been some nice stuff over the years... there's also some that just reek of fancy for the sake of being fancy. Give me a quality design, cool looking colours or foil, over die cut anyday. Incorporate nice designs / colours / foil into a die cut... and that's nice. Just don't go overboard.

[09232003]

I too like the traditional size but some of the other are very interesting to me

I do have the 09-10 UD champ's Mini Threads set completed, just thought it was nice looking and different to have than the usual sets of GU

Also like the 13-14 fleer showcase Jambalaya subset, I have 3 of the 4 Penguins from that subset.

Tall boys were nice but hard to store in toploaders in boxes.


thanks
jim

[Sharky94]

I hate booklets, and I probably wont buy any, even of my main PC. There is no good way to display them, and they are too much hassle to be worthwhile. I definitely hope that fad does not last long.

[09232003]

I hate booklets, and I probably wont buy any, even of my main PC. There is no good way to display them, and they are too much hassle to be worthwhile. I definitely hope that fad does not last long.

I saw that Ultrapro has top loaders for the single booklet styles, not sure about bigger ones yet

[jandrack]

I'm a fan of the Champs minis, the smaller V-series in this year's O-Pee-Chee and the Pop-Ups from a few years back in O-Pee-Chee. The Pop-Ups I really liked so I've been working on that entire set. The others, and die-cuts like Score's NHL shields I like and try to chase down for Penguins and other players I collect. I've avoided all booklets so far, mostly due to price and I haven't really seen any that I couldn't do without.

My biggest pet peeve is size/thickness more than shape. While I do own some cards from The Cup and Prime and other set I really hate the thick cards. I try to store my collection in pages and that just doesn't work with the thick cards. I picked up some of the Pascal Dupuis skate and glove cards from Prime since, aside from base, there aren't a lot of Dupuis cards out there, but in general I'm relieved when I see there aren't cards of some of my favorite players in The Cup.

[pwaldo]

I'm not really a fan of mini sized cards but I can't stand the over sized ones. They are tough to keep without getting them damaged and I don't want to have to get anything special just to keep them in it. I can understand vintage cards being bigger or something but companies need to lay off the odd sized stuff in newer products in my opinion.

[oogabooga99]

Speaking of odd ball cards, I was a big fan of the 2003-2004 Beehive Jumbo Jersey's. A huge 5x7 card featuring 2 large swatches on a canvas looking card, which had an ugly brown/orange border. Yep they are sexy haha