Worst Product so far, i think so !!!

[JHEYKID]

Here is what I dont understand...Panini has put Ovechkin on the front of the Contenders Box, much like they have done with other products like Certified. Certified came out nearly 7 months ago, but yet they still have not sent out any of the Ovechkin Redemption autos from that product. This just feels like false advertising...how can a player be the spokesman for your product and to some the reason why you buy the product but you cannot get a measly 50 autographs out in 7 months?

+1 been waiting for my gold mirror auto for 8 months, no responses, garbage customer service.

Mike

[pensauto77]

IDK? I won't buy any boxes of this stuff. I agree with most on here. 3 auto's are fine but when it's guys like Muzzin and such? Can't be a fan of that. Sorry to any Muzzin collectors as that was just a referrence. I will stick to saving my money and grabbing the cards I need at some point down the road. Let's face it. If the print run is 500 or so? Won't be hard to get the cards you want. Now if it was 50. Then that means you need to get them now! But I can already see it's not going to be a low print run. I won't complain about Panini though. I had really great Limited breaks this year. So they did me fair on that stuff. I know every product is hit or miss. But this seems too expensive to take the risk on buying. JUST MY OPINION, Brad.

[PHK - AL]

As painful as it has been at times, I've read through these comments and found them to be very useful. The criticism about collation is fair. As some of you know, Clint and I have been working to adjust the system and it hasn't yet worked. It's especially frustrating since the QC cases we pulled for both Pinnacle and Contenders displayed none of the problems we've since seen in various online case breaks. Without getting into specifics, we have a wildly different approach being put into effect for Zenith that should address this issue once and for all.
As for some of the other complaints, well, I'm not sure exactly how to address them. I read some of you saying you want no inserts--okay, well, I've been to a couple of focus groups recently that said the opposite. No product is going to make everybody happy, but inserts are part of the mix for now. Others have said they want lower print runs *and* more hits. I'm no Elon Lindenstrauss, but it doesn't take a Fields winner to understand that math doesn't quite work. Same goes for the complaints about pulling guys like Jake Muzzin. The reality is that not every rookie in the league is, or will ever be, a superstar pursued by a massive collector base. Still, every player is collectible to someone, whether they like his NHL team, his junior club, are from his hometown, whatever. And sometimes, those players no one initially notices blossom into a highly desirable commodity. And then there's the practical reality: we can't make 10-card RC subsets consisting only of top-10 picks...unless, that is, you want us to print 5,000 copies of each. Don't think anyone would think that's the answer.
In closing, I appreciate the passion every brings to the argument, whether they are pro or con. And if anyone has some practical solutions to something they see as an area needing improvement, I'm happy to hear them. Both Clint and I are lifelong collectors and so we always want to make the best products possible. Your suggestions just might help...

[theboxbreaker96]

I understand what your talking about Al but what we mean is that we dont want an insert and then paralled to /100 /75 /50 /25 /10 /1 and so on maybe just /100 /50 /1

we dont want you to get rid of the inserts just not as many parallels

and as for the costumer service which you didnt talk about is horrible. This is the reason i wont buy from panini because i pull a redemption or have questions and ill never be able to get an update.

I am not the only one who wont buy unless the costumer service is fixed. Panini is losing a lot of customers because of it

[DeanCrandall]

As painful as it has been at times, I've read through these comments and found them to be very useful. The criticism about collation is fair. As some of you know, Clint and I have been working to adjust the system and it hasn't yet worked. It's especially frustrating since the QC cases we pulled for both Pinnacle and Contenders displayed none of the problems we've since seen in various online case breaks. Without getting into specifics, we have a wildly different approach being put into effect for Zenith that should address this issue once and for all.
As for some of the other complaints, well, I'm not sure exactly how to address them. I read some of you saying you want no inserts--okay, well, I've been to a couple of focus groups recently that said the opposite. No product is going to make everybody happy, but inserts are part of the mix for now. Others have said they want lower print runs *and* more hits. I'm no Elon Lindenstrauss, but it doesn't take a Fields winner to understand that math doesn't quite work. Same goes for the complaints about pulling guys like Jake Muzzin. The reality is that not every rookie in the league is, or will ever be, a superstar pursued by a massive collector base. Still, every player is collectible to someone, whether they like his NHL team, his junior club, are from his hometown, whatever. And sometimes, those players no one initially notices blossom into a highly desirable commodity. And then there's the practical reality: we can't make 10-card RC subsets consisting only of top-10 picks...unless, that is, you want us to print 5,000 copies of each. Don't think anyone would think that's the answer.
In closing, I appreciate the passion every brings to the argument, whether they are pro or con. And if anyone has some practical solutions to something they see as an area needing improvement, I'm happy to hear them. Both Clint and I are lifelong collectors and so we always want to make the best products possible. Your suggestions just might help...

How about listing a production number instead of calling it SP, only to find out by the football experts who have experience with Panini tactics, it will likely be over 500 . 500 is hardly an SP, and many are sitting on their Rookies until the actual numbers are released.

Rushed out and paid $35 for a card that will be under $10 within a week.... only because of a phantom SP.

[PHK - AL]

I can't speak directly to the customer service issues (that's a totally different part of the company and I have no sway there), but we are on the same page re: insert parallels. Finishing off Certified now, and there'll be no more than two parallels to any of the insert sets (#'d to 25 and/or 1/1). I've definitely heard some say that no parallels at all is the right way to go, but I've also heard others (particularly player collectors) say they love the challenge of chasing them down. This approach sits somewhere between the two and hopefully makes a plurality of collectors happy.

[brian045]

Inserts def. have there place. How many packs are in a box..25? That would be wayyy to much base ,and then everyone would complain. There are alot of nice designs in the contender subsets though. UD ultimate will be around the same price, but with no base/parallel and then people complain because they only got 2 cards for 150 that retail for 37 dollars. There are two sides of the argument, to each his own!

[RGM81]

As the old saying goes, you can't please all of the people all of the time.

My favourite product this year was Certified. I think you guys jumped out of the gates with a great product, that delivered just the right balance between parallels and other hits. I know that a lot of people can get turned off by too many shiny variations, and I do too in certain instances, but the parallels in Certified did it right. You can only get certain version in the hot boxes, some have memorabilia, others have autographs. So long as there is something tangible to the parallel beyond applying a different stamper, there's nothing at all wrong with them.

I like that the subsets in Contenders just have the two parallels - toss in an auto'd version and that's really all you need. I intend to get one of each of the Lottery Winners versions for the Price PC, and there's some other really cool cards in there I want to grab as well (already have a Leather Larceny incoming).

I'm still very eager to learn what the "Tag Team Combos" subset in Dominion is all about too.

[Iced_Knuckle_Puck]

For some constructive critisim

I feel my favorite product this year was Crown Royal

Perfect mix of base to inserts to autos to game used

all parrallels were numbered (maybe one or two too many)

but still a really nice product

Thank you for that !

[LegendsCollector]

How about listing a production number instead of calling it SP, only to find out by the football experts who have experience with Panini tactics, it will likely be over 500 . 500 is hardly an SP, and many are sitting on their Rookies until the actual numbers are released.

Rushed out and paid $35 for a card that will be under $10 within a week.... only because of a phantom SP.

Its not their fault you overpaid for a card. Contenders Football has had rookies numbered as low as 30 and 21 in the past. Anything less than the standard print run is considered an SP. If they didn't announce that the card you bought was an SP, then its entirely your fault that you paid that much. You gambled and lost, deal with it.